In mid-September, more than a dozen team members from the Tulsa-based venture capital firm Atento Capital were situated at a table in the back room of Amelia’s Wood Fired Cuisine, a restaurant in the heart of the Arts District. They’re all explaining something to me: How in the world they ended up in Oklahoma.
Michael Basch, founder of the George Kaiser Family Foundation-affiliated early-stage venture firm Atento, worked on the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign, then briefly ran for mayor in New York City (he dropped out before the election). Investor Rosa Hathaway was a 10-year aerospace engineer at SpaceX. Francis Jee, a former Deloitte consultant who did work for the World Economic Forum, made his way to Atento after growing up in England and Zimbabwe. About one-third of Atento’s team, including co-founder Will Gray, a former competitive tennis player, is from Oklahoma. But half of the investment team is international, spanning four continents—and they had to be convinced. After all, to work in venture capital anywhere outside of the coastal meccas of San Francisco, New York City, and, more or less these days, Miami, there’s got to be a pretty good reason.
