In the dynamic landscape of venture capital, a new paradigm is emerging from the heartland, spearheaded by firms like Cortado Ventures. This Oklahoma City-based firm, a prominent member of the NVCA, is actively challenging the traditional geographic concentration of capital by investing in seed-stage frontier technology companies across the U.S. Midcontinent. Co-founder and General Partner Mike Moradi leads this initiative, bringing a unique blend of entrepreneurial grit and strategic vision to the venture world. Cortado’s core thesis is built on the conviction that the most impactful founders, those poised to transform critical industries, are often individuals with years of direct experience working within those very sectors. By strategically connecting their deep industry knowledge with essential capital, customer access, and a robust support network, Cortado Ventures is actively expanding the frontiers of American innovation beyond conventional tech hubs.
Mike Moradi’s Entrepreneurial Journey: A Foundation of Resilience and Strategic Acumen
Mike Moradi’s path to venture capital is a testament to the transformative power of firsthand entrepreneurial experience. A serial founder with six companies under his belt across diverse and technically complex industries such as biopharmaceuticals and nanotechnology, Moradi intimately understands the exhilarating highs and daunting challenges of company building. His entrepreneurial odyssey began unconventionally, leaving dental school to launch his first venture. That initial endeavor, he candidly shares, ended in failure. Yet, this setback did not diminish his ambition; rather, it forged a resilient spirit and instilled a crucial lesson: the importance of perseverance through obstacles and unwavering commitment in the face of doubt. "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, a principle that now underpins Cortado’s approach to nurturing early-stage companies.
Subsequent ventures brought both rapid success and near-catastrophe. One company experienced swift growth, culminating in an acquisition by a Fortune 100 corporation. Another San Francisco Bay Area startup also achieved a successful acquisition, but only after navigating a perilous period following an $18 million Series B financing round that nearly saw its demise. This pivotal experience offered a different, equally profound insight: while capital can accelerate a company’s trajectory, speed is only beneficial when the business is moving in the right direction and genuinely prepared for scale. Moradi keenly observes, "A high valuation and a full bank account will happily let you scale the wrong thing." This hard-won wisdom underscores his current mission to infuse Silicon Valley’s innovative spark into the Midcontinent, prioritizing not just the amount of capital, but its judicious timing and sequence. Financing, in Cortado’s philosophy, must enable founders to test assumptions, mitigate risk, and achieve meaningful milestones, never allowing growth to outpace proven viability. This philosophy champions pairing entrepreneurial optimism with rigorous evidence, disciplined execution, and a crystal-clear understanding of the next critical objective.
Moradi, alongside a team of seasoned founders, CEOs, and operators, co-launched Cortado Ventures in 2020. Their collective ambition was to create the very firm they wished had existed during their own entrepreneurial journeys: one that deeply understood the intricate decisions founders confront and could offer value far beyond the initial investment check. This ethos of "built by founders, for founders" is a cornerstone of Cortado’s identity, fostering an environment of empathy and practical support.
The Midcontinent as a Competitive Advantage: Tapping into Underserved Innovation
Cortado Ventures’ investment thesis is strategically anchored in the unique strengths of the U.S. Midcontinent. This vast region, often overlooked by traditional coastal venture capital, is paradoxically home to many of the nation’s critical industries undergoing immense pressure to innovate and evolve. Sectors such as energy, aerospace and defense, healthcare, advanced manufacturing, mobility, and logistics operate within complex physical environments, rely on established supply chains, and demand exacting customer relationships. Transforming these bedrock industries requires more than just compelling software; it necessitates a profound, nuanced understanding of their operational intricacies.
Cortado actively seeks out experienced technical founders who possess this invaluable "insider" knowledge. These are individuals who may have spent years within a hospital, a factory, a research laboratory, an energy conglomerate, an aerospace program, or a logistics network, enabling them to identify persistent problems and conceive truly differentiated solutions. Their deep-seated experience provides immediate credibility with potential customers, crucial insights into implementation challenges, and a strategic knowledge base that would be exceedingly difficult for outsiders to cultivate.
