Luke Cooper, founder and managing partner of Latimer Ventures, joins Vlad Cazacu, co-founder and CEO of Flowlie, to discuss his journey from M&A lawyer to multi-time exited entrepreneur turned venture investor.
Luke Cooper, founder and managing partner of Latimer Ventures, joins Vlad Cazacu, co-founder and CEO of Flowlie, to discuss his journey from M&A lawyer to multi-time exited entrepreneur turned venture investor. He opens up about the pain, profit, and purpose that drove his transition and the impact he hopes to make as an investor. Luke also dives into his thesis at Latimer Ventures, which focuses on supporting black and Hispanic founders in the US.
You can find Luke Cooper on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukecooperbaltimore/ and learn more about Latimer Ventures at https://www.latimer.vc/.
Learn more about Flowlie and how the platform can help you screen deals faster and discover the right connections from your network at https://www.flowlie.com.
Stay up-to-date with all our episodes by checking our website at https://www.thevcarchitects.com, following us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/thevcarchitects, and on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/thevcarchitects.
The VC Architects (Ep. 8) - Luke Cooper (Latimer Ventures)
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Luke Cooper: [00:00:00] My name is Luke Cooper. I'm currently the founding general partner of Latimer Ventures. I started my career as an M& A attorney before starting my own company, which was acquired by a joint. We make post seed investments in black led enterprise tech companies.
Vlad Cazacu: Hey everyone, thanks for tuning in and welcome to the VC Architects, the podcast where we share the real stories behind new VC fund managers and the blueprints used to make them successful.
Vlad Cazacu: My name is Vlad Cazacu and I'll be your host today as we interview Luke Cooper, a Baltimore native who overcome poverty and built an incredible career as an M& A attorney turned tech entrepreneur with two successful exits before launching his own venture fund. This is an episode you cannot miss as we touch upon many of Luke's past stories that build the resilience required to succeed in the business world.
Vlad Cazacu: For more information about starting and growing your venture fund including show notes, highlight clips, and exclusive scenes, Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at TheVCArchitects, as well as on our website at TheVCArchitects. com. This episode is brought to you by Flowlie, the number one choice for deal screening and network [00:01:00] management used by hundreds of investors from 50 plus different countries.
Vlad Cazacu: Now, let's dive right in.
Vlad Cazacu: Luke, such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for having the time to connect to us today. I think it's gonna be a really interesting conversation today, especially given your background. Let's zoom in a little bit on the very first entrepreneurial days caldwell technology solutions in '06 and then, uh, prompted to go back into arena with fix it in 2013. Curious to understand where this transition from lawyer to founder actually began and what prompted you to get there. Yeah, man, it can be summed up very, very
Luke Cooper: quickly in three concise words, pain, profit, and purpose, right? I mean, you know, as a, as a practicing lawyer, I mean, you're required to bill hours.
Luke Cooper: Um, and you work on, on great, you know, transactions and opportunities that like, you know, yield knowledge, but, you know, it's, you don't own anything, you don't, you don't really drive anything. Um, you're [00:02:00] kind of like a traffic guard, which is fun too, in its own way, and I respect and admire great lawyers that are out there today that do that well for startups.
Luke Cooper: But I knew it wasn't my ambition, my passion or the thing that was going to bring me a lot of profit and, you know, coming out of poverty so that, so that pain is real, right? So that pain associated with being a lawyer is real. And so I was, I always knew I was an entrepreneur. I wanted to move on from the practice of law at some point to fulfill my, my longstanding, um, you know, desire to, to be an entrepreneur. And I was getting like tons of fax messages as an in house counsel at State Farm on the fax machine about deals and transactions and opportunities. I mean, again, this is like 2005 timeframe.
Luke Cooper: And so the, you know, faxes were very relevant back then, uh, still. And I would get these faxes for deals and my boss would get pissed at me, you know, that I was, you know, sort of distracted and I was always thinking about other ways [00:03:00] to deploy my talent. And so that, that was a signal to me, you know, the fact that he was pissed at that told me that I probably should do more of it.
Luke Cooper: Right. But maybe not here. Right. And so, um, I left and I was in search of a good opportunity and came across two friends, uh, the Caldwells that were looking to build a great cybersecurity business. They knew a lot about the technology. They, you know, Excellent management skills, you know, they were just missing some critical components that I brought to the table.
Luke Cooper: I understood him today. I knew our end goal was to sell the company and get to a strong exit. I understood, culture building, you know, creativity and how to sort of harness that in a constructive manner. And so, you know, I brought a lot of those things to the table that, you know, we put together as a team and really executed well over the course of four years and got to a strong exit, um, exiting the company to, to khaki.
