Poverty to Prosperity: Luke Cooper's Entrepreneurial Journey

The Exit - Presented By Flippa

Technology

5 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2024

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week on The Exit: Luke Cooper, General Partner at Latimer Ventures, discusses his journey from poverty to law school and eventually becoming a successful entrepreneur and investor. Luke recounts his first major exit with a defense contractor, followed by a challenging acquisition of an ice cream company during the 2008 financial crisis. His biggest success came with Fixt, a mobile device repair startup he founded and sold to Assurant in 2020. Luke emphasizes the importance of building relationships with potential acquirers early, understanding company culture in M&A deals, and navigating the complexities of the acquisition process. Luke Cooper is currently the Founding Managing Partner of Latimer Ventures, and was the original founder and CEO of Fixt, which he exited in 2020. Before moving into entrepreneurship, Mr. Cooper started his career as an attorney at DLA Piper and then at State Farm. Luke’s first entrepreneurial experience was joining Caldwell Technology Solutions, and guided them to a $60 million exit. His second entrepreneurship experience was with Brigham's Ice Cream, a 100-year-old ice cream manufacturer and restaurant chain, which eventually was sold to HP Hood, a food and dairy giant. LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/lukecooperbaltimore Websites - https://www.fixt.co/ - https://www.latimer.vc/ For a Free Flippa Business Valuation: https://flippa.com/exit -- The Exit—Presented By Flippa: A 30-minute podcast featuring expert entrepreneurs who have been there and done it. The Exit talks to operators who have bought and sold a business. You’ll learn how they did it, why they did it, and get exposure to the world of exits, a world occupied by a small few, but accessible to many. To listen to the podcast or get daily listing updates, click on flippa.com/the-exit-podcast/

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the exit presented by Flip Up the number one platform to buy and sell online businesses
0:05.9	Flipa manages over a billion in deal value annually and combines expert buy and sell side Advisory with its market leading valuation tool,
0:14.2	Deal Room, Off Market Offering, Market Insights,
0:17.3	an AI-based deal-by-deal matching engine.
0:20.7	Now for the exit.
0:21.9	The exit is a 30 minute podcast featuring awesome
0:24.4	entrepreneurs who have been there and they have done it. The exit talks to
0:27.6	operators who have bought and sold businesses of all different sizes. You learn
0:31.5	how they did it, why they did it and get
0:33.8	exposure to the world of exits it's a world occupied by a small few but
0:38.2	accessible to many on this episode the exit I sit down with Luke
0:41.7	Cooper he's a general partner at
0:44.7	Latimer Ventures and it is an awesome conversation that I have in this episode.
0:50.3	Not only do we talk about the life skills associated with engineering and law
0:56.6	degrees around how to think, but we also just talk about the practicality of going through a transaction with a team and just the
1:06.9	overall stress load that it really requires to be able to do a transaction like this where one of the really great
1:15.9	takeaways from this interview was when I was talking to Luke about the size of the team and just the
1:22.1	transaction that took place.
1:24.4	He said that the team had grown not only as an organization,
1:29.0	but just people had families.
1:31.2	They started as young individuals and grew families. people had the stress of running out of cash after raising six and a half million dollars
1:44.7	literally having to part ways with an investor halfway through there and just the
	...

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