Tulsa is the only city in Oklahoma where being recruited is the founding experience. Tulsa Remote pays individuals $10,000 to move here, and over 4,200 people have taken it, about 80% of whom are still here two years on. Atento Capital pays hard-science founders from Latin America $100,000 to relocate, covering visas, office space, and housing. In July 2024 the region's consortium won approximately $51 million from the federal Economic Development Administration to build an autonomy and AI hub. None of those programs exists for Oklahoma City, Norman, Broken Arrow, or Edmond.
So if you are sitting up tonight deciding whether to start something here, understand what you are deciding inside of. The oil boom is gone. The oil money stayed, and it now pays people to come build what comes next.
What it does not do is give you a team. That is the gap this page is about.
The Glenn Pool strike came in on November 22, 1905, and it was so rich that more money came out of it than the California gold rush and the Colorado silver rush combined. By 1920 Tulsa held 400 petroleum companies and called itself the Oil Capital of the World.
That money became foundations. The George Kaiser Family Foundation started Tulsa Remote in 2018 for the explicit purpose of reducing Tulsa's dependence on oil and gas. It created Tulsa Innovation Labs in 2020. It is the single limited partner behind Atento Capital. The Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation built Kitchen 66 and Mother Road Market.
A founder arriving in Tulsa in 2026 is not walking into an oil town. They are walking into the machine that oil money built to replace itself.
Tulsa Remote is still running and the terms are public: $10,000 to help you make Tulsa your new home, a twelve-month window to relocate after approval, full-time remote employment based outside Oklahoma, and you have to have lived outside Oklahoma for a full year before applying. Buy a qualifying home and the $10,000 comes as a lump sum after purchase. Approved members also get a three-year free membership at Gradient.
Program director Justin Harlan has said the selection targets "folks experiencing some sort of major life change. Ready to turn a page." The Economic Innovation Group studied the program and found $13.77 in new local labor income for every dollar spent relocating a remote worker, and roughly one new job created in Tulsa for every two remote workers who moved. Tulsa Remote's own count at its 4,000th member: $600 million in direct employment income, $30.5 million in county and state tax revenue, more than 1,000 jobs supported.
Angela Harris moved here from Houston through the program after her husband died, and stayed into a third year. What she told the Christian Science Monitor about it: "I felt like I was just a blank canvas... I see colors on this canvas now." That is who is around you here.
Not a directory. Three actual places where things happen, and what walking into each is like.
Gradient, 12 N. Cheyenne Ave, in the Arts District. A 112,000 square foot converted OTASCO warehouse that opened in December 2024 and pulled Tulsa's whole coworking and incubator scene into one building. Workspaces for teams of 1 to 50, capital providers in the building, a state-certified incubator, event space for 3 to 300. It is a 501(c)(3) with more than 4,000 members across more than 500 businesses. A hot desk is $159 a month with 24/7 access, and it is free for three years if you came through Tulsa Remote. The calendar is the part that matters when you know nobody: 1 Million Cups in the mornings, Startup Grind monthly, a women's business breakfast quarterly, member lunches. All at one address. You can be six weeks into this city and be a regular.
Build in Tulsa, in Greenwood. Founded in 2021 to honor Black Wall Street's legacy, and it treats entrepreneurship as the restoration of a wealth-creation engine that was destroyed. In five years it has put over $20 million into underrepresented founders through capital, coaching, and community, with a Techstars accelerator running 13-week cohorts of 12 companies on top. Managing Director Ashli Sims on why they push retention: "We don't just want folks to come here, receive resources, and then go to other places." No other city in Oklahoma can tell that story, and Tulsa did not invent it for a brochure. It happened on those streets.
Mother Road Market and Kitchen 66, on Route 66. Oklahoma's only nonprofit food hall, with a culinary incubator inside it. If you are starting a food business, the room is a pipeline with rungs: a 12 to 15 week business training course, then a Takeover Cafe pop-up residency, then a stall in the hall, then a storefront of your own. Lobeck Taylor CEO Brian Paschal: "The heartbeat of Mother Road Market is entirely a result of the Kitchen 66 program."
Joy Harvey runs Harvey's Detail Connection, mobile car detailing, built through Build in Tulsa: "They've seen me grow from not having any confidence to having confidence." Kora-Lynah Abelard founded Orijin, a Haitian skincare brand, through the same program: "They pour so much into the human as much as they pour into the business." Both quotes are from NewsOn6's June 2, 2026 coverage. Neither of them is a tech founder with a seed round. One details cars. One makes skincare. That is what starting a business in Tulsa usually looks like, and the support here is built for it.