Luke Cooper: And it was the first opportunity for my eyes to be open. As to like the power of [00:04:00] innovation, creativity and hard work, um, you know, being applied to your own personal ambitions. So that was my first experience and how I transitioned from being a merger lawyer to being a merged, uh, founder.
Vlad Cazacu: A person who practices what at some point we're advising on. This is not the traditional exit for the first time entrepreneur. Being able to get to a successful exit in the first four years. So I'm curious to understand how did you take that learning and move it back into the entrepreneurial arena in 2013 with the fixed and, uh, take that as well to an exit. And what's
Luke Cooper: your relationship between the, so I didn't take it well, right? Like I think you don't always, you, you learn well from mistakes, right? You learned a lot from, from errors and judgment or things that you, you know, could have done better.
Luke Cooper: And I think, I think the learning is more acute when it's those scenarios, but I think as humans, we're just innately[00:05:00] wired to, to just celebrate wins as opposed to, like, learn from them. Right. And when we win, we don't, we don't do sort of the, the deep technical analysis as to like, what really drove those wins.
Luke Cooper: Right. And you, I mean, and you see this like in an engineering culture. In engineering culture, you do retros. You know, when you, at the end of every week to talk about not just your failures, but about your successes and like why it was a success and why that worked. And that's what keeps an engineering team at a certain level of cadence.
Luke Cooper: And so I, I'm a big believer in agile methodology for that reason, but I didn't really execute well on agile methodology as I was going through that first startup, I was just thinking that a lot of that was caused by my own effort, hard work, hustle, you know, some luck as well, and, and a lot of intelligence, right? And so, and so that, that folly, that, that hubris oftentimes leads to other poor decision making and, you know, it's a poor decision making sometimes doesn't [00:06:00] reflect in itself. And like, just making a bad decision, you got to get your timing wrong.
Luke Cooper: And that's exactly what happened between, you know, my two successful outcomes. I bought a company out of bankruptcy that I thought I could turn around. It was a retail business. You know, and I, it was a brilliant deal. I'd sold off part of their manufacturing assets to finance the transaction.
Luke Cooper: It was a big name legacy retail asset in the new England region and in the DC region, people like really knew those brands. And my goal was to sort of consolidate them over time. And, you know, I just got my timing wrong in 2008, you know, 2009, you know, 2010, we were dealing with the fallout from the 2000, 2008 crisis.
Luke Cooper: And I closed down that company in the middle of 2008, right? And so, and then the fall of 2008 happened. So I just got my timing wrong, you know? And I didn't really have strong management skills. I had never run a company that had 400 employees, right? But those are the realities that we step into situations with.
Luke Cooper: And if we don't recognize our own sort of deficiencies in those [00:07:00] moments, we don't put the right padding around us to... You know, to help us get through those scenarios. I bought into that company in 2008 and I was getting MBA at the time and then, you know, put the company back into bankruptcy.
Luke Cooper: And I think that's a skill to like, learning how to divest from something both, you know, from a financial perspective and an emotional perspective. And it just made me stronger. It made me, it gave me more confidence. I talk about my, in my experience, I write about them, you know, um, fervently people know about my failures because I think it's important to, you know, not only expose to yourself why you failed, but to other people, um, in a way that helps them navigate those things. But I think also it's important to take some time, right? So, after failure, you know, I took, you know, the better part of, uh, 10 months, just really figuring out what I was going to do.
Luke Cooper: I stayed home with my son, um, you know, I have a son and a daughter, our son was, you know, 3 months old. And I stayed home with him. I taught three 31 finance at a local, um, university as [00:08:00] an adjunct and just to keep my finance skills sharp and I just thought really deliberately about how I wanted to present my talent to the world, you know, what I wanted to do that would bring more profit, more passion, more purpose to my life.
Luke Cooper: I started to think about hard problems I'd seen. To be successful as an entrepreneur, I mean, you gotta be really be focused on solving hard problems and I thought very, very deliberately about, you know, sort of problems I'd seen and one that I saw recurring, you know, sort of incessantly was the poor customer service experience that you got when you dealt with insurance companies.
Luke Cooper: And I was part of that infrastructure as an M&A attorney and also in house counsel, I'd seen it firsthand, you know, we would get these faxes of cases and claims and other things from clients and it was a slow process and they never got their money back. They never got their, you know, their cars or things, their possessions back.
Luke Cooper: It was not efficient communication. There was never any sort of data aggregate that like a repository that told [00:09:00] me as the in house counsel told claims, told the insurance company, the third party administrator and the customer where we could see all of that data in one place.
Luke Cooper: Like all of those things were kind of missing from the experience. And so as I start to talk, to think very deliberately about that, you know, I began to think about what kind of solution could occupy that space. It took us about a year and a half to, to really land on the right solution.
