The venture capital landscape in the United States is undergoing a profound transformation, moving beyond its traditional coastal epicenters to cultivate innovation in burgeoning regional hubs. This shift is epitomized by firms like Cortado Ventures, an Oklahoma City-based entity that is redefining how seed-stage frontier technology companies are identified, funded, and supported in the U.S. Midcontinent. As part of the NVCA’s “Meet a VC” series, this spotlight on Mike Moradi, co-founder and general partner of Cortado Ventures, offers a compelling narrative of experience, strategic foresight, and a deep-seated commitment to democratizing access to capital and expertise.
Moradi’s journey into venture capital is deeply rooted in his extensive experience as an entrepreneur. A six-time founder, he has navigated the exhilarating highs and challenging lows of company building across technically complex industries such as biopharmaceuticals and nanotechnology. His path began unconventionally, leaving dental school to launch his first venture. That initial foray, however, ended in failure. Yet, this setback proved to be a crucible, instilling in him an unwavering resilience. "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, highlighting a foundational principle that would guide his subsequent endeavors. This early experience forged a founder who understood that perseverance, not immediate success, often defines the entrepreneurial spirit.
Subsequent ventures brought both rapid growth and sobering lessons. One of his companies achieved a swift acquisition by a Fortune 100 corporation, a testament to his evolving business acumen. However, a later San Francisco Bay Area venture presented a different kind of challenge, nearly collapsing after securing an $18 million Series B financing round. This near-failure imparted a critical insight: while capital can accelerate growth, speed without direction is perilous. "A high valuation and a full bank account will happily let you scale the wrong thing," Moradi states, underscoring the importance of strategic alignment over mere financial injection. This experience cemented his conviction that capital must be deployed judiciously, enabling founders to test assumptions, mitigate risk, and achieve meaningful milestones rather than fostering premature scaling. His mission today is to infuse the entrepreneurial zeal often associated with Silicon Valley into the Midcontinent, meticulously considering the sequence and timing of capital deployment to foster sustainable growth.
Cortado Ventures was co-founded in 2020 by Moradi alongside a team of seasoned founders, CEOs, and operators. Their collective vision was to build the kind of firm they wished had existed during their own entrepreneurial careers – one that intimately understood the founder’s predicament and could offer value far beyond a mere financial investment. This “built by founders, for founders” ethos forms the bedrock of Cortado’s operational philosophy, aiming to bridge the gap between innovative ideas and the comprehensive support systems needed for their success.
The Midcontinent Advantage: A Crucible for Critical Industry Innovation
Cortado Ventures’ investment thesis is strategically centered on the U.S. Midcontinent, recognizing it not as a periphery, but as a fertile ground for innovation, particularly in critical industries ripe for disruption. This region, often overlooked by traditional venture capital flows, is home to sectors like energy, aerospace and defense, healthcare, manufacturing, mobility, and logistics. These industries operate within intricate physical environments, established supply chains, and demanding customer relationships, requiring deep, nuanced understanding for true transformation.
Cortado actively seeks out experienced technical founders who possess this innate industry knowledge – individuals who have spent years embedded within hospitals, factories, laboratories, energy companies, aerospace programs, or logistics networks. Their firsthand experience provides unparalleled credibility with customers, crucial insights into implementation challenges, and a practical knowledge base that is difficult to cultivate from an external perspective. This approach counters the common perception that innovation primarily springs from generalist tech hubs, asserting that deep domain expertise is a powerful differentiator.
The geography itself offers a competitive advantage. The Midcontinent boasts proximity to these critical industries and potential customers, a technically skilled workforce, robust research institutions, and access to complementary public funding, all while offering lower company-building costs compared to coastal hubs. For instance, states like Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas, part of this vast Midcontinent, contribute significantly to the nation’s energy, aviation, and agricultural sectors. Research institutions such as the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University are increasingly fostering innovation pipelines that can feed into venture-backed startups. This unique confluence of factors creates an environment where disruptive technologies, from advanced manufacturing to critical infrastructure cybersecurity, can take root and flourish.
