Stories of Oklahoma’s Startup Transformation
How years of ecosystem development and increased VC funding are creating the next generation of Oklahoma startups
When I started working in the Oklahoma tech ecosystem 10 years ago, the number of tech startups were few and far between. Our friends at Tailwind, WeGoLook, Cage, and Oseberg were a few staples in the Oklahoma City area. These founders spoke at all the tech events around town, in part because there weren’t enough successful startup entrepreneurs to have a more robust rotation. Today, a new generation of startups are building and scaling in Oklahoma, thanks to:
- the hard work of the entrepreneurs who paved the way,
- a legion of builders in the entrepreneurial ecosystem that created space and pathways for startups,
- and a 10x increase in available venture capital.
In 2020, Cortado Ventures aimed to raise $10M in the middle of a global pandemic. After raising twice that amount in less than nine months, we’re now diligently working to raise a second fund of $80M to catalyze the growth of this new guard of startups now and into the future. I’m excited to share stories of a few of these startups and how a plethora of new resources in the ecosystem are equipping them to succeed.
Oklahoma Startup Stories
Volt
“Looking back, it’s incredible to see how the Oklahoma ecosystem has evolved. We owe a significant part of our success to the resources and support that weren’t even on the horizon a decade ago. It’s a testament to the power of community and the potential that lies in Oklahoma’s future.” — Martin Langelo Lien
The founding team at Volt, a Tulsa-based telecommunications infrastructure startup, met while students at the University of Oklahoma. They worked together for the first time at a Techstars Startup Weekend event hosted at OU’s Tom Love Innovation Hub (and facilitated by yours truly!). Here, they ideated and prototyped a tech product over the course of the weekend. The product they built then didn’t have legs, but when the idea for Volt came around several months later, the team got back together and jumped in. They received their first formal startup mentorship through an early cohort of Stitchcrew — one of OKC’s first accelerator programs. The Volt team received pre-Seed funding from Atento Capital and Cortado Ventures, both funds in their infancy at the time. In fact, Volt was the very first check that Cortado wrote. Since that initial funding, Volt has been incubated at 36 Degrees North in Tulsa and recently surpassed a major milestone of $1M ARR.
Most of the entrepreneurial resources in Volt’s story didn’t exist in the Oklahoma system 10 years ago. Their story, and current success, is an inspiring one for those resource providers who supported their journey in some way.
Watkins Conti
“I’m passionate about patient-centered innovation, which comes as much from female founders as it does from women sharing our experiences with our doctors, participating in clinical trials, and advocating for ourselves. I am grateful to Cortado Ventures and other Oklahoma- and Texas-based resources which really embody the spirit of entrepreneurship in our own backyard.” — Allison L. Watkins
Allison L. Watkins, Founder & CEO of Edmond-based Watkins-Conti Products, is another great story of a homegrown entrepreneur setting out to build a women’s health empire with several local resources supporting her along the way. Allison’s story is a robust one, as getting a regulated medical device successfully through FDA clinical trials is a years-long endeavor. Allison received early angel funding through Victorum Capital, at the time one of the state’s most prolific angel groups — now raising their own venture fund.
While Watkins-Conti’s first device was in the throes of clinical trials, Allison was hard at work planning for the future with other local resource providers. The Oklahoma Manufacturing Alliance helped plan for the eventual manufacturing of her device here in Oklahoma. Consultants at University of Oklahoma’s I-CCEW helped Allison strategize for secondary applications of her technology and ideate future products. During this time, she worked out of Francis Tuttle’s incubator, benefiting from their space, mentorship, and Oklahoma’s outstanding income tax credit for incubator members.
We are celebrating alongside Allison this month as Watkins-Conti just submitted data from a national clinical trial (at Stanford, NYU, and Jefferson Health) to the FDA for clearance, with a goal to launch Yōni.Fit in key markets.
Annolab
“We’ve been able to establish and expand an AI company in Oklahoma thanks to the newly available resources. We’ve discovered mentors, an enthusiastic community rooting for our success, and individuals eager to share their networks to enable our growth. I think that Oklahoma always had a passion for supporting entrepreneurs. Now it has the environment that expresses that passion.” -Luke Simkins
Annolab’s story is a great example of how Oklahoma’s OG tech startups are now creating exponential growth in the ecosystem. Annolab’s founders, Grant Delozier and Luke Simkins, met when they were both engineers at one of the old guard OKC tech startups, Oseberg. Oseberg has contributed to at least 4 new companies as early employees were bitten by the startup bug and branched out on their own.
In addition to the training and mentorship received from their startup life before Annolab, Grant and Luke also utilized local resources and networks as they bootstrapped their AI company, which now has a number of enterprise customers in the aviation sector. Annolab has been part of OKEMP (the Oklahoma Entrepreneur Mentor Program), and they are regular participants at local tech events including OKC Tech++, Cortado’s Founder Hours, and more.
Conclusion
Choosing which Oklahoma startup stories to feature for this blog was incredibly difficult, as there are now so many great companies innovating the future of tech entrepreneurship. At Cortado, we’re thrilled to be a small part in some of these entrepreneurs’ inspiring stories and the legacies they’re building. Our Fund II will be even more fuel on the fire for Oklahoma startups, and we can’t wait to see the growth in the next ten years.
Want more startup stories? Follow Cortado’s Medium page for long-form posts about the startups we’re funding in Oklahoma and the broader Midcontinent region.
At Cortado Ventures, we invest in pre-seed and seed stage startups with a focus on energy & logistics, life sciences, and the future of work. If you are a Midcontinent startup or looking to invest in these startups, contact us to learn more.