Luke Cooper: But by 2014, I'd gone through Techstars and really been challenged on the model in ways that made me think about, you know, the right entry point, the right solution. Web-based web app, mobile app. I mean, there's a lot of decisions. And ultimately we built a web mobile API that could connect all your data to what was happening to your 18 billion of mobile devices, which, you know, kind of is what's been annually on, on this category.
Luke Cooper: Um, and then we later learned there was all like manual processes that were governing it. We also learned that 50, 000 daily genius bar [00:10:00] requests where someone would say, I have a problem, you know, and a large plurality there were coming from of those were coming from, you know, the corporates that didn't have the infrastructure to solve their own problems.
Luke Cooper: And so my team and I, we, we quickly deduced that we built a product that could accommodate the corporates in a way that gave them a one pane of glass, so to speak, of all their information and also solve the problem for them by connecting them with, you know, real time availability of technicians that were out there in the field that could solve problems.
Luke Cooper: We could build that into a big company. I knew it. I knew that we could. And we struggled, right. We struggled, you know, we raised six and a half million dollars for the company. I grew it 300 percent year over year acquiring, you know, the fortune 500. But we were still running out of cash by 2019.
Luke Cooper: And I knew I had to get to an outcome. We had been developing relationships along the way with strategics. And, you know, one of the strategies that we had built a great relationship with led to a great conversation in Las Vegas that ultimately led to the [00:11:00] acquisition of the company six months later and the company went on to go do, more than half a billion dollars for the acquirer.
Luke Cooper: ANd now I'm an investor and as I look back at that time, you know, it took a year between the time that I was an investor and, um, became an investor in the time that I exited my last company and I was just investing in other companies and investing really with the idea that, you know, Hey, are there other people that are like me that.
Luke Cooper: You know, have great companies, you know, they just need a little bit of support both financially and otherwise that could, you know, lead them to a better outcome than the one I got, capturing more of the value that they're creating for the acquirer. And so that's what I'm doing now: taking advantage of the mispricing that I see happening to these, you know, incredibly gifted potential black unicorns that are overperforming, they're undervalued and I have unique access to them.
Vlad Cazacu: And before we dive into Latimer Ventures and your work as an investor, I'm curious to spend just a little bit of time on the fundraising journey of Fixed. Because [00:12:00] before backing founders, you were a backed founder. So what was some of the learnings that you carried over from that fundraising journey into now your journey as an investor and helping other founders and building a little bit more empathy, maybe for the
Luke Cooper: fundraising process.
Luke Cooper: For the fundraising process. But there's a, there's a difference between empathy and compassion, right? Empathy is like, you know, Hey, I feel bad that you're in that situation. When I was starting fix, for example, you know, during the fundraise I had a daughter going to stage four cancer, right? Our four year old went into stage four cancer. Lot of people empathize with us, right? And empathy, you know, in the case of cancer, for example, is, hey, I feel sorry that you have cancer. That's awful. Like we feel awful. That's, we feel bad. And you just kind of stay kind of stuck in that, you know, sort of exchange.
Luke Cooper: Right. But nothing actually gets accomplished. And I, so I think as a founder, you and as a, as a person supporting founders, as an investor, you need empathy for [00:13:00] sure. Right? But you also need compassion. And compassion is really, Hey, I feel sorry that this has happened, but you know, how do we, how do I help you navigate, you know, as, and sometimes navigation is just like, alright, today we're gonna, you had a tragic event happen today all we're gonna work on is just getting outta bed.
Luke Cooper: That's it. We're going to work on getting that's compassion, right? So I try to exercise compassion as much as possible. And I have deep compassion and empathy for founders who raise money because I'm going to that experience myself as a, as a, a venture manager and, you know, and the, and the challenges are the same, right?
Luke Cooper: It's, it's tell me how you're different, you know, but don't be too different. Tell me, you know, how you're going to make money. Who's going to buy this at the end of this? How did, what's your exit plan? You know, what's your portfolio construction look like? How many companies of a certain variety are you going to invest in?
Luke Cooper: It's, it's very similar to the founder experiences, but I think a lot of VCs don't come from a founder experience and they sort of warp how, [00:14:00] you know, VCs and VC funds get, formed and therefore get filtered through the market. Right? And so I think that's not the best model, right? I think you should be taking advantage of all the strong attributes that you develop as a founder and applying them to other things where they, where they're applicable.
Luke Cooper: And I think there's a ton of things that are applicable as a founder to the fundraising journey that I'm on as a, as a venture manager. And I just try to, you know, be thoughtful about, you know, which tools to take out of the tool belt, you know, at the right time, you know, to accomplish the mission and, you know, so I don't divorce myself of the things that I learned as a founder through this journey, I just selectively use the pieces that apply when they apply and modified accordingly, based on the feedback that I get from a wealth of advisors.