Tulsa's support layer is extraordinary and it is concentrated. Tulsa Remote, Tulsa Innovation Labs, and Atento all trace back to one foundation. Gradient, Build in Tulsa, and Mother Road Market are all nonprofits. You are building inside a subsidized ecosystem, not a self-sustaining market, and it is worth knowing that going in. The capital named in local coverage skews early, and nothing names a Tulsa-based later-stage fund. The employers setting local salary expectations are aircraft maintenance, hospitals, and pipelines: aerospace and defense employs 46,233 people across more than 250 companies in the region, anchored by American Airlines, Nordam, and L3Harris; health care employs 27,936 in the city; Saint Francis is the largest employer here. And the city grows at 0.15% a year, with 2024 employment flat to slightly down. Your customer base and your hiring pool grow mostly through imported people. Which is exactly why the city pays to import them.
Put that together and here is the founder's real problem in Tulsa. The city will pay you to come. It will give you a desk, a cohort, a mentor, a pitch morning, and a room full of people who moved here on purpose. What no program in this city gives you is somebody to do the work at 11pm when the coaching is over.
You do not need Tulsa to hand you a staff. You can bring one. Supanova is an AI workforce. The workers are called atoms, and they plan and execute real business work: research, marketing, planning, writing, operations. You describe what needs doing and they do it, then bring it back to you. For one person starting something here, that is the difference between a company of one and the output of a staffed company. The 1 Million Cups pitch you present next month, the market research behind it, the marketing plan for the first hundred customers, the operating documents nobody has time to write. That is the work that piles up between the coaching and the customer.
Gradient can give you the room. Build in Tulsa can give you capital and people who believe you. An AI workforce is what does the work in between.
Your first 100 tasks are on us. One claim per email. Give your workforce something real to do this week, whether or not you have moved here yet.
Tulsa's startup infrastructure is unusually concentrated, so the practical first step is picking a room rather than a form. Gradient at 12 N. Cheyenne Ave in the Arts District holds more than 4,000 members across more than 500 businesses in one 112,000 square foot building, with a state-certified incubator inside and a hot desk at $159 a month. Build in Tulsa in Greenwood has put over $20 million into underrepresented founders in five years and runs a Techstars accelerator. If you are starting a food business, Kitchen 66 inside Mother Road Market runs a 12 to 15 week training program that leads to pop-up residencies and then a stall.
The program pays $10,000 to move to Tulsa and it is still operating. Independent research from the Economic Innovation Group found $13.77 in new local labor income for every dollar spent relocating a remote worker, and about one new job created in Tulsa for every two remote workers who relocated. Roughly 80% of participants are still in Tulsa two years after arriving, and the program has enrolled more than 4,200 people. Whether it fits you depends on eligibility: you need full-time remote employment based outside Oklahoma and you must have lived outside Oklahoma for one full year before applying.
Tulsa Remote offers $10,000 to help you make Tulsa your new home, with a 12-month window to relocate after approval. Eligibility requires full-time remote employment outside Oklahoma and having lived outside Oklahoma for one full year before applying. Homebuyers can receive the $10,000 as a lump sum after purchasing a qualifying home. Approved members also receive a three-year free membership at Gradient plus Benepass wellness perks, and finalists get a hosted visit. Full terms are on the Tulsa Remote program details page.
A hot desk at Gradient is $159 per month with 24/7 access. Gradient is a 501(c)(3) at 12 N. Cheyenne Ave in Tulsa's Arts District, in a 112,000 square foot converted OTASCO warehouse that opened in December 2024. It offers workspaces for teams of 1 to 50, in-house capital providers, a state-certified incubator, and event venues for 3 to 300 people. Tulsa Remote members receive a three-year free membership.
1 Million Cups is a morning program at Gradient where early-stage startups present their companies to an audience of peers, mentors, educators, and advisors. It runs alongside Gradient's other recurring programming, including a monthly Startup Grind featuring Tulsa founders, innovators, educators, and investors, a quarterly Tulsa Women's Business Breakfast, and locally sourced member lunches. All of it happens at 12 N. Cheyenne Ave in the Arts District.
Build in Tulsa is a nonprofit founded in 2021 in Greenwood to honor Black Wall Street's legacy, and it has invested over $20 million in underrepresented founders across five years through capital, coaching, and community. Its Techstars accelerator runs 13-week cohorts of 12 companies. Founders who have come through it include Joy Harvey of Harvey's Detail Connection and Kora-Lynah Abelard of Orijin. Application details are on Build in Tulsa's site.
Supanova is an AI workforce for small operators and solo founders. The workers are called atoms, and they plan and execute real business work including research, marketing, planning, writing, and operations. For a founder in Tulsa building alone, it covers the work between the coaching and the customer: market research, marketing plans, operating documents, and the writing nobody has time for. The first 100 tasks are free, one claim per email.
Sources: Tulsa Remote program details and 4,000th-member report; Economic Innovation Group research (eig.org); Christian Science Monitor, Aug 10, 2026; Fortune, May 5, 2025; NewsOn6, June 2, 2026 and Oct 3, 2024; Gradient (joingradient.com); Kitchen 66 and Mother Road Market; Tulsa Innovation Labs; PartnerTulsa industry data; Census ACS 2024. Figures as published on 2026-08-17.