Hello.
My name is Ifedayo Omotunde. I back founders, I build things (with the help of Claude) and I am trying to make the Midwest the next great location for unicorns.
I am an MBA candidate at the Ross School of Business, recruiting exclusively for venture capital. Before this I spent three years in Alzheimer’s biotech, 2 years helping friends with startups, and 7 years tutoring.
I was born in Nigeria and grew up in Park River, North Dakota. My high school graduating class had 34 people in it. I studied Neuroscience at Harvard (Mind, Brain, Behavior track) and picked up a secondary in Slavic Languages and Literatures along the way. My dog is named Вовочка.
I describe myself as a bit of an unconventional person, from an unconventional place, taking an unconventional path. I think unconventional things are the most interesting.
Fair question. It heads this site, it's in the URL, and even I sometimes wonder. The easiest way to explain it is to explain the name.
Where I grew up outside Park River was a cluster of about a dozen homes, two miles from a tiny rural town. We didn't interact in the overtly friendly, kumbaya way you might imagine. In fourteen years I only visited a handful of my neighbors' homes. And yet when something needed doing, someone did it. When the kids sold Christmas wreaths, the community bought them. When tragedy struck, people showed up. That community was called Oak Ridge.
Wherever I end up, I want to build something like that. Not a community of talk and promises, but one of action and kindness. Practically, Oak Ridge Capital is a holder of funds that will one day invest across three markets: venture and angel capital, public equities, and real estate, with a bias toward intrinsic value over market value and the long term over the next quarter. In function, it's a place for me to think out loud, a meeting ground for people who'd rather act than talk, and a name I simply love and intend to keep. In the end, it represents me.
Want the longer version of why venture? Read on »
People tend to fall into two camps: the founders, who create, and the operators, who execute. In the long stretch of figuring out who I was after college, I kept finding myself drawn to the founders, fascinated by how they thought, and just as drawn to the operators who let founders run wild and reined them in when it mattered. I learned I'd probably make a poor founder and a very good third or fourth employee. I'm the person founders come to when something needs to get done. I find the right people, choose the course, and gather what's needed. Venture is the logical conclusion of those instincts.
At its core, venture capital doesn't create anything new. It takes the ideas of visionary founders and gives them the resources, the people, and the support to become real. VCs are almost never the experts in the fields they fund. They just know how to find those experts and build the right team around them.
Think of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. Beyond being immensely gifted, they shared a patron: Baron Gottfried van Swieten. Closer to home, Serge Koussevitzky, the conductor and double bassist who led the Boston Symphony, commissioned major works from Stravinsky, Copland, Prokofiev, Ravel, and Bartók. Far less famous than the music they enabled, these patrons were essential to its existence. Venture plays the same role: capital, guidance, and a network in service of someone else's masterpiece. That's the part I want.
My interest in venture starts with its mission: backing disruptive, status-quo-rattling companies and the ambitious people who build them. Growing up in the Midwest, I saw the raw, untapped potential of the region's young minds firsthand, and the conspicuous scarcity of capital to develop it. My long-term ambition is to build a venture firm in the Midwest: to develop local technology, keep local talent local, and bring a little more dynamism to a place that has more of it than the coasts give it credit for.
The Midwest thesis rests on three pillars: strong academic institutions, an incredible depth of talent, and an industrial heritage that most of the country has written off. Breakthroughs in mechanized farming by Cyrus McCormick and later Hiram Moore weren't possible without the region's flat expanse and its long habit of agricultural invention. The capacity is here. The infrastructure to fund it is not. Yet.
Disagree? Tell me why »
A running list of the things I'm making. Most are half-built, which is the honest state of most things worth doing.
How I approach startup investing, in short: I want to fund revolution over evolution. New systems, not faster horses. I'd rather back a company building something the world genuinely needs than one nudging an existing number a few points in the right direction.
I look for products with impact, founders worth betting on, and the chance to find a company six to twelve months before everyone else does, support them while they're still in a dorm room, and stay until they reach a boardroom. I prefer partnership to oversight: a board observer seat, a close relationship with the first dozen employees, and the discipline to guide rather than control. VCs are rarely the experts. The founders are. The job is to let them be.
There are also things I don't like. Overreaching boards, for one. Fifteen accomplished people micromanaging a company they understand less well than its founders. Downside-protection clauses, for another: if I don't believe enough to share the risk, why am I here? And rules used as a substitute for judgment. Numbers should confirm a good thing when you see it, not make the decision for you. If ratios drove my investments, I'd have started a hedge fund.
Portfolio — what I'm invested in (or want to be)
Blog & investment memos — ramblings and analysis
Lists — what I consume
The vision centers on underserved regions and the sectors those regions are already good at, where the world has a real need. I'm starting in the Midwest, where the strength is in biotech (particularly rural and local health), agritech, aerospace, and engineering, the fields sitting at the leading edge of healthcare, food, agriculture, and climate. The fund is a generalist one, but it leans toward areas of deep internal expertise like biotech and neurology. I fund pre-seed to Series A, with room to broaden in later funds.
Preferred checks run from $100k to $5M, targeting a portfolio of 10 to 25 companies per fund, with roughly 20% reserved for follow-ons. The approach favors revolution over evolution: innovative products with real reach that create new systems, not companies that simply move the needle. The other half of the job is timing, finding and supporting these companies six to twelve months before others catch on, backing them in the dorm room and partnering with them to the boardroom.
I'm based in the Midwest, around innovation hubs with strong university presence. Think Minneapolis with access to the University of Minnesota system and the Mayo Clinic, then a presence in places like Grand Forks, Fargo, Ann Arbor, St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Chicago. The aim is to give startups access to the creativity of city environments while bridging the gap between rural and urban innovation, and to do it by backing university spinouts.
I reject the traditional oversight model in favor of partnership. For most investments I aim for a board observer seat, but above all for a close, supportive relationship with founders. Guiding rather than controlling is how you leverage their expertise fully. I want to know the first twelve employees, founders included, personally, and to know the team will speak up, and speak out, when they see something wrong or something that could work better.
Decisions are guided by impact and product, not by hitting KPIs and growth targets for their own sake. Chasing growth alone has led to a kind of "private equitization" of venture that dilutes its ability to change anything. I focus on companies delivering groundbreaking products and processes, and on supporting great founders and marginalized builders. ESG isn't the primary lens, but I'm drawn to ventures with genuine environmental and social upside.
An extensive network across top universities and the venture landscape of the Midwest and East Coast creates resources and synergies for portfolio companies. I want each company in the portfolio to be a resource for the others: a network, not just a list. The partnership approach doesn't dictate control; it builds shared interest between investor, founder, and company.
Many VCs look at a basket of companies and pick the one they think will win. I'd rather look at what people actually need and find the companies delivering it in the most innovative, game-changing way. Start from the need, not the bracket.
Wildly eclectic.
Manchester United, the Los Angeles Lakers, the Minnesota Vikings, Boston Legacy FC,Minnesota United, and Lewis Hamilton.
My plans for the next 1, 5, 10, 25, and 50 years.
Being written.
I'm looking for partners, mentors, founders, and the occasional good argument. If any of that is you, get in touch.
Email: iomotunde@alumni.harvard.edu
LinkedIn: /in/ifedayoomotunde
Twitter/X: @ifee10
Phone on request. Response time: eventually.
This page is under construction. You found it anyway, which says something good about you.
Come back later. There'll be something here about what I'm reading, building, and thinking, updated whenever the mood strikes.