The geographic location itself becomes a powerful competitive advantage. The Midcontinent offers unparalleled proximity to these critical industries and their potential customers, a readily available technically skilled workforce, robust research institutions, and often complementary public funding initiatives. Furthermore, the region boasts significantly lower company-building costs compared to coastal tech hubs, allowing startups to extend their runway and achieve more with less capital. According to recent reports from industry analysts, venture capital investment in the Midcontinent has seen a steady uptick in recent years, though it still represents a fraction of the national total, indicating substantial untapped potential for growth and outsized returns for early movers like Cortado. For example, states like Oklahoma and Kansas, central to the Midcontinent, have consistently invested in infrastructure and STEM education, fostering an environment conducive to technological innovation in these key sectors.
Cortado’s diverse portfolio vividly reflects the breadth of innovation emerging from this environment. Its companies are applying cutting-edge technologies across space communications, industrial safety, critical infrastructure cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, energy transition, and future mobility solutions. The firm’s strategy is not merely based on a philanthropic desire to fund Midcontinent founders because they have historically attracted less venture capital. Instead, it is firmly built on the economic conviction that direct proximity to hard, real-world problems can produce truly differentiated companies and generate superior financial returns. As Moradi eloquently states, "Talent is not concentrated anywhere in particular. Capital and networks have just been slower to distribute than talent has." For Moradi, expanding the geographic reach of venture capital is not just about finding more founders; it is about uncovering rich veins of insight and innovation that traditional networks have historically overlooked, creating a more equitable and robust national innovation ecosystem.
Beyond Capital: Cultivating a Robust Ecosystem for Sustainable Growth
When Cortado Ventures first launched, Mike Moradi, like many pioneers in emerging venture ecosystems, initially believed that the primary constraint facing the region was a simple shortage of capital. The firm quickly demonstrated that promising companies could indeed be identified and successfully funded within the Midcontinent. However, as Cortado matured and expanded its reach, Moradi’s understanding of founders’ needs became significantly more expansive and nuanced. "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," he reflects, a pivotal realization that reshaped Cortado’s strategic approach.
Founders, particularly in nascent ecosystems, require far more than just financial investment. They need experienced operators who can provide hands-on guidance to help them circumvent preventable mistakes, early-adopter customers willing to pilot and validate unproven technologies, supportive investors prepared to bridge funding gaps between milestones, and a vibrant community where crucial relationships can organically form. Moradi emphasizes, "Money can accelerate a company. It cannot stand in for experience." Regional entrepreneurs consistently highlight the critical need for mentorship, strategic advice, and warm introductions to potential partners and talent, often valuing these non-monetary contributions as much as, if not more than, the capital itself.
This profound realization has significantly shaped Cortado’s expanded role within the broader Midcontinent ecosystem. Rather than reserving its network exclusively for its own portfolio companies, the firm actively works to connect founders, funders, leading universities, established corporations, influential policymakers, and technical experts across the entire region. This collaborative approach fosters a virtuous cycle of innovation and support. Cortado’s annual Midcontinent Venture Capital Summit stands as a prime example, bringing together a diverse array of investors, limited partners, founders, and ecosystem leaders from across the country to share insights, forge connections, and explore investment opportunities. The firm also collaborates closely with regional entrepreneurship organizations and The Verge, a prominent Oklahoma City incubator and accelerator that provides invaluable company-building resources, specialized programming, and critical capital connections to early-stage ventures.
Each of these interactions, whether a summit presentation or an informal networking event, can prove instrumental in helping a founder secure a crucial customer, find a vital adviser, recruit a senior executive, identify a key collaborator, or attract additional investment. Collectively, these myriad relationships weave together the intricate infrastructure that enables more companies to successfully start, scale, and thrive within the region. For Moradi, this is where venture capital’s true impact begins to transcend the boundaries of a single investment, evolving into a powerful catalyst for regional economic development. A stronger, more interconnected ecosystem provides more entrepreneurs with a viable pathway to company formation, simultaneously creating more opportunities for capital, talent, and innovation to converge.
