Koopedia began as a startup based out of Atlanta, Georgia founded by CB Smithwick and Thomas Wright. It focused on helping small business owners start, grow, and expand their companies through hyper-local marketing. Similar to most daily deal sites, Koopedia did this through promotions on behalf of the businesses. The main difference was the amount the business owners paid for the service – zero. Instead, the consumers paid a small transaction fee when they purchased the deals. Other daily deal companies charged the business owner up to 95% of the revenue from the promotion.

Koopedia experienced amazing growth and success. So much that they were featured in Techcrunch. See the article here – https://techcrunch.com/2012/11/29/koopedia-daily-deals/ 

CB eventually bought out his partner, Thomas, and became sole owner of the company in 2013.

After making a lot of noise in the daily deal world, Koopedia was approached by a leader in the space with an offer to purchase its intellectual property. The deal was executed after careful consideration and some back-and-forth negotiations. The time was right for CB to move forward and get back to his roots of helping small businesses. The best way he found to truly help these small businesses was to take the immense knowledge and experience acquired from working with some of the world’s largest companies and make it affordable.

Fast forward, CB founded Raise Company, LLC, an innovation management firm, and now works with some of the largest and best companies in the world, exceptional small businesses, and highly impactful non-profit organizations.