Cortado’s portfolio vividly illustrates the breadth of innovation emerging from this environment, encompassing companies applying new technologies across space communications, industrial safety, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, energy, and mobility. Their strategy is not merely predicated on addressing historical underfunding in the region; it is built on the profound conviction that proximity to "hard problems" — the complex, real-world challenges faced by established industries — will naturally produce differentiated companies and, consequently, strong financial returns. Moradi succinctly captures this sentiment: "Talent is not concentrated anywhere in particular. Capital and networks have just been slower to distribute than talent has." This perspective frames the Midcontinent not as a beneficiary of charity, but as a strategic investment opportunity where untapped potential awaits.
Beyond Capital: Cultivating a Robust Innovation Ecosystem
Initially, Moradi believed that the primary constraint facing a nascent venture ecosystem was a simple shortage of capital. While Cortado Ventures has demonstrably helped to identify and fund promising companies in the region, his perspective evolved as the firm grew. He realized that capital, while necessary, was "nowhere close to sufficient." Founders require a multifaceted support system that extends far beyond monetary investment. This includes access to experienced operators who can guide them through common pitfalls, customers willing to embrace unproven technologies, investors prepared to bridge funding gaps between milestones, and a vibrant community where crucial relationships can be forged. "Money can accelerate a company," Moradi emphasizes, "It cannot stand in for experience."
This crucial realization profoundly shaped Cortado’s role within the broader Midcontinent ecosystem. The firm actively works to interconnect founders, funders, universities, corporations, policymakers, and technical experts, deliberately expanding these relationships beyond its immediate portfolio companies. This ecosystem-building approach is exemplified by initiatives like Cortado’s annual Midcontinent Venture Capital Summit, which convenes investors, limited partners, founders, and ecosystem leaders from across the country, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange. Furthermore, Cortado partners with regional entrepreneurship organizations and supports entities like The Verge, an Oklahoma City incubator and accelerator that provides vital company-building resources, programming, and capital connections. Each interaction within this expanding network is designed to help a founder secure a customer, find a mentor, recruit an employee, forge a collaboration, or attract further investment. Collectively, these relationships construct the essential infrastructure required for more companies to launch, scale, and thrive, ultimately extending venture capital’s impact beyond individual investments to create a more resilient and dynamic regional economy.
Disciplined Investing in an Uncertain World: Conviction, Valuation, and Resilience
Investing in early-stage companies inherently involves navigating a landscape of incomplete information. Moradi candidly admits, "Incomplete data is my job description." Rather than striving for an elusive perfect certainty, he employs a disciplined approach: distinguishing between assumptions that can be immediately tested and those that will only resolve over time. This involves identifying critical conditions that must hold true, rigorously considering how these conditions might be disproven, and meticulously evaluating the cost associated with achieving the next meaningful milestone.
Moradi’s strongest convictions typically coalesce around the founding team’s capabilities, the clarity of the customer problem being addressed, and the company’s demonstrated rate of progress. He maintains a healthy skepticism regarding predictions about the precise timing of emerging markets or the exact pathway a company might take to an eventual exit. This discipline becomes especially vital during rapidly moving financing rounds, where the excitement of a compelling founder and a competitive process can generate immense pressure to make swift decisions before core investment assumptions have been thoroughly vetted. "A hard deadline is exactly when people stop asking uncomfortable questions," he observes. When necessary, Cortado will deliberately slow down the process, engaging independent scientific or technical experts for deeper diligence. This additional scrutiny either solidifies the firm’s conviction or uncovers reasons to step away, ensuring decisions are grounded in evidence rather than momentum.
This same discipline extends to valuation. Moradi advocates for a "sensible entry price," viewing it as a critical form of protection for founders, employees, and investors alike. An overly aggressive valuation, while appearing to be an immediate victory, can create significant long-term challenges. If a company’s progress fails to meet the inflated expectations tied to such a valuation, it can adversely affect founder ownership, dilute employee equity, constrain future fundraising options, and severely limit the company’s adaptability. Conversely, an overly low valuation can stifle growth and talent acquisition. "The right number buys you options for years. In boom times, people forget that financial crises happen," Moradi warns, highlighting the importance of building resilience into the financial structure from the outset. For Cortado, this discipline is not a lack of belief in a founder’s ambition; rather, it is a strategic approach to provide ambitious companies with the necessary flexibility and time to achieve their potential amidst market fluctuations.