A Disciplined Approach to Investment: Conviction Without False Certainty
Investing in early-stage companies inherently involves navigating a landscape of incomplete information, a reality Moradi readily acknowledges. "Incomplete data is my job description," he quips, underscoring the necessity of making informed decisions amidst uncertainty. Rather than attempting the impossible task of eliminating all uncertainty, Cortado’s investment philosophy centers on a disciplined process of distinguishing between assumptions that can be immediately tested and those that will only resolve over time. The firm meticulously identifies the critical conditions that must hold true for a venture to succeed, rigorously considers how those assumptions could be disproven, and carefully evaluates the cost and resources required to reach the next meaningful milestone.
Moradi’s strongest conviction typically revolves around three core pillars: the strength and capability of the founding team, the clarity and urgency of the customer problem being addressed, and the company’s demonstrated rate of progress. He maintains a more cautious stance when it comes to predicting the precise timing of an emerging market or the exact path a company may ultimately take to an exit, recognizing the inherent unpredictability of long-term market dynamics. This discipline becomes particularly critical when a financing round is moving at a rapid pace. The allure of a compelling founder, coupled with a competitive investment process, can often create undue 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 a common pitfall in high-pressure investment scenarios.
When necessary, Cortado is prepared to deliberately slow down the investment process, bringing in independent scientific or technical experts for additional, specialized diligence. This supplementary scrutiny may either significantly strengthen the firm’s conviction or, equally importantly, reveal a fundamental reason to step away from the deal. Intriguingly, many of Cortado’s strongest founder relationships have originated from precisely this kind of rigorous scrutiny, as it can sharpen strategic thinking, identify potential risks early, and allow time for proactive mitigation. However, slowing the decision-making process does not equate to a sluggish response; once a decision is made, action is swift and decisive.
Moradi applies the same unwavering discipline to company valuation. "A sensible entry price is a form of protection for the founder, employees, and investors alike," he asserts. While an aggressive valuation might feel like an immediate victory for a startup, if the company’s subsequent progress fails to meet the elevated expectations tethered to that valuation, the repercussions can be severe. Such consequences can negatively impact founder ownership, dilute employee equity, constrain future fundraising options, and severely hamper the company’s ability to adapt to unforeseen challenges. This principle cuts both ways, as venture capitalists who demand excessively low valuations can also stifle a company’s growth and ambition. Achieving a delicate balance is key. "The right number buys you options for years. In boom times, people forget that financial crises happen," Moradi reminds, underscoring the long-term strategic value of a prudent valuation. For Cortado, this discipline is not a reflection of a lack of belief in a founder’s ambition; rather, it is a strategic mechanism to endow ambitious companies with the crucial flexibility and extended runway they need to truly succeed.
Showing Up With Work Already Done: The Art of Meaningful Founder Support
Cortado Ventures distinguishes itself through a profound commitment to meaningful founder support, deeply rooted in the operating experience of its team. The firm’s partners have not only invested in but also built, scaled, and successfully exited companies across many of the very industries in which Cortado now invests. This invaluable operating background profoundly shapes how the firm assists founders when strategic plans inevitably pivot or difficult decisions arise.
Moradi encapsulates Cortado’s philosophy of impactful support in two concise 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 actionable approach means that when a founder faces a challenge, Cortado’s team doesn’t just offer abstract guidance; they actively engage. This could involve rebuilding a complex financial model, making a critical customer introduction, spearheading the recruitment of a senior executive, or taking direct responsibility for navigating a challenging board conversation. It also entails the courage to deliver uncomfortable truths when a company’s runway is shrinking or its core strategy demands a fundamental shift.
Moradi vividly recalls being the founder on the receiving end of such difficult conversations. "What helped was someone who lowered the temperature, told the truth to me and the board, and followed up after the meeting," he recounts, emphasizing the importance of empathy, honesty, and consistent support. As Cortado and the surrounding Midcontinent ecosystem have matured, the sophistication of its founder support has grown commensurately. Portfolio companies now have access to a rich network comprising operating executives, specialized industry experts, dedicated advisers, prospective customers, experienced coaches, follow-on investors, and a vibrant community of fellow founders.
