In a compelling feature as part of the National Venture Capital Association’s (NVCA) "Meet a VC" series, Mike Moradi, co-founder and General Partner of Oklahoma City-based Cortado Ventures, offers a profound look into the ethos driving his firm. Cortado Ventures, a pivotal player in the evolving landscape of American innovation, is strategically investing in seed-stage frontier technology companies across the U.S. Midcontinent, challenging traditional notions of where groundbreaking startups can emerge and thrive.
Cortado’s investment thesis is firmly rooted in a distinctive belief: the most effective founders for transforming critical industries are often those who have intimately experienced them from within. By bridging their invaluable industry experience with essential capital, customer access, and a robust support network, Cortado Ventures is actively expanding the geographical footprint of American innovation, demonstrating that talent and opportunity are not confined to established coastal hubs.
Mike Moradi’s Entrepreneurial Odyssey: Lessons Forged in Fire
Moradi’s journey into venture capital is not merely academic; it is deeply experiential, shaped by the unpredictable realities of company building. A serial entrepreneur, Moradi boasts a remarkable track record as a six-time founder, having spearheaded companies across highly complex sectors such as biopharmaceuticals and nanotechnology. His entrepreneurial path commenced with a bold decision to depart from dental school to launch his inaugural venture. The initial outcome, however, was a stark lesson in resilience: it failed.
This early setback, rather than diminishing his ambition, served as a crucible, instilling in him the unwavering resolve to persevere through adversity and maintain commitment even when faced with skepticism. "The lesson was to keep pushing past every obstacle, to not be discouraged by hearing the word ‘no,’ and to stay the course," Moradi reflects, underscoring a fundamental principle that now guides Cortado’s approach to supporting founders. This grit is particularly relevant in the startup world, where, according to statistics from the U.S. Small Business Administration, approximately 50% of new businesses fail within their first five years, highlighting the inherent risks and the necessity of persistence.
His subsequent ventures painted a more successful picture. One company experienced rapid growth and was eventually acquired by a Fortune 100 enterprise, a testament to Moradi’s refined strategic acumen. Another significant undertaking, a San Francisco Bay Area venture, also achieved an acquisition, though not without its own dramatic near-failure following an $18 million Series B financing round. This specific experience delivered a crucial, albeit different, lesson: while capital can indeed accelerate a company’s trajectory, speed is only advantageous when the business is progressing in the correct direction and is genuinely prepared for scale. "A high valuation and a full bank account will happily let you scale the wrong thing," Moradi cautions, emphasizing the critical importance of foundational proof and market readiness over mere financial injection.
These profound experiences have shaped Moradi’s contemporary mission: to infuse the entrepreneurial dynamism often associated with Silicon Valley into the heart of the Midcontinent. He meticulously considers the sequence and timing of capital deployment as much as he scrutinizes a company’s core technology. Financing, in Cortado’s philosophy, should serve as a tool to facilitate assumption testing, mitigate risk, and enable founders to achieve tangible milestones. Crucially, it should never permit a business to outpace its proven capabilities. This approach marries entrepreneurial optimism with rigorous evidence, disciplined execution, and a clear-eyed understanding of the immediate next steps a company must validate.
Cortado Ventures: Built by Founders, For Founders
In 2020, Moradi, alongside a cadre of accomplished founders, CEOs, and operators, co-launched Cortado Ventures. Their collective aim was to establish the very firm they had wished existed during their own entrepreneurial endeavors: a partner that possessed an innate understanding of the complex decisions founders confront and could offer value extending far beyond the initial capital investment. This collaborative founding team brings a wealth of operational expertise to the table, providing a distinct advantage in navigating the challenges inherent in scaling frontier technology companies. The timing of Cortado’s launch also coincided with a growing national recognition of the need for diversified venture capital access, moving beyond the historically concentrated epicenters. Data from PitchBook and NVCA consistently show that while major hubs still dominate, a significant portion of new VC activity and fundraising is increasingly occurring in emerging markets and regional ecosystems.