Vlad Cazacu: Absolutely. There's like a wealth of experiences that build towards the ability to both be a great investment manager, but also a great supporter for founders who are now [00:15:00] leaning onto your experiences and your background into helping growing their companies. And I think it's a very unique angle when a founder with the level of experience that you do comes into the venture ecosystem because they just have a very different perspective on how things are run and should be run.
Vlad Cazacu: I'm curious to understand the decision to become an investor. I don't think we touched upon that yet. The moment when Luke said, Hey, I think this is now the time for me to start deploying capital and supporting others
Luke Cooper: rather than building. It comes down to what I talked about in the beginning, right?
Luke Cooper: Like, you know, pain, profit purpose. Right. And you know, the, the pain of like the practice of law, like, Oh, I don't want to do that. Got me out of it. Right. The profit motivation from being, you know, growing up in abject poverty with a father in prison. Um, you know, it has me fully focused on wealth creation for myself and the communities that are affected by historical disenfranchisement from all of these resources, right?
Luke Cooper: And we all know the [00:16:00] numbers, right? Less than 2 percent of venture goes to, you know, to black founders, you know, less than 0. 4 percent goes to black fund managers, right? And so, like, the issue just elevates as you. And becomes more severe as you pan out from sort of, sort of the founder perspective. Um, and so, yeah, so like, and then, and then purpose, right?
Luke Cooper: I do things with deep intentionality, you know, hopefully always the right intentions. I think that's important as well, but you know, that purpose really locks me into the largest opportunity set that, you know, can be created to fulfill my purpose.
Luke Cooper: And so if my purpose is to create wealth for myself and my community, I can start another company. Yeah, I could have certainly done that after my last exit. Um, and that was a, that certainly was a thought, right? Could I do that? You know, there was a lot of thoughts and a lot of different things I wanted to do.
Luke Cooper: Um, but when I thought, you know, very deeply about, I wanted to affect the world, well, I want to [00:17:00] affect a lot of people and, and to do that, you know, I thought the best way I, you know, I could do that and do it most efficiently was deploy capital to them, give them my playbooks, give them, my words of inspiration, you know, have those people hear the timbre of my voices.
Luke Cooper: And my voice that, you know, could lead to the inspiration, you know, opportunity that they needed to create for themselves to not only create, you know, the value that their solutions are doing out in the world, creating out in the world, but also capture. And I could have built another company and hiring a hundred employees and 50 of whom would be black and, you know, maybe they exit for millions of dollars and make money.
Luke Cooper: That's that's impact for sure. But if I could do that for 20 companies. And each of those companies has 100 employees, you know, 50 of whom are black, you know, that's a thousand, all right. And so it's just a, you know, it's just magnifying the results of what I want to see in the world that's already good.
Vlad Cazacu: It feels like choosing the path with the best leverage to fulfill that greater [00:18:00] purpose. And let's explore for a second your thesis at Latimer Ventures, because it is very much purpose driven supporting black and Hispanic founders at the earlier stages for the people who are not yet very familiar with your work at Latimer.
Vlad Cazacu: What is briefly your work and how do you best support
Luke Cooper: those found? Yeah. So my work is really to identify the most talented, promising black led enterprise tech companies that are in the U S today.
Luke Cooper: Like that's, that's, that's the overwhelming majority of my job sourcing, identification of great tech entrepreneurs, investing in them as the second leg of that. Once we get through sort of criteria that they meet and that the company meets, for the standards that I set for myself and the standards that my LP set for me. And once I've identified that, you know, we've had, you know, uh, all the warm and fuzzy, good feelings about, you know, making an investment, we make an investment, you know, we're fully committed and that commitment doesn't stop with just a check. That's that commitment [00:19:00] extends to, you know, advice, feedback, playbooks.
Luke Cooper: Everything from sales playbooks that help them drive customer acquisition, you know, repeatability in their sales model, you know, persona development so that they can target the right customers at the right time to M&A playbooks that help them understand, you know, what the value of the company is that they're building. And how do they accrete that value, you know, to the acquiring companies, to the market in some way through an IPO, you know, what an IPO journey looks like, right. All those things are things that, you know, we sort of help them think about. Um, as they're navigating, you know, their way to, to a win, um, and then, you know, give them some things to think about post, you know, post investment.
Luke Cooper: Right? We eventually are going to sell the company or exit. What do you do then? Like, what are the kinds of opportunities that are going to come to you that you should be thinking about, et cetera. So when I think about Latimer. Ventures, you know, Latimer ventures is just like 1 piece of the continuum of resources and enablements that [00:20:00] I want to provide to founders over time, you know, it extends out to Latimer advisory, the M& A components to help them think about M& A.
