Highly Objective

Sundie Seefried has spent ~40 years in the credit union industry. In 2014, she saw that Cannabis-Related Businesses (CRBs) needed financial services and that Colorado communities would be safer if the new industry had access to banking solutions. Seefried was the former CEO of Partner Colorado Credit Union (PCCU). Established in 2015 by PCCU, Safe Harbor was formed to provide an unmet need–compliant banking and financial services to the rapidly growing U.S. cannabis industry. Seefried designed a full scope Cannabis Banking Program for PCCU known as the Safe Harbor program, which has withstood the scrutiny of 16 federal and state exams to date. In 2021, she became the full time CEO/President of Safe Harbor Financial. In February 2022, she helped to facilitate a $185M merger with Northern Lights Acquisition Corp SPAC.

David Goubert is President and CEO of Ayr Wellness and is responsible for overseeing the Company’s operational and commercial functions, including production, supply chain, retail, wholesale and marketing. Mr. Goubert joined Ayr from Neiman Marcus Group, one of the largest multi-brand retailers in the United States, where he helped lead the company through a transformation into one of the strongest retailers in the country. Most recently, he served as NMG’s President and Chief Customer Officer, where he was responsible for the full P&L of the Neiman Marcus brand as well as all customer touchpoints. Prior to joining Neiman Marcus, Mr. Goubert spent 20 years at LVMH, the world’s leading luxury consumer-products company. At LVMH, David served in a variety of capacities, including Senior Vice President of LVMH’s Starboard Cruise Services subsidiary and 15 years leading manufacturing, supply chain, retail and general management at the company’s flagship Louis Vuitton brand.

Jason Desentz is a HR leader with over 20+ years of progressive human resources experience working for start-up cannabis companies & Fortune 100 companies. He has developed an innovative framework to help companies build resilient and sustainable organizations.

Mike Siebold is a strategic advisor and investor to several cannabis teams domestically. His exposure to the hiring demand and movement of people within the cannabis industry gives him a unique perspective on the prospects and viability of players across the entire ecosystem.

Founded in 2017, FlowerHire is a team of experienced talent and recruiting professionals dedicated to helping companies build, scale, and retain world-class teams. The Company partners with cannabis companies to provide high-touch services including retained and embedded search, strategic talent management, and comprehensive HR advisory. The Company's Senior Advisors practice guides cannabis companies to strategically improve their human capital processes for compliance, performance management, retention, compensation design, and other specific needs of each company.

Summary. Advanced Vapor Devices (AVD) has quietly built the second-largest vape company by market share, just behind CCELL. In my conversations with CEO, Alex Kwon, it's clear that the company prefers to be heads down on execution, while letting the product, technology, and customers (such as Trulieve, Jeeter, Gold Drop, Blue River, Jetty, to name a few) speak for itself. Despite maintaining a low profile, AVD was thrust into the spotlight following a significant intellectual property (IP) lawsuit filed by Smoore/CCELL in 2021 in the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC). As the legal proceedings unfolded, it became apparent that AVD was the primary target of CCELL. However, just last month, the ITC delivered a definitive ruling in favor of AVD, finding no violation of their products. The ITC decision inadvertently fortified AVD's global IP strategy, charting a new path in the battle for IP dominance in the still nascent cannabis vape industry. In the months ahead, expect increased visibility from AVD as they launch new products in collaboration with some recognizable companies in the Cannabis industry.

Alex Kwon, CEO and Co-Founder. Alex leverages two decades of experience leading cannabis companies to strategically guide AVD’s growth and success. His extensive cannabis industry knowledge encompasses plant biology, cannabinoid science and leading-edge extraction and vape technologies. AVD operates on fundamental values that guide its daily operations propelling it to make impactful change as a force for good. Alex excels at building teams and architecting how businesses work, as he strives to inspire and influence how other entrepreneurs can think differently and challenge the status quo. 

His industry background includes founding the Humboldt Consulting Group, where he directed land acquisition and development in Northern California, and founding Sungrown in Washington State. As Sungrown’s CEO, he oversaw a targeted resin farming approach, that when coupled with best-in-class extraction and formulation, produced the premier cannabis oils found in top product brands in the state. Alex enjoys spending as much time as possible with his wife and three children.

Company Background and Overview. After extensive experience in cultivation and extracts, Alex realized that he should focus on value-added products like vapes and concentrates as they would continue to gain market share against flowers. Having experienced many reliability and consistency issues in vape hardware firsthand, Alex co-founded AVD in 2018 and delved into studying the entire supply chain to find ways to produce vape hardware at a fair cost while ensuring improved reliability, consistency and flavor. AVD embarked on a mission to assist companies and extractors in tackling the additional complexities of vape hardware, which added to the already challenging process of extraction and formulation. Furthermore, given the dissatisfaction caused by subpar customer service and products from incumbents like CCELL, there was a clear and urgent demand for a solution that could genuinely fulfill customer requirements and earn their loyalty. AVD had found a big product and customer service issue to solve in a multi-billion-dollar segment of the Cannabis industry.

