These investors want to provide ‘inspiration capital’ for Southern founders

Tulsa, Oklahoma, was once known as the “oil capital of the world.” But now a new group of explorers want to tap into the city’s resources to discover the next generation of founders.

Blueprint: Tulsa handpicks 20 idea-stage founders from across the South, awards them $10,000 in nondilutive funding, and brings them together in Tulsa to jump-start their companies.

Three times over three months entrepreneurs from backgrounds like nursing, therapy, and daycare spend a few days in Tulsa attending programs and workshops on business techniques like prototyping and customer conversion.

The program, which began in 2025, is a joint effort between Visible Hands, a pre-seed investment fund focused on founders from underrepresented backgrounds, and Build in Tulsa, a local nonprofit with the mission to close the racial wealth gap through tech and entrepreneurship. Half of the spots are reserved for Oklahoma founders exclusively, but the rest are open to any entrepreneur from Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Arkansas, and Texas.

“We are betting big on the South,” Justin Kang, general partner at Visible Hands, told Founder Brew.

Currently, venture capital funding is extremely concentrated geographically. In 2025, just three states–California, New York, and Massachusetts–accounted for nearly 75% of all venture capital funding in the US, according to a report from the National Venture Capital Association.

The team behind Blueprint: Tulsa wants to change that. Instead, they believe there’s untapped talent across the country and the just-right size of Tulsa can support Southern founders while they “fail fast.”

Kang emphasized the idea of “inspiration capital” as a driving force behind the program. In an email to Founder Brew, he defined the term as an investment to “instill the confidence for talented individuals to see themselves as an entrepreneur.”

“Unless you’re in the right networks or in the right city, you’re typically not having the vision to start a technology company,” Kang told Founder Brew. “We need to start creating that pipeline, not creating the talented people, but creating the pipeline for people to feel inspired to start such businesses.”

Tulsa as the perfect midsize lab for founders

Major cities on the coasts may dominate venture capital funding, but Tulsa, with a population of around 416,000 people, offers its own opportunities.

“No one’s going to take over [San Francisco] or New York City in the short term or medium term, but there are many ways to create vibrant ecosystems that can still have great impact,” Kang said.

In a smaller city, major institutions–and future customers–are more accessible, explains Desiree Frieson, director of programming at Build in Tulsa.

“The one thing that I have always heard from the founders that has been valuable to them is proximity to decision-makers,” said Frieson.

Frieson explained founders have the opportunity in Tulsa to walk into rooms with the head of the Tulsa Health Department, the head of medical center Hillcrest Hospital, or the procurement manager at national rest stop brand QuikTrip.

Across a survey of both cohorts in 2025 and 2026, at least three out-of-town founders each year indicated that they’d be open to relocating to Tulsa after their experience.

Failing fast

A major goal of the program is to test ideas early—and recognize when the problem requires a different solution.

“I will give an example of a founder who she’s pivoted multiple times and she’s continued to grow,” Frieson told Founder Brew.

The entrepreneur, who had initially built an AI-powered device to assess vision and eye health, went through Build in Tulsa’s Female Founders Pitch Night before joining Blueprint, receiving $10,000 from each time. But as she talked to potential customers, she found that getting businesses to install and carry a physical device came with challenges she hadn’t anticipated.

According to Frieson, the experience helped her rethink both the product and business model. She began exploring how computer vision could make the technology more accessible through phones and other consumer-facing tools.

“Kudos to Justin for really working with her and really pushing her on: You must prototype, you must build this tool, you must really build this product, you really must go out there and get as much many customer insights to really determine if this is the right thing to build,” Frieson said.

For Kang, that willingness to rethink the solution is exactly what Blueprint is designed to encourage.

“Making sure that the founder is obsessed with the problem and not so much the specific solution, that growth mindset is paramount for a successful founder in this program,” Kang said.