The needs of founders have also evolved. In the early days, when capital was scarce in the region, Cortado’s direct investment and its ability to attract additional investors into a funding round were particularly valuable. Today, while capital remains crucial, founders increasingly seek customer access, top-tier senior talent, specialized technical expertise, and candid, honest guidance. Crucially, the firm’s role is never to usurp control from the entrepreneur. Sometimes, the most valuable contribution an investor can make is the wisdom to know when not to intervene. "Other times," Moradi thoughtfully adds, "being helpful means staying out of the way." This nuanced understanding of founder dynamics underscores Cortado’s commitment to empowering, rather than dictating to, the entrepreneurs they back.
Building What Outlasts a Fund: A Vision for Enduring Impact
Mike 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 vision for enduring impact that transcends short-term investment cycles. For Cortado, this translates into a dedicated effort to strengthen the connective tissue among founders, funders, universities, corporations, and policymakers across the Midcontinent. It also means actively fostering the formation and growth of other investment firms within the region, embracing a philosophy of collaborative expansion rather than competitive exclusion.
"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 simultaneously creates more opportunities for investors to collaborate, co-invest, and participate in promising companies, thereby de-risking individual investments and diversifying portfolios. Over time, this collective effort can establish a more durable and robust pathway between regional innovation and national capital markets, ensuring that promising ideas in the Midcontinent receive the attention and resources they deserve.
This commitment to ecosystem building, however, does not diminish Cortado’s fundamental responsibility to its limited partners. Moradi’s prior experience as a trustee and audit committee member for a state retirement system instilled in him the paramount importance of directness regarding investment risk, duration, and potential losses. "Ecosystem building matters, and it does not excuse any of us from being disciplined fiduciaries first," he states, emphasizing the critical balance between community development and stringent financial stewardship.
Moradi also recognizes the NVCA (National Venture Capital Association) as an indispensable part of the connective infrastructure that supports venture firms and founders nationwide. Policy issues such as capital formation, research commercialization, immigration policies affecting talent acquisition, 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 essential talent, and a new technology’s journey 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 affirms. Active participation in the NVCA also affords Cortado the vital opportunity to bring a unique Midcontinent perspective into national dialogues concerning innovation, capital formation, and the future trajectory of the broader venture industry, ensuring that the voice of regional innovation is heard at the highest levels.
Expanding the Map of American Innovation: A Broader Horizon
Moradi harbors a profound hope that Cortado Ventures’ story can help illuminate the true breadth and diversity of American venture capital. While the industry’s largest, most publicized firms often command the greatest attention, the vast majority of venture capital activity 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 often-glamorized image of the venture world.
These smaller, specialized firms play an absolutely essential role in the innovation ecosystem. They are adept at identifying founders before their markets become obvious, skillfully connecting specialized knowledge with crucial capital, and expertly 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 intensive, hands-on support required for early-stage success.
The accelerating pace of technological advancement is rendering this work even more consequential. The advent of artificial intelligence, advanced automation, sophisticated manufacturing techniques, groundbreaking energy innovations, cutting-edge biology, and transformative space technology are dramatically reducing the cost and complexity of pursuing ambitious ideas. Small, agile teams can now tackle opportunities that once demanded the vast resources of large corporations or national programs. Many of these pioneering teams, Moradi predicts, will emerge in locations intimately connected to the very problems they are striving to solve.
This is the profound, broader impact of strategically expanding venture capital across America. When investors consciously look beyond familiar networks and make a concerted effort to meet founders where critical industries actually operate, they achieve several vital outcomes: more innovative ideas are transformed into viable companies, more groundbreaking technologies successfully reach the market, and more communities 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 unwavering optimism. "Never forget that we’re here for them. When we do this right, everyone, including humanity, wins," he concludes, encapsulating Cortado Ventures’ mission to drive both economic returns and societal progress.
Cortado Ventures stands as a shining example of how regional venture capital firms, deeply rooted in their communities and committed to a founder-first philosophy, are not only generating strong returns but also fundamentally reshaping the map of American innovation. We are proud to have Cortado Ventures as part of the NVCA membership, contributing to a more diverse, resilient, and impactful venture ecosystem. To learn more about the firm and its groundbreaking work, visit cortado.ventures.