Benjamin Ballinger is a cofounder of Shryne Group, California’s largest vertically-integrated operator—with retail, manufacturing, cultivation and distribution operations across the state, and the parent company of STIIIZY—the biggest vape brand in the US. As one of Shryne’s top executive, Benjamin oversaw the massive scaling of the company through California’s initial legalization period from 2017 to 2020—with a 10x increase in company revenues between the years of 2018 and 2020 alone. More recently, Benjamin was COO of Left Coast Holdings—a Michigan-based vertically-integrated cannabis company with a successful portfolio of brands—before founding Diamond Miners Consulting—a cannabis consulting firm specializing in helping operators in the areas of business development, product development and operational excellence.

Link to notes and transcript: https://www.highlyobjective.com/p/benjamin-ballinger-fouder-diamond?sd=pf

The profitable #1 ranked vape brand in Arizona has taken no outside funding to expand to its current footprint in five markets (AZ, CA, OH, OK, MO).

Background. Prior to founding Timeless, Rocky was CEO & Co-Founder of Molly Water, a premium alkaline mineral water designed to assist in regulating the body’s pH balance. Rocky and COO Shawn Williams sold the brand into 200+ convenience stores in Arizona and California between 2008-2011. While Molly Water was not a successful venture for the pair as Alkaline water, and beverage in general, is a tough category—a lot of the learnings on consumer education, community, branding and marketing helped lay the groundwork for Timeless. Rocky and Shawn started the lifestyle brand Always Timeless in 2010 when they opened a screen print shop and resale store on Mill Avenue in Tempe, AZ.

Overview. Timeless is headquartered in Scottsdale, AZ and currently operates in Arizona, California, Oklahoma, Ohio, and Missouri. It holds the #1 ranking for market share in AZ for vapes (BDSA estimates Timeless generates ~$6.8M/month1 in AZ sales, ahead of Select, Stiiizy, Abstrakt, Jukebox, Dime Industries, Item 9 Labs, Drop, Grow Sciences), and is one of the top 5 vape companies nationally (and only one of two that is independent, Stiiizy being the other). For BDSA trackable markets that Timeless is in (AZ, CA, MO), the brand ranks #4 behind Stiiizy (not in MO), Select and Raw Garden (only in CA).

BDSA estimates that Timeless did ~$75M in retail sales in 2021. Building on the success of Timeless, the Company has launched a “house of brands,” which includes prerolled brands JOILO and Tumble.

Recorded on March 22, 2023.

Topics discussed:

– M&A

– Verticalization

– Revenue Mix

Petalfast is the first-of-its-kind route-through-market platform for the cannabis industry. Petalfast helps cannabis brands thrive via its go-to-market accelerator program and through its full spectrum of agency services available to brands nationally. Notable cannabis brands already engaged in the Petalfast platform include Space Coyote, Emerald Sky, Bloom Brands, and Yada Yada. The Company, through its incubator program Pilot by Petalfast, also provides new and recently launched brands with direct access to leading retailers and opportunities to gain first-hand market analysis while also offering select retailers the opportunity to see future brands before they formally hit the market. Petalfast is taking its business model and expanding into newer, competitive markets.

The Bloomwell Group is a Frankfurt,Germany-based holding company for medical cannabis companies and potentially for companies in a recreational market. Founded in June 2020, the Company operates three different business: Algae Care, a telemedicine platform with over 100,000+ treatments and 13,000 returning treatments; Ilios Sante, a vape pen brand with a medical focus based on strong sourcing and R&D and Breezy; a lifestyle brand for cannabis. Bloomwell Group is a top 3 operator in Germany when it comes to revenue, size, or volume. Think of Bloomwell Group as more of a tech company rather than a vertically-integrated company as the Company focuses on product development and sourcing. 

Niklas Kouparanis brought Cannabis to Germany in 2017; this is his third Cannabis Company. One of the biggest companies in Germany, wholesale platform, telemedicine platform. He previously built two wholesalers in Germany (Cannamedical® Pharma GmbH and Farmako GmbH.

The company raised a $10M Seed led by Measure 8 Venture Partners on October 18, 2021. Voxel Ventures, LA Finance and M4 Capital also participated in the round. Based on inbound interest and excitement around Germany, Bloomwell decided to take money from a new investor, Artemis Growth Investments, by extending their Convertible Note. The Company is currently preparing to go out for their Series A.

Rainbow Realty Group and its affiliates are real estate companies focused on retail, industrial and greenhouse properties with cannabis companies in the United States. Rainbow offers sale-leaseback and mortgage financing with a portfolio consisting of 50+ properties across 9 states in the U.S. Rainbow’s parent, Gould Investors L.P., has been in the real estate industry for over 60 years. Gould is a significant shareholder of NYSE:BRT and NYSE:OLP. 

Kyle Shenfeld serves as President of Rainbow Realty Group, having served as Associate General Counsel of Gould Investors L.P. since 2016. Prior to that, he was an Associate in the Real Estate Department of Herrick Feinstein LLP from 2012 to 2016.