Founder Brew covered how 20 idea-stage founders across the South use Blueprint: Tulsa to prototype, talk to customers, and follow the problem.
Blueprint: Tulsa selects 20 idea-stage founders from across the South. Each founder receives $10,000 in nondilutive funding, which is capital that does not require giving up ownership in the company.
Over 12 weeks, founders travel to Tulsa three times for multi-day sessions on prototyping, customer conversion, and other early-stage business work. Founders in the program come from fields including nursing, therapy, and child care.
Build in Tulsa runs the program with Visible Hands, a pre-seed investment fund. Half of the seats are reserved for Oklahoma founders. The rest are open to founders in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
Venture capital is concentrated in a few places. Founder Brew cites National Venture Capital Association data showing that California, New York, and Massachusetts accounted for nearly 75% of U.S. venture funding in 2025. Founders outside those markets often have fewer direct paths to investors, advisors, and early customers.
Tulsa's size shortens those paths. Desiree Frieson, director of programming at Build in Tulsa, told Founder Brew that founders consistently point to proximity to decision-makers as one of the most valuable parts of the program. In Tulsa, founders can get in front of leadership at the Tulsa Health Department, Hillcrest Hospital, and the procurement team at QuikTrip.
That access affects where founders choose to build. In surveys of the 2025 and 2026 cohorts, at least three founders from outside Oklahoma each year said they would be open to relocating to Tulsa.
One founder in the program first built an AI-powered device to assess vision and eye health. She secured $10,000 through Build in Tulsa's Female Founders Pitch Night and another $10,000 through Blueprint: Tulsa.
Customer conversations showed her that asking businesses to install and carry a physical device created barriers she had not planned for. She used that feedback to rethink both the product and the business model, and she is now exploring how computer vision could make the technology accessible through phones and other consumer tools.
…she's pivoted multiple times and she's continued to grow." — Desiree Frieson, Director of Programming, Build in Tulsa
Frieson credited Justin Kang, general partner at Visible Hands, with pushing the founder to prototype, build, and gather customer insight before deciding what to build. Kang told Founder Brew that a founder who stays focused on the problem, rather than one specific solution, is the kind of founder who succeeds in the program.
Kang described the program's funding as inspiration capital: an investment that gives talented people the confidence to see themselves as founders. His point is about the pipeline. People outside the right networks or cities rarely get the signal to start a technology company, and Blueprint: Tulsa is built to create that path.
Read the full Founder Brew story and learn more about Blueprint: Tulsa.