Seed to CEO

When Ankur Rungta wanted to break into the cannabis industry, he didn’t study cultivation or extraction.

Instead, Rungta joined a top tier corporate law firm and later a Wall Street investment boutique where he sharpened his legal, finance and M&A chops.

That gave him the expertise to launch Michigan-based C3 Industries, a vertically integrated cannabis company now in four states and going for more.

But how did Rungta survive the challenges that finance and law couldn’t prepare him for in the cannabis industry?:

• Surrounded himself with top talent, including the former chief cultivator of Green Thumb Industries.
• Made quick decisions rather than dawdling when new opportunities arose.
• Focused on premium brands and found they did well even in saturated markets.
• Respected local cannabis cultures.

Joe Bayern wants to make Curaleaf the “first truly national cannabis company in the U.S.” and with operations in 23 states, Curaleaf is getting there.   What did it take?   Bayern leveraged decades of experience in the beverage sector and other industries. Once at Curaleaf, he executed, taking it from 2,000 employees when he joined in 2019 to 5,500 today.  

Key insights he’s learned along the way include:  

• Don’t underestimate the amount of change and the pace of the industry; be ready to make decisions very quickly. 
• Maintain a start-up mindset. 
• The greatest opportunities in cannabis are with brands. 

• Create competitive advantage by investing in research and development to create great brands and products. 
• Build a broad distribution platform to get those products to consumers. 
• Allocate your resources scrupulously. 

Guