In a strategic move reflecting the evolving landscape of American innovation, Cortado Ventures, an Oklahoma City-based firm, is actively reshaping the narrative around venture capital, spearheaded by its co-founder and General Partner, Mike Moradi. Through its focused investment in seed-stage frontier technology companies across the U.S. Midcontinent, Cortado Ventures is challenging the traditional geographic concentration of capital, championing the belief that transformative founders often emerge from within the critical industries they seek to revolutionize. This approach, rooted in deep operational experience and a commitment to robust ecosystem development, positions Cortado not merely as an investor but as a vital architect of regional economic dynamism.
The firm’s core thesis is elegantly simple yet profoundly impactful: the most effective innovators are frequently those who have spent years immersed in the complexities of established sectors. By bridging the gap between their intimate industry knowledge and essential resources—capital, customers, and a comprehensive support network—Cortado Ventures is actively fostering an environment where American innovation can flourish far beyond the conventional tech hubs. This strategy is more than a geographic diversification; it is a recognition of untapped potential and a commitment to unlocking value from overlooked regions. This deep dive into Cortado Ventures and Moradi’s philosophy is part of the NVCA’s "Meet a VC" series, which aims to illuminate the people, perspectives, and convictions driving the venture capital industry forward.
The Entrepreneurial Crucible: Mike Moradi’s Path to Venture Capital
Mike Moradi’s journey into venture capital is deeply informed by his extensive and often challenging experiences as a serial entrepreneur. A six-time founder, Moradi navigated the intricate landscapes of biopharmaceuticals, nanotechnology, and other technically demanding industries, accumulating a wealth of practical wisdom that now underpins Cortado’s investment philosophy. His entrepreneurial saga commenced with a bold decision: departing dental school to launch his first company. This initial venture, however, did not achieve success, failing to gain traction in a competitive market. This early setback, while disheartening, provided an invaluable lesson in the high-stakes, high-failure environment of startup creation, where only a fraction of new businesses achieve sustained growth.
Rather than deterring him, this early setback served as a formative lesson, instilling a profound resilience and an unwavering commitment to perseverance. "The lesson was to keep pushing past every obstacle, to not be discouraged by hearing the word ‘no,’ and to stay the course," Moradi often reflects, highlighting the tenacity required to navigate the precarious early stages of company building. This foundational experience underscores a critical truth in entrepreneurship: failure is often a prerequisite for future success, offering invaluable insights that cannot be gleaned from textbooks or simulations.
Moradi’s subsequent ventures demonstrated this learned resilience. His second company achieved rapid growth and was ultimately acquired by a Fortune 100 corporation, a testament to his evolving understanding of market dynamics and strategic execution. A later San Francisco Bay Area startup also secured an acquisition, but not before confronting a near-catastrophic downturn following an $18 million Series B financing round. This period of intense struggle delivered another pivotal lesson: while capital can dramatically accelerate a company’s trajectory, speed without strategic direction and market readiness can be detrimental. "A high valuation and a full bank account will happily let you scale the wrong thing," Moradi sagely observes, emphasizing the importance of disciplined growth and validated product-market fit. This insight, gained from the brink of failure, now profoundly shapes Cortado’s cautious yet ambitious investment approach, focusing on sustainable rather than simply rapid expansion.
Today, Moradi’s professional mission extends beyond individual company success; it is about replicating Silicon Valley’s innovative "spark" within the Midcontinent. He meticulously considers the sequencing and timing of capital deployment as much as the underlying technology, advocating for financing that enables founders to rigorously test assumptions, mitigate risks, and achieve substantive milestones. This disciplined approach ensures that growth is tethered to proven progress, preventing businesses from outstripping their validated capabilities. It marries entrepreneurial optimism with empirical evidence, strategic discipline, and a clear-eyed understanding of immediate objectives, a methodology highly valued in the volatile world of frontier technology.
Cortado Ventures: Built by Founders, for Founders
The foundation of Cortado Ventures in 2020 was a direct response to this accumulated wisdom. Moradi, alongside a team of seasoned founders, CEOs, and operators, embarked on a mission to create the kind of venture firm they themselves wished had existed during their entrepreneurial journeys. This meant building a firm that not only provided capital but also deeply understood the myriad decisions and challenges founders confront, offering contributions that extend far beyond the initial check. This ethos has allowed Cortado to forge genuine partnerships, leveraging collective operational experience to guide portfolio companies through their most critical growth phases.
The timing of Cortado’s inception also coincided with a broader national shift in venture capital. For decades, the vast majority of venture funding was concentrated in a few coastal enclaves. In 2020, for instance, California, New York, and Massachusetts accounted for over 70% of all U.S. venture capital dollars. However, the early 2020s witnessed a growing recognition of "innovation deserts" and a movement towards decentralizing tech investment, significantly accelerated by remote work trends during the COVID-19 pandemic. This backdrop provided fertile ground for Cortado’s thesis, demonstrating that talent and groundbreaking ideas are not geographically constrained, and that regional ecosystems were primed for growth if given the right support.
