Tapping His Experience, Serial Tech Entrepreneur Launches VC Firm To Back Black Founders - Forbes
Serial entrepreneur and M&A lawyer Luke Cooper started and sold two enterprise technology companies between 2006 and 2020. Cooper, who grew up in public housing in Bridgeport, Ct., the son of struggling single mother, he's now tapping the full range of his experience through Latimer Ventures. That's his Baltimore-based venture capital firm, which invests in enterprise SaaS startups founded by Black entrepreneurs. Latimer Ventures is named in honor of Lewis Latimer, an African American inventor born to fugitive slaves. Racial Equity and Profitability Founded in 2022, Cooper's focus is on early-stage, post-seed investments in enterprise tech startups. He's doing so, in part, to address the lack of capital available to entrepreneurs of color. But also, he sees a lot of potential in such companies. Black founders, he says, are progressing with a higher success rate than non-Black counterparts. "Within the enterprise technology, Black founders ar...