oklahoma
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BTC Broadband has a plan for the next severed cable
The Bixby telephone company grew into a fiber, voice and managed IT provider. Its next test is keeping Oklahoma customers connected when something goes wrong.
AXH air-coolers brings factory muscle to the data-center heat problem
The Oklahoma manufacturer built its business cooling industrial machinery. Now its data-center push puts two decades of factory expansion, practical engineering and field service to a new test.
The Tulsa Bank That Tried Crypto - and Came Back to the Business of Knowing You
Vast Bank became a national curiosity by putting crypto beside checking. Its more durable proposition is quieter: a Tulsa bank that mixes modern tools with bankers who still answer the phone.
Lauren Roberts
Lauren Roberts is an Associate at Forum Ventures in New York, where she evaluates hundreds of pre-seed B2B SaaS startups each year and coaches founders on market positioning, storytelling, and early traction. A University of Oklahoma alumna who co-founded her school's first student-run venture fund, she came to VC through a transformative summer in Tulsa during the centennial of the Greenwood Race Massacre - an experience that turned a pre-law finance student into one of the more distinctive voices on inclusive investing in early-stage tech.
Zach Bryan
Zachary Lane Bryan is an American singer-songwriter and record producer who went from posting iPhone recordings on YouTube while serving as a U.S. Navy Aviation Ordnanceman to breaking U.S. concert attendance records and landing back-to-back Billboard 200 #1 albums. Rooted in Americana, outlaw country, and raw emotional storytelling, Bryan released his sixth studio album With Heaven on Top in January 2026 — debuting 18 songs simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100 — and has maintained a consistent Hot 100 presence throughout 2026 with singles 'Plastic Cigarette' (#13) and 'Say Why' (#25). A Grammy winner, a literary patron (he paid $12.1M for Jack Kerouac's On the Road scroll), and an artist who refuses to be called country, Bryan is one of the most commercially and culturally influential musicians of his generation.