The Midcontinent as a Strategic Competitive Advantage
The U.S. Midcontinent is not merely a geographical location; it is a strategic crucible for innovation, home to numerous industries grappling with immense pressure to evolve. Sectors such as energy, aerospace and defense, healthcare, manufacturing, mobility, and logistics operate within intricate physical environments, established supply chains, and demanding customer ecosystems. The transformation of these industries demands more than just an elegant software application; it necessitates an profound, granular understanding of their intrinsic workings.
Cortado Ventures actively seeks out experienced technical founders who possess this deep, insider knowledge. These individuals often have spent years immersed in hospitals, factories, laboratories, energy corporations, aerospace programs, or logistics networks before identifying a unique opportunity to address a persistent problem through innovative means. Their firsthand experience grants them unparalleled credibility with potential customers, invaluable insight into implementation challenges, and a depth of knowledge that would be exceedingly difficult for outsiders to cultivate.
Moreover, the geography itself confers a significant investment advantage. The Midcontinent region offers immediate proximity to critical industries and a vast pool of potential customers. It also boasts a technically skilled workforce, robust research institutions, complementary public funding initiatives, and, crucially, significantly lower company-building costs compared to coastal tech hubs. For instance, the cost of living and operating expenses in cities like Oklahoma City or Tulsa are often 30-50% lower than in Silicon Valley or New York, allowing startups to extend their runway and allocate more resources to product development.
Cortado’s diverse portfolio stands as a testament to the breadth of innovation emerging from this dynamic environment. Its companies are leveraging cutting-edge technologies across vital sectors including space communications, industrial safety, critical infrastructure cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, energy, and mobility. This strategic focus is not predicated on the notion that Midcontinent founders deserve investment simply due to historical undercapitalization. Rather, it is built on the firm conviction that proximity to "hard problems" — deeply entrenched, complex industry challenges — can organically produce highly differentiated companies capable of generating exceptional returns. Moradi succinctly articulates this belief: "Talent is not concentrated anywhere in particular. Capital and networks have just been slower to distribute than talent has." For Moradi, expanding the geographical reach of venture capital is not merely about discovering more founders; it is fundamentally about uncovering previously overlooked sources of insight and innovation that traditional networks may have inadvertently bypassed.
Capital Is Necessary, But Not Sufficient: Building a Thriving Ecosystem
When Cortado Ventures first commenced operations, Moradi believed that the primary constraint impeding the growth of a nascent venture ecosystem was a scarcity of capital. The firm successfully demonstrated that promising companies could indeed be identified and funded within the region, attracting both local and external investment. However, as Cortado expanded its operations and deepened its engagement with the entrepreneurial community, Moradi’s understanding of founders’ comprehensive needs evolved significantly.
"Five years ago, I would have said the limiting reagent in a young ecosystem was capital. Capital turned out to be necessary, and also nowhere close to sufficient," Moradi states, highlighting a crucial realization. Founders require more than just financial backing; they need a sophisticated support system encompassing experienced operators who can help them circumvent preventable pitfalls, pioneering customers willing to adopt unproven technologies, patient investors prepared to sustain a company between significant milestones, and a vibrant community conducive to the formation of critical relationships. "Money can accelerate a company," Moradi emphasizes, "It cannot stand in for experience."
This profound realization has profoundly shaped Cortado’s expansive role within the broader Midcontinent ecosystem. The firm actively works to forge connections among founders, funders, universities, corporations, policymakers, and technical experts, consciously avoiding the reservation of these vital relationships exclusively for its own portfolio companies. This inclusive approach fosters a more collaborative and resilient regional innovation infrastructure.
A flagship initiative in this regard is Cortado’s annual Midcontinent Venture Capital Summit, which convenes investors, limited partners, founders, and ecosystem leaders from across the nation, creating a vital forum for networking and collaboration. Furthermore, Cortado actively partners with regional entrepreneurship organizations and The Verge, an Oklahoma City-based incubator and accelerator that provides invaluable company-building resources, targeted programming, and crucial capital connections. Each of these interactions serves as a potential catalyst, helping a founder identify a critical customer, an insightful adviser, a key employee, a strategic collaborator, or a future investor. Collectively, these relationships construct the essential infrastructure that empowers more companies to successfully launch and scale. For Moradi, this is where venture capital’s true impact extends far beyond a singular investment; a stronger, more interconnected ecosystem provides a viable pathway for a greater number of entrepreneurs to realize their visions, simultaneously creating more abundant opportunities for capital, talent, and innovation to converge.
