Michael Cortez
Founder of In The Ecosystem with Mike. 8 years in Atlanta’s startup ecosystem — from Morehouse College and the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs to building ConnectGA, the city’s entrepreneur resource platform.
How I learned the ecosystem from the inside.
Morehouse College
Bachelor of Arts in Psychology. I came into Atlanta’s startup world as a student, studying how people make decisions — the same lens I use today to help founders talk to the people who decide.
Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs
I joined as the first fellow intern — the third person in the building. Being there from day one put me in conversation with founders, executive directors, venture capitalists, and angel investors before most people knew the center existed.
Morehouse Innovation & Entrepreneurship Center
Student Initiatives Program Coordinator, then Research & Data Analyst. I worked with 600+ business owners, mostly through the center’s Small Business Executive Program cohorts — helping them get clear on what their business actually needed, what was in the way, and the plan to get there.
Surveys and assessments from 100+ participants showed where the program was missing people. The services we redesigned from that feedback raised participation by 25%.
ConnectGA
Product Manager Lead for the Atlanta Entrepreneur-Serving Ecosystem Coalition’s city-wide platform. I lead discovery with 30+ partner organizations to put Atlanta’s business resources in one place — built for the 2,000+ businesses that launch here every year.
In The Ecosystem with Mike
A show, free public workshops, and direct routes to funding — so founders can see where the resources are, who to talk to, and how to talk to them.
I got tired of watching my peers collect no’s that could have been yes’s.
I kept seeing the same thing. Founders were piecing their local ecosystem together on their own — one event, one cold email, one coffee meeting at a time. The resources existed. Nobody had handed them the map, so their results came months later than they should have.
Then there was the harder part. When founders finally got in the room with an investor or a decision maker, many didn’t know how to speak to them. They talked about the vision when the investor wanted the numbers. They asked for a favor when they should have asked a specific question. Good businesses lost the room in the first few minutes.
I started In The Ecosystem with Mike to shed light on startup and business ecosystems: where the resources are, who people can talk to, and — most importantly — how to talk to them to get the results they want for their business.