Luke Cooper: You know, and then in the future, we'll have Latimer, you know, consulting, maybe that helps them with their careers as they think about the next, you know, sort of board seats and, you know, book deals and other things that are going to come to them as a result of the incredible stories that these folks have, the journey that they've gone through to get to those, um, to those outcomes, um, and the communities they come from and how they can still deeply impact them with, um, you know, news of what they've done.
Vlad Cazacu: And it's a very convincing narrative, right? With a lot of different synergies between some of those entities, but there was one point when an external party, the very first LP said, you know what, Luke, this makes a lot of sense to me as well. Here's some money to make this a reality. Can we peel back the curtain a little bit behind the very first interaction, the very first yes who [00:21:00] solidified the fact that this is happening.
Vlad Cazacu: Latimber Ventures is not just a
Luke Cooper: plan anymore, it's an actual fund. So it wasn't, I wouldn't say it was one individual. There's certainly some individuals that are. than others. Um, you know, Dan Rizzo comes to mind. He was, he just, you know, was a But he didn't commit right away. It was, it was a group of us that sat down and I, and I shared my ideas and I, I encourage founders to do this to share your ideas as raw as you can make them right.
Luke Cooper: The more raw you share your idea, the more real it is, the closer it is to the vision and the reality that you want to see in the world. Um, and that's what investors. You know, we'll understand, um, the best and they'll be able to give you feedback on that. Right? Um, because where you start is never where, you know, um, finish always.
Luke Cooper: It's always sort of a journey. And so I started with this idea that I could raise a very large fund that could do not only direct investment into diverse founders, but also, um, indirect investment through fund to funds [00:22:00] activity, right?
Luke Cooper: And I got great feedback, right. And, and the feedback was really like, Hey, you know, doing it was feedback. I tell founders all the time, right. Doing one thing is hard, right? Doing two things in a startup is not necessarily, you know, twice as hard.
Luke Cooper: It's exponential, right? And so thinking about that, you know, I sort of stepped back from the idea of doing an indirect fund, you know, alongside of our direct vehicle. And then, you know, the investors in the room gave me tons of feedback on that. And they all committed in that room. I mean, there's no better feeling than to have a meeting like that and have all your investors in one room and you're talking about your dreams, your visions, embarking on the journey. There's no better feeling than walking through all of those things and then getting to a place where investors say, wow, that's amazing.
Luke Cooper: There was also pruning feedback that helped me evolve the idea into what we have, more of what we have today. Um, which is a better starting place than where I, you know, I think where I initially started, but those investors were incredibly invaluable.
Luke Cooper: Right? So, like, you know, [00:23:00] for me, it wasn't really 1 investor at 1 moment. It was a series of investors. You know, some collectively in that one moment, and then over time here and there, there have been like one off conversations that have led to, you know, big checks from investors like Doug song, you know, he built duo security. I have this deep admiration for him and his team and what they were able to accomplish over the course of 10 years and he sold it to to Cisco for over 2. 5 billion dollars. I mean, it's an incredible accomplishment as a founder, particularly a diverse founder from Baltimore.
Luke Cooper: And so to have someone like that, believe in you, that understands the model of connecting corporate capital, corporate, you know, ventures and corporate development teams, the M and a components that drive them with the startups that, you know, need that optionality, have great products, but oftentimes can't, can't find these corporates, um, there's no big, bigger happiness than, you know, seeing someone like him come on board and like, and be a big supporter of what we're doing.[00:24:00]
Vlad Cazacu: I can only imagine how powerful it feels to have some of those other successful individuals see and validate the long term vision of you and what you're building at Latimer. So I would love to also take the other side of the coin because I think it's a topic that a lot of people don't discuss. And you mentioned earlier of sharing also, what didn't go well, what is one of the reasons people said, no, where did you face rejection from the LP say, you know, this doesn't really fit my criteria. Was it more related to the LP's thesis and not finding necessary allocation for this particular strategy? Was it not believing that this is an opportunity worth pursuing?
Vlad Cazacu: Where did you
Luke Cooper: see the most pushback, right? Like you, Luke, you're a twice exited tech entrepreneur, you know, marginal success, right? In my opinion, right? Like when you, what we don't do in this society. Is we, we don't always acknowledge, you know, the journey that people have taken to get to the places that they are right.
Luke Cooper: And [00:25:00] so, like, you know, if you get to a 10, 000, 000 exit, 000 exit, and you're from abject poverty, and you grew up in Pequanix projects like I did, that's, that, that is, that's incredible. That's unbelievable. Right. It's unbelievable. But in the world of tech, you know, a 30 million acquisition is like, you know, kind of like a Tuesday, right?