Conviction Without False Certainty: A Disciplined Investment Philosophy
Investing in early-stage companies inherently involves navigating environments characterized by incomplete information. Moradi candidly acknowledges this reality: "Incomplete data is my job description." Rather than attempting the impossible task of eliminating uncertainty, he employs a disciplined approach, segmenting assumptions that can be immediately tested from those that will only resolve over time. He meticulously identifies the conditions that must hold true, considers potential avenues for disproving them, and carefully evaluates the cost associated with achieving the next meaningful milestone.
Moradi’s strongest convictions typically revolve around the founding team’s capabilities, the veracity of the customer problem being addressed, and the company’s demonstrable rate of progress. He exercises greater caution when attempting to predict the precise timing of an emerging market or the exact path a company might ultimately take to an exit. This discipline becomes particularly vital when a financing round is progressing rapidly. The combination of a compelling founder and a competitive investment process can generate immense pressure to make a swift decision before the central investment assumptions have been thoroughly vetted. "A hard deadline is exactly when people stop asking uncomfortable questions," Moradi warns, highlighting the danger of rushed decisions.
When circumstances demand it, Cortado will deliberately slow down the process, often engaging independent scientific or technical experts to conduct additional evaluation. This enhanced diligence may either solidify the firm’s conviction or, critically, reveal a compelling reason to withdraw from the investment. Paradoxically, Cortado’s most robust founder relationships have often originated from this initial scrutiny, as it sharpens strategic thinking and identifies potential risks while there is still ample time to address them effectively. However, slowing the decision-making process does not equate to slowing the response time to founders.
Moradi applies the same rigorous discipline to valuation. "A sensible entry price is a form of protection for the founder, employees, and investors alike," he asserts. An overly aggressive valuation, while initially appearing as a victory, can have severe long-term repercussions if the company’s subsequent progress fails to meet the inflated expectations tied to that number. Such consequences can negatively impact founder ownership, dilute employee equity, constrain future fundraising options, and hinder the company’s essential ability to adapt to market changes. This balancing act is crucial, as Moradi also acknowledges that "VCs can also strangle the life out of a company. Balance is key." He wisely adds, "The right number buys you options for years. In boom times, people forget that financial crises happen." For Cortado, this discipline is not indicative of a lack of belief in a founder’s ambition; rather, it is a strategic mechanism to provide an ambitious company with the essential flexibility and time required to achieve sustainable success.
Strategic Support: Showing Up With Work Already Done
The Cortado team possesses a unique advantage: its members have personally built, scaled, and successfully exited companies across many of the very industries in which the firm now invests. This profound operating experience fundamentally shapes how Cortado supports founders when strategic plans inevitably shift or difficult decisions emerge. Moradi encapsulates the essence of meaningful support in two concise words: "Speed and specificity."
"Answer in hours rather than days and show up with work already done instead of advice. Better yet, pick up the phone," he advises, emphasizing proactive, hands-on engagement. This tangible support might involve meticulously rebuilding a complex financial model, facilitating a crucial customer introduction, assisting in the recruitment of a senior executive, or taking direct responsibility for navigating a challenging board conversation. It also entails the courage to articulate uncomfortable truths when a company’s runway is dwindling or its core strategy requires a drastic pivot. Moradi, drawing from his own past, vividly recalls being the founder in such high-stakes meetings: "What helped was someone who lowered the temperature, told the truth to me and the board, and followed up after the meeting."
Cortado’s founder support mechanisms have evolved and become increasingly sophisticated as the firm and the surrounding ecosystem have matured. Portfolio companies now benefit from a vast network comprising operating executives, industry specialists, expert advisers, prospective customers, experienced coaches, fellow investors, and other founders within the firm’s expansive network. The needs of founders have also transformed; while capital was once the scarcest resource in the region, today’s entrepreneurs increasingly seek customer access, senior talent, specialized technical expertise, and candid, honest guidance. Crucially, the firm’s role is not to usurp control from the entrepreneur. Sometimes, the most valuable contribution an investor can make is discerning when not to intervene. "Other times," Moradi concludes, "being helpful means staying out of the way."
