Top Tech Startups in Tennessee, US in 2027

Mirror Motivation started with a simple observation: the first waking minutes, the brain's peak window for setting intention, almost always get handed to a phone instead of anything designed to help. We're building a slim, battery-powered display that mounts to any bathroom mirror via suction cup and delivers personalized morning content — affirmations, scripture, mindset tools, and goal tracking — through a companion app, no installation required. The business is subscription-first: the device is the hook, the membership is the business, the same model that's worked for WHOOP, Peloton, and Oura. We're not selling a gadget, we're selling a daily habit. In our first few weeks, we've filed a provisional patent on the device and mount mechanism, built our full brand identity, written a complete business plan with a 3-year financial model, and are actively getting quotes from multiple manufacturers on production. We're currently raising a pre-seed round and building relationships with investors who believe in the same thing we do: that fixing how people start their day can change how they live the rest of it. We're a small, founder-led team right now, which means whoever joins us early gets real ownership and a real say in how this gets built, not a seat at the back of a big room. We move fast, value people who ship over people who talk, and care about building something that actually helps people, not just something that makes money off them.

Rhea County School District is a public school system based in Dayton, Tennessee, serving approximately 3,900 to 4,350 students across seven schools. The district operates elementary, middle, K-8, and high schools throughout the county, providing education

Eiro is founded by three computer science and bioinformatics professors at Vanderbilt University and Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Eiro started as a research effort as part of Wellcome Leap's MCPsych program (wellcomeleap.org/mcpsych), which aimed to leverage data-driven stratification and treatment-matching so as to double the number of people who receive an effective treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD) on the first try. As a part of that program, the Eiro team developed a platform which enables identification of informative biomarkers across multiple data modalities, statistical association of those biomarkers to various treatment outcomes, and optimization for rapid patient reocvery over the trajectories of clinical actions (data collection and/or treatment prescription). Eiro is now focused on translating this technical platform into products that can inform better care for real patients. We are building both patient-facing and clinician-facing interfaces to our technology. Software which makes individualized recommendations about treatment efficacy are regulated by the FDA under the Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) category. This means that both the patient-facing and clinician-facing versions of our technology must be deemed safe and effective in a randomized control trial. In preparation for these clinical trials, we are building out the capabilities to collect patient data at scale, as needed to train and validate our biomarkers against observed treatment outcomes. We are actively recruiting for three founding engineers, a research assistant and an administrative assistant. Please see our open roles for more information.

FairwAI is building real-time accountability infrastructure to detect bias in the moments that matter most. We’re solving one of the toughest challenges in tech: how to make fairness not just a principle but a system. From healthcare and hiring to hospitality and housing, bias shows up when people are most vulnerable. FairwAI turns those moments into measurable, actionable data—using AI, computer vision, and behavioral science to flag risks and enable institutional change before harm happens. We’re not a DEI tool. We’re compliance infrastructure for a new era—where safety, dignity, and fairness are non-negotiable. Our team includes engineers, policy thinkers, civil rights advocates, and public interest technologists from MIT, Harvard, Stanford, The UN, and beyond. We’re launching high-impact projects and building the backbone of ethical AI adoption across sectors. For interns & fellows, this is not a coffee-run experience. You’ll co-design tools, analyze live scenarios, and help shape the future of bias detection and remediation. Your work will be mentored, respected, and turned into real-world impact. If you care about fairness, ethics, and building tools that actually change lives—FairwAI is where your skills meet purpose. Join us. Let’s build the infrastructure fairness deserves.