About Me

Hey there,

I’m Wesley Cooper, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of W Squared, a venture studio that builds calm, lasting businesses.

All businesses we start are “calm” - meaning we focus on sustainable, profitable growth. If we raise money, it’s intentional, and intended to support our speed-to-profitability, rather than the classic “growth at all costs” mentality many startups subscribe to.

A little about me…

I was born and raised in Austin, TX.

I spent my first year of college at a small liberal arts school in Vermont called Champlain College. It wasn’t for me.

My sophomore year I transferred to FIT - a fashion school in NYC - to study advertising and marketing. At the time I thought I wanted to work in the fashion industry.

After working some internships in the industry and surrounding myself with the fashion world, I learned that there is a big difference in liking and enjoying fashion, and actually working in fashion.

I ended up dropping out of FIT after 3 semesters.

Also, school just wasn’t for me.

While I was still at FIT, I got a job on the field marketing team at Vita Coco to pay for school/my life.

I worked nights at restaurants and bars while working at Vita Coco, and discovered that while I sucked at being a waiter, I was a pretty good bartender.

I even took a stab at modeling. I came to find out that being 6-feet tall with no abs wouldn’t get me very far in terms of any real modeling “career.”

Before I moved on from this pursuit, I was cast to walk a show in NY Fashion Week. It was a very cool experience I’ll never forget.

I stayed at Vita Coco for a little over 3 years, working my way up and eventually managing the field marketing team.

I eventually left for an energy drink company called UPTIME. They were expanding distribution and hired me to build and manage their field marketing program in the NYC metro.

Then, COVID hit NYC and I was laid off. Turns out field marketing (events & person-to-person interaction) isn’t a viable marketing strategy during a pandemic.

I moved back home to Austin to wait things out, with plans of moving back to NYC once the pandemic blew over.

While in Austin, I decided to go all-in on a business I had been building on the side: Neo Bites.

Less than a year later I met Winslow, and he joined to help me with Neo Bites.

I bartended some more while we got the biz off the ground, and then eventually retired from the bar world for good.

Ever since, Winslow and I have been building things together. Some worked, many did not.

Oh, and I ended up meeting a girl (my beautiful fiancé, Hattie) and staying in Texas longer than originally planned.

A few interesting and/or embarrassing (I’ve embraced them) things I’ve worked on in the past, in order:

56 Summit, a subscription condom company, and my first foray into the entrepreneurial world. While at Champlain College my friend and I got way in over our heads developing a subscription business (in 2014, at the height of the DTC subscription boom) around something every college freshman thinks about. This (luckily) never launched when we realized we didn’t know what we were doing.

Red Oak Ridge, a tex-mex bar in NYC. While living in NYC and working in restaurants & bars I started to miss the staple cuisine from home, but couldn’t find any good tex-mex in the city. I naively assumed I could do it better. This (also luckily) never left the concept phase.

Neo Bites, which ended up being acquired by Big Munch Brands in May 2023. We pushed a boulder up a hill and helped to introduce a novel source of protein - insects - to the masses via sustainable dog supplements. For our first legitimate business, we started on “hard mode” and built a product nobody asked for. Luckily, it was well received within a specific niche and found decent success before being acquired. More importantly, we learned a ton.

Dog People Certified®️, what started out as dog-friendly certifications for hospitality businesses turned into custom-designed bags of dog treats for hotels, breweries, coffee shops, etc. This became Neoteric Brands (which we still operate today) in the summer of 2024 when we expanded to human snacks (i.e. mixed nuts, trail mix, coffee etc) and became a true low-minimum private-labeler, serving hotel minibars and local coffee shops alike.

Aretheydogfriendly.com, a discovery app to ID dog-friendly businesses and clarify what that business deems “dog-friendly.” We had big plans for this paired with the certifications at Dog People. We built the initial database in Austin, TX, and ultimately abandoned the idea when the private-label side of DPC started taking off. I still think there’s an opportunity on this one...

These are just a few of the fun things I’ve built or played around with. There are 100+ other ideas that haven’t left the ground and live in my “Biz Ideas” note on my phone.

Currently, I live in Houston, TX with my fiancé, Hattie, and our two dogs, Pepper and Bruiser.

I split my time between W Squared, where I focus on operating our current businesses and incubating others, and Ralph & Ralph, a 3rd generation CPA firm where I’m currently acting as the VP of Business Operations focused on modernizing the business.

There are lots of exciting things on the horizon. Thanks for following along.

See you soon,

Wesley Cooper