Operate

OC4 Venture Studio — now branded as Operate — is Orange County's first venture studio, launched in early 2020 and headquartered in Newport Beach, California. Co-founders Carey Ransom and Kyle Kamrooz built OC4 as a hands-on build-and-invest platform for early-stage technology founders, pairing seed capital with deep operational engagement across product-market fit, go-to-market strategy, team-building, and fundraising. The firm's thesis is organized around four pillars: Capital, Collision, Coaching, and Community. OC4 focuses on capital-efficient, data-centric SaaS, fintech, and enterprise-software startups, often with Orange County or broader Southern California roots. Typical seed checks run $100,000 to $500,000 with a midpoint around $250,000, deployed through OC4 Ventures Fund I LP and selective Qualified Opportunity Zone vehicles for capital-gains investors. Carey Ransom brings substantial operating pedigree — former COO of Aspiration, CPO at Experian Consumer Services, CMO at Payoff (Happy Money), CEO of RealPractice, and Managing Director at BankTech Ventures. Across 21 disclosed investments, portfolio companies include Torpago, a corporate card and expense management platform for SMBs that received the firm's most recent disclosed investment in June 2024; Scener; Ramped; Volonic; Givsum; Chatterworks; Spoonful; and Cheese. The studio model means OC4 provides more than a check: the Operate brand reflects a commitment to being in the operational trenches with founders, sharing functional expertise in product, growth, and finance rather than standing at arms length as a conventional fund LP. For Southern California's startup ecosystem, OC4 filled a gap left by the historic concentration of institutional venture capital in the Bay Area.