Luke Cooper: Like no one's no one's paying attention to that. And, and what I'm, what I'm saying is that like, yeah, we don't, we don't want to just keep doing 30 million acquisitions, but, you know, for somebody who has the capacity to overcome those kinds of things to get to that, you know, that scale of an exit multiple times.
Luke Cooper: Um, they have capacity to do a lot more, a lot more and a lot bigger. They're just missing some things. They might be missing, you know, the skill experience, um, networks that drive, you know, the connectivity they need to these capital markets. They might be missing, you know, the capital, right. Um, to, to actually drive toward those goals.
Luke Cooper: All right. And, and so, you know. You know, I took it personal right when, when [00:26:00] I would get that pushback that like, Oh, your track record, you know, doesn't really, you know, sort of justify, you know, such a large allocation, you know, because, you know, you haven't been an investor, you've been mostly a founder. Um, and so that was the, that's an emotional response.
Luke Cooper: Right. And I think that's natural for us as, you know, founders, you know, who are entering the world as VC, like you, you bring all the emotional baggage with you that makes you a great founder too, along with the founder, all those things that, you know, make you successful and succeed as a founder. Right.
Luke Cooper: You need passion and passionate delivery of your ideas, all those things. But you need a little bit of something different as a VC also, right? Like portfolio construction, you know, compliance with internal processes is important. You can't overlook those things. All right, because they dictate the measure of information and the returns that you're driving back to found back to the, um, to limited partners and those limited partners are, you know, um, [00:27:00] responsible for incredible amounts of money, right?
Luke Cooper: And so when I, so when I see that incredible linkage, I understand that, you know, it's a, it's a fair comment, you know, to say that, Hey, you know, we, we are not fully confident in your, in your track record just yet.
Luke Cooper: And so I think it's a combination of like demonstration of my angel track record that stands in the place of like a, you know, sort of professional venture investing track record, you know, yielding seven and a half X over the course of two years for my investments and my own venture, you know, angel portfolio, and then also a mix of demonstrating to my LPs that, you know, I, I could bring on the right team, right.
Luke Cooper: That I'm not only a one man show that I could bring on the right team that could help with, you know, some of the more traditional things that they expect to see in a conventional, um, you know, conventionally formed, um, you know, venture capital firm. And so I brought in, you know, three or four people. And ultimately went with, you know, the, the person that I thought [00:28:00] was the best.
Luke Cooper: Um, and she's just been so additive in so many ways, but she has a more traditional background. So, yeah, so I could put the biggest pushback was track record. And, you know, and, and, and again, as a, as a, you know, new manager, as a new founder, like it's important to just like, Just hear the feedback, right? Just hear it.
Luke Cooper: Like, a lot of times we, I don't, we say yes, we, we actually, you know, tell the person that we hear it, but we go off on an emotional sort of rant that this isn't right and this is wrong. Like, just hear it. Just hear the feedback and, and take the pieces of it that, you know, make you better and also, you know, bring you closer to the fundraising goals that you have without, you know, sort of compromising your values.
Vlad Cazacu: And it's an interesting storyline that we've heard before around the emotional impact that fundraising has on founders as well as investors. And being, having the thick skin to handle that rejection and knowing that not everybody's going to see the world the way you see the world. [00:29:00] And it's even more pronounced in previously less funded populations where, you know, their viewpoint, it's even more different than the status quo that the industry has been perpetuated over the past years. Before we jump on the rapid fire part of the episode, I'm curious to understand your process around the limiting between feedback that's worth listening to and feedback that is not worth listening to and handling the emotional response around navigating those
Luke Cooper: more difficult situations.
Luke Cooper: I think, you know, everybody should have a set of core values, right? Like, you know, I think COVID was a great time for us to sit back and say, you know, Hey, you know, things are slower right now. This is a great time to revisit what I stand for, right? You'd be alarmed how many people I asked that question to, like, what do you stand for?
Luke Cooper: And they don't really have an answer. At all. Right. But when I, when I think about that, that question, right. To me, you know, it [00:30:00] reflects a set of values that, you know, sum up how I think about myself, the world and my interaction with it. Right. When I think about those things that, you know, the, the, some of the core values that I think about that are important to me as a individual, you know, hard work, patience, sacrifice, self confidence, um, right intentions.
Luke Cooper: Um, you know, some of those things and, um, and so, so when you're, when you're interacting now with the world with that perspective, and you come across, you know, a mentor or, you know, someone who's giving you feedback that, um, you know, is not coming from a place that is consistent with those values. That's a signal.
Luke Cooper: That's a signal that advice might be tainted in some way. Right. And so I think I think it's important to recognize that as founders and not like, not, not, you know, not ignore, um, you know, sort of the, the, you know, the reality of what you're seeing. Right. Because oftentimes as founder, [00:31:00] we just, we second guess ourselves often.