Building What Outlasts a Fund: A Vision for Enduring Impact
Moradi firmly believes that a venture firm’s responsibility extends far beyond the confines of its own portfolio. "We must build things that outlast a single fund," he declares, articulating a long-term vision for regional development. For Cortado, this translates into actively strengthening the connective tissue among founders, funders, universities, corporations, and policymakers. It also means proactively fostering the formation and growth of more investment firms within the Midcontinent region. "This is not a zero-sum game," Moradi asserts. "We want to enable a dozen other firms in our geography, and bring in outside funds for later rounds. We need to create scalable structures where everyone can win."
A larger, more interconnected investment community offers founders a greater diversity of potential capital sources and expertise. It also creates more opportunities for investors to collaborate and participate in promising companies, thereby de-risking individual investments and fostering a culture of shared success. Over time, this collaborative approach can establish a more durable and efficient pathway between regional innovation and national capital markets.
Ecosystem building, however, does not diminish a firm’s fundamental responsibility to its limited partners (LPs). Moradi’s prior experience as a trustee and audit committee member for a state retirement system profoundly reinforced the imperative of being unequivocally direct and transparent regarding investment risk, duration, and potential losses. "Ecosystem building matters, and it does not excuse any of us from being disciplined fiduciaries first," he underscores, emphasizing the dual mandate of financial stewardship and community development.
Moradi also recognizes the NVCA as an indispensable component of the connective infrastructure that supports venture firms and founders across the entire country. Policy issues such as capital formation, research commercialization, immigration, government procurement, tax treatment, and securities regulations are not abstract concepts; they directly influence an emerging manager’s ability to raise a fund, a startup’s capacity to attract top talent, and a new technology’s potential to reach the customers and institutions that desperately need it. "NVCA helps each of us make policy concrete and stay on top of the issues that matter in D.C. and beyond," Moradi notes, highlighting the organization’s crucial advocacy role. Participation in NVCA also provides Cortado with a vital platform to inject a Midcontinent perspective into national dialogues concerning innovation, capital formation, and the future trajectory of the venture industry.
Expanding the Map of American Innovation
Moradi hopes that Cortado’s compelling story can contribute to a broader understanding of the true breadth and diversity of American venture capital. While the industry’s largest, most prominent firms often garner the lion’s share of attention, a substantial portion of the venture ecosystem comprises smaller, specialized investors writing early checks into niche industries, specific technologies, underserved communities, and emerging regions. "Most of VC looks nothing like the caricature. The bulk of the industry is small firms writing early checks into some niche, be it industrial, geographic, demographic, or otherwise. And a VC firm is also a startup until fund 3 or 4," he points out, demystifying the industry.
These smaller, specialized firms play an absolutely essential role in identifying founders before their markets become obvious, skillfully connecting specialized knowledge with crucial capital, and guiding companies through the notoriously difficult period between a promising idea and a sustainable, thriving business. "The hardest work happens after the money moves," Moradi stresses, highlighting the ongoing, intensive support required.
The advent of new technologies is rendering this work even more consequential. Advancements in artificial intelligence, automation, advanced manufacturing, energy innovation, biotechnology, and space technology are dramatically reducing the cost and complexity of pursuing ambitious ideas. Small, agile teams can now undertake opportunities that once demanded the vast resources of large corporations or extensive national programs. Many of these pioneering teams, Moradi contends, will naturally emerge in locations intimately connected to the very problems they are striving to solve.
This decentralization of innovation is the broader, transformative impact of geographically expanding venture capital across America. When investors consciously look beyond familiar networks and actively meet founders where critical industries operate, they facilitate the conversion of more ideas into viable companies, enable more groundbreaking technologies to reach the market, and empower more communities to actively participate in and benefit from the nation’s dynamic innovation economy. For Mike Moradi, the founders who dare to attempt what others deem impossible remain the single greatest reason for enduring optimism. "Never forget that we’re here for them. When we do this right, everyone, including humanity, wins."
The NVCA proudly counts Cortado Ventures among its esteemed members, recognizing its pivotal role in shaping the future of venture capital and American innovation. Further insights into the firm’s groundbreaking work can be found at cortado.ventures.