The Midcontinent’s Undeniable Competitive Edge
Cortado Ventures’ strategic focus on the Midcontinent is not arbitrary; it is predicated on a profound understanding of the region’s inherent competitive advantages. This vast expanse, encompassing states like Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, and parts of Texas, is home to many of the industries most critically poised for technological evolution and disruption. Sectors such as energy (oil & gas, renewables), aerospace and defense, healthcare, advanced manufacturing, mobility, and logistics operate within complex physical environments, rely on deeply entrenched supply chains, and serve demanding customer bases. Transforming these industries demands more than superficial software solutions; it necessitates a granular understanding of their operational intricacies and inherent challenges.
This is precisely where Cortado seeks its founders: experienced technical individuals who possess this indispensable domain expertise. These entrepreneurs often have spent years within hospitals, factories, laboratories, energy corporations, aerospace programs, or logistics networks, directly identifying persistent problems and conceiving innovative solutions. Their lived experience confers immediate credibility with potential customers, provides critical insight into implementation hurdles, and offers a depth of knowledge that would be exceedingly difficult to acquire from an external vantage point. For example, a founder developing AI-driven solutions for oilfield optimization in Oklahoma or precision agriculture robotics in Kansas would possess an invaluable contextual understanding that an equivalent founder in Silicon Valley might lack, thereby accelerating market adoption and product-market fit.
Beyond human capital, the Midcontinent itself offers a compelling investment advantage. The region provides unparalleled proximity to critical industries and a vast pool of potential customers, fostering shorter sales cycles and more direct feedback loops. It boasts a technically skilled workforce, often trained through strong regional universities like the University of Oklahoma or Oklahoma State University, and vocational programs. Furthermore, the presence of robust research institutions and complementary public funding initiatives (such as state-level economic development grants or federal programs like the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program) can de-risk early-stage ventures. Crucially, the lower cost of company-building in the Midcontinent—from office space to talent acquisition—allows startups to extend their runway and achieve more with less capital. According to recent data, the cost of living in Oklahoma City is approximately 25% lower than the national average, a significant boon in the often capital-intensive world of frontier technology.
Cortado’s diverse portfolio vividly illustrates the breadth and depth of innovation emerging from this environment. Its investments span cutting-edge applications in space communications, industrial safety, critical infrastructure cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing, digital healthcare solutions, sustainable energy technologies, and next-generation mobility platforms. These are not merely local businesses; they are companies developing globally relevant solutions from a strategically advantageous regional base, demonstrating the potential for outsized returns from traditionally overlooked geographies.
The firm’s strategy is deliberately not built on the premise that Midcontinent founders deserve investment merely due to historical undercapitalization. Instead, it is firmly grounded in the conviction that proximity to hard, real-world problems inherently produces differentiated companies capable of generating superior returns. While venture capital investment in the Midcontinent has seen significant growth—with Oklahoma, for instance, experiencing a 10x increase in VC funding between 2017 and 2022—it still represents a small fraction of national totals, indicating substantial untapped potential. "Talent is not concentrated anywhere in particular. Capital and networks have just been slower to distribute than talent has," Moradi asserts, encapsulating the firm’s belief in the widespread distribution of entrepreneurial brilliance. For Moradi, expanding the geographic reach of venture capital is not simply about discovering more founders; it is about unearthing novel sources of insight and innovation that traditional, centralized networks may have consistently overlooked.
The Evolving Needs of Founders: Beyond Just Capital
When Cortado Ventures first launched, Moradi initially believed that the primary impediment to a burgeoning venture ecosystem in the Midcontinent was a scarcity of capital. The firm quickly demonstrated that promising companies could indeed be identified and funded within the region, successfully deploying capital and validating its investment thesis. However, as Cortado matured and gained deeper insights into the entrepreneurial journey, 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, reflecting on this critical realization. While essential, funding alone cannot guarantee success. Founders require a multifaceted support system that extends far beyond monetary investment. This includes access to experienced operators who can help them sidestep preventable pitfalls, early-adopting customers willing to pilot unproven technologies, supportive investors prepared to bridge funding gaps between milestones, and a vibrant community conducive to forging crucial relationships. "Money can accelerate a company," Moradi emphasizes, "It cannot stand in for experience."
This profound understanding reshaped Cortado’s role within the broader Midcontinent ecosystem. Rather than hoarding relationships for its exclusive portfolio, the firm actively cultivates connections among founders, funders, universities, corporations, policymakers, and technical experts throughout the region. This open-source approach to ecosystem building is exemplified by initiatives like its annual Midcontinent Venture Capital Summit, which convenes investors, limited partners (LPs), founders, and ecosystem leaders from across the nation. Such events, first launched by Cortado in 2021, facilitate invaluable networking, knowledge exchange, and co-investment opportunities, significantly boosting regional deal flow and visibility. Feedback from attendees often highlights the unique value of connecting with peers and potential partners outside of traditional hubs, fostering a sense of shared purpose and collective growth.
Furthermore, Cortado collaborates closely with regional entrepreneurship organizations and actively supports The Verge, an Oklahoma City-based incubator and accelerator