Luke Cooper: Right. We, and, and we're in such desperate, you know, sort of needs, um, circumstances that we will typically listen to folks that we shouldn't listen to because like they got money and we don't, you know what I mean? Um, and I think early on in my career, I probably, you know, would, would, you know, adjust accordingly with, you know, the ebbs and flows of, you know, different investors and what they thought, you know, right.
Luke Cooper: And, and I think over time I didn't do that. And it led to me really redefining my values, standing up for myself in a way that, you know, not only my, my kids would be proud and my community would be proud, but my ancestors would be proud as well. And so I, so I think that's first just recognizing it and not, and knowing that it's like, not, not you, , right?
Luke Cooper: It's just, it's, it's them. It's not their, it's not your problem, you know, necessarily. It's there, it's them. And then once you recognize that, I think that that unlocks you from the emotional trauma and the emotional response of it.
Luke Cooper: So first thing is like, [00:32:00] just having the, the, the courage to accept what you're seeing and know that it's out of place with your values. And then secondly, I think is having the courage to, to speak up for yourself, right? In a way that, that doesn't necessarily come from an emotional response kind of place, right?
Luke Cooper: for me, I've had moments like that where, you know, getting feedback that I didn't think was, you know, adequate or sufficient or relevant or, and this felt like it was coming from a place of maybe that person's own ego, right. Uh, or those kinds of things. And, uh, I was okay.
Luke Cooper: Like, you know, basically, you know, saying those things as a founder, you got to have a diplomatic diplomatic tongue. All right, like you, things I think might be true that you need to say to your, your team, but like, how you say that will dictate like the culture that you're trying to set for the company.
Luke Cooper: And so just because the thing is true, doesn't mean that a true and also difficult to say, doesn't mean that a, you don't say it. Or B, [00:33:00] you don't say it with tact and I think that's important for founders to sort of embrace. And so I've been in conversations where I've with investors and at the end of it said, hey, you know, I really enjoy having this conversation with you.
Luke Cooper: You know, um, you know, in fact, during my series, a, we were raising and we got a quarter of a million dollar commitment from a very well known firm in Manhattan. You know, I spent basically that last half of the afternoon with him also to get there. He was late to the meeting, you know, kind of casual throughout the meeting, flip it, said a bunch of crazy things about Baltimore and the people that live there.
Luke Cooper: And I felt some type of way about that. And I had a quarter of a million dollar commitment. I had at that point, I had like maybe 300, 000 of the whole two and a half million dollar round raised. And, or 3 million, 3. 5 million raised, so I needed that money desperately. I needed that money. Um, but on the train ride home, I, you know, pull up my laptop, you know, and I wrote him [00:34:00] an email, you know, that I still have to this day.
Luke Cooper: And I said, you know, listen, I, I, I really enjoyed meeting with you. I thought, you know, some of your feedback was really spot on and helpful. I thought some of it, you know, was, was, you know, outside of what I believe in terms of my own cultural values. And so, you know, I don't know that we're a great fit and I just, I'm okay with that, you know, and I, I wish you well, and I'm happy to keep you updated on our progress, but I don't think we're a great fit.
Luke Cooper: And he said, okay, no problem. And that was it. And, like, again, like, I think we all, we all overestimate people's response to us when we, when we're really wrong. And honest in that way, but oftentimes it's just like, it's just like a Tuesday for them.
Vlad Cazacu: I think that's a great answer and it touches upon so many different things from the self awareness of understanding, what your core values are to the courage to take in those core values at heart and the awareness of other people's similar vibration to those, to some extent, right.
Vlad Cazacu: And understanding who really is seeing the world through the same lens that you are. Uh, [00:35:00] and being okay to partner with the ones
Luke Cooper: that don't,
Vlad Cazacu: I think it's a great point to turn to the very last part of the interview, three quick questions with three quick answers, to let the people know more about Luke Cooper and the person behind Latimer Ventures. And the question we like to start with is one thing that most people don't know about that
Luke Cooper: they should know.
Luke Cooper: I've been a vegan for a very long time. When I was starting out my last company, Olivia, our daughter. Kind of sick. I was always like, you know, health conscious, vegetarian, mostly throughout most of my life from college. But, you know, I think, you know, lack of knowledge about how food really affects us, probably kept me eating things I shouldn't eat.
Luke Cooper: And, um, you know, grateful for the experience I went through, you know, with Olivia because it exposed my, my thinking and my, you know, my mindset to, you know, other, you know, people. Ways to sort of achieve, you know, optimal health and, [00:36:00] um, you know, I, I began to like really look into that and, you know, became a vegan and.
Luke Cooper: You know, I'm, I'm, I'm very, very much still a vegan today.