Operator-Led Support: Speed, Specificity, and Strategic Intervention
Cortado Ventures’ team leverages its extensive operating experience to provide meaningful support to founders, particularly when plans deviate or difficult decisions arise. Moradi encapsulates this philosophy in two words: "Speed and specificity." He elaborates, "Answer in hours rather than days and show up with work already done instead of advice. Better yet, pick up the phone." This proactive, hands-on approach can manifest in various ways: rebuilding a complex financial model, making a strategic customer introduction, assisting in recruiting a senior executive, or taking responsibility for navigating a challenging board conversation. It also entails the courage to deliver uncomfortable truths when a company’s runway is shortening or its strategic direction needs a drastic pivot. Moradi, having been the founder in such critical meetings, deeply understands the value of an investor who can "lower the temperature, tell the truth to me and the board, and follow up after the meeting."
As Cortado and the surrounding ecosystem have matured, so too has the sophistication of its founder support. Portfolio companies can now tap into a rich network of operating executives, industry specialists, advisers, prospective customers, coaches, and fellow founders. While the region once primarily sought capital, today’s founders increasingly need customer access, senior talent, technical expertise, and candid guidance. Crucially, the firm’s role is not to usurp control from the entrepreneur. Sometimes, the most valuable contribution an investor can make is recognizing when to refrain from intervention. "Other times," Moradi concludes, "being helpful means staying out of the way." This nuanced approach balances active support with empowering founders to lead.
Building Enduring Legacies: Cortado’s Vision for a Distributed Future
Moradi firmly believes that a venture firm’s responsibility extends beyond the immediate performance of its own portfolio. "We must build things that outlast a single fund," he asserts. For Cortado, this translates into a dedicated effort to strengthen connections among founders, funders, universities, corporations, and policymakers across the Midcontinent. It also involves actively fostering the formation and growth of other investment firms within the region, rather than viewing them as competitors. "This is not a zero-sum game," Moradi states. "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 wider array of capital sources and expertise, while simultaneously creating more opportunities for investors to collaborate and participate in promising ventures. Over time, this collaborative approach aims to establish a more durable pathway connecting regional innovation with national capital markets. Moradi’s experience as a trustee and audit committee member for a state retirement system has reinforced the paramount importance of fiduciary duty. He emphasizes that while ecosystem building is vital, it "does not excuse any of us from being disciplined fiduciaries first," ensuring transparency regarding investment risk, duration, and potential losses.
Cortado Ventures also recognizes the crucial role of the NVCA as part of the connective infrastructure supporting firms and founders nationwide. 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 talent, and a new technology’s path to market. "NVCA helps each of us make policy concrete and stay on top of the issues that matter in D.C. and beyond," Moradi notes. Furthermore, Cortado’s participation in the NVCA provides 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 Innovation Map: The Future of American Entrepreneurship
Moradi hopes that Cortado’s story can illuminate the true breadth and diversity of American venture capital. While the industry’s largest firms often garner the most attention, the vast majority of venture activity involves smaller investors writing early checks into specialized industries, niche technologies, specific communities, and underserved 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 explains, demystifying the venture ecosystem. These specialized firms play an indispensable role in discovering founders before their markets become obvious, connecting highly specialized knowledge with crucial capital, and guiding companies through the arduous period between a promising idea and a sustainable business. "The hardest work happens after the money moves," Moradi asserts, highlighting the ongoing commitment required.
The advent of new technologies — artificial intelligence, automation, advanced manufacturing, energy innovation, biology, and space technology — is significantly reducing the cost and complexity of pursuing ambitious ideas. This paradigm shift enables small, agile teams to tackle opportunities that once demanded the vast resources of large corporations or national programs. Many of these pioneering teams are emerging in locations intimately connected to the problems they are striving to solve. This is the profound, broader impact of expanding venture capital across America: when investors deliberately look beyond familiar networks and engage with founders where critical industries operate, they facilitate the transformation of more ideas into viable companies, enable more technologies to reach the market, and empower more communities to actively participate in the nation’s innovation economy. For Mike Moradi, the founders who dare to attempt what others deem impossible remain the greatest source of optimism. "Never forget that we’re here for them. When we do this right, everyone, including humanity, wins," he concludes, encapsulating the ultimate purpose behind Cortado Ventures’ pioneering work. The NVCA proudly counts Cortado Ventures among its members, championing their vision for a more distributed and impactful future for American innovation.