Vlad Cazacu: I mean, it's such a powerful reflection to see that through a, through a positive and life changing light. Second question is one person you consistently looked up to throughout your career that was to some kind.
Luke Cooper: There are a number of, of, of people. Um, that I looked up to over the course of my career, I think early on, you know, folks like miss Matthews, who was my prep school teacher, um, English teacher who made sure every single day, you know, even though my collars were dirty because I lived in the project and I came to this prestigious prep school every day, um, you know, and I, I couldn't afford lunch, right.
Luke Cooper: And she, she made sure that I could afford lunch every day, make sure I had, you know, a little bit of cash, so I wasn't walking around the lunchroom begging. Um, and so I looked up to her. We, we had a great relationship up until she died, um, about two years ago. And, um, you know, she's [00:37:00] someone that, you know, I got, you know, um, a lot of, you know, my sense of, uh, devotion to my, my values and what I believe and to a set of values that, you know, um, you, you embrace and hold on to fervently.
Luke Cooper: Um, you know, even in the face of, you know, racism, you know, um, or opportunity. Right. I think people sometimes shift when there's an opportunity to, to be successful, you know, they'll, you know, accommodate, you know, that person that those, those systems in a way that, you know. Don't reflect their values. And she's someone that's like, really helped me, you know, sort of think through that, you know, so she's somebody has been a great mentor for a very long time, you know, folks like Jim cash, you know, board chair, Walmart, um, who is, you know, integrated the basketball teams in the 60s. He was, you know, on the 1st. You know, all black basketball team that started, you know, starting 5 at like Kansas State or some school like that. Um, and, uh, you know, Harvard emeritus, you know, professor, you know, their buildings erected to him on Harvard's campus and, [00:38:00] um, and just a brilliant man and he goes about his work in a way that is inclusive.
Luke Cooper: Right? Because I, and I, I believe that I believe that we're all. Responsible for this work of elevating, you know, the voices that have been less heard in our society, um, and breaking down systems that have, you know, um, historically held people back from fully participating in the American dream. Um, and he does that in a way that, that, that, you know, gets everybody working together.
Luke Cooper: And so I, you know, he's somebody that I deeply admire as well. It's been a great mentor for me, you know, um, over time, I mean, I can, I can reel off a bunch of other mentors and folks that I draw inspiration from, you know, some, some are not with us anymore.
Vlad Cazacu: Very inspiring answer. And I'm really curious to hear your answer to the last question, a longstanding transition at our company, which is ending the conversation with a point of gratitude. So really quick and only one person that is allowed as an answer. Someone that you wish to say thank you for provide some gratitude to looking [00:39:00] back at your work. Yeah. I
Luke Cooper: would say thank you to my family. I thank you to my, my, um, you know, to, to, uh, my, my kids, you know, they haven't, they've watched me through this entire journey. You know, they've, they've been on phone calls.
Luke Cooper: I remember, you know, as I was, um, exiting the last company, you know, we, you know, one of my employees, you know, did some, some crazy stuff, like really, really crazy stuff that. You know, really necessitated, you know, a termination and my kids had to sit through that, you know, because the only way I could do it was on a phone call zoom, you know, at a time when we were trying to do, you know, sort of a family activity and they had already, you know, been deferred, you know, for like a whole week on this activity and I was not going to do that again.
Luke Cooper: And so they sat through that and I thought it was good learning for them. But also, you know, the, the uneasiness with that kind of, you know, action that you've got to take as a CEO, right? Um, it's not [00:40:00] just felt by you, it's felt by the people around you as well. And, you know, I'm sure my kids felt that. So like they, they've got it, they had to endure some of the.
Luke Cooper: You know, uneasiness I felt, you know, through, you know, my journey as a founder. So I'm so thankful for them and their mom, you know, for just being an incredible mom, incredible wife, um, ally, supporter, you know, of all of my ambitions. And someone who's just like, really, you know, sort of made sure that the pieces were picked up.
Luke Cooper: Um, when, you know, uh, I couldn't be there to pick them up. And so I'm incredibly grateful and thankful for those
Vlad Cazacu: people.
Vlad Cazacu: Fantastic. Luke, my gratitude goes to you for such an honest, transparent, and really engaging conversation that I'm certain listeners will take note of and learn a lot from. It's been very inspiring to hear more about your story and your background, and I'm excited about having you back on the podcast at Latimer Ventures Fund 2. And [00:41:00] discussing your continued success as you're continuing to back unbelievable founders from previously unfunded backgrounds in a city that before you may not have been on the venture map as broadly as it is right now and excited to, uh,
Luke Cooper: excited to be here. Thank you so much.
Vlad Cazacu: What a great conversation. If you enjoyed it, make sure to like and subscribe to our podcast and be on the lookout for a new episode in two weeks featuring another amazing fund manager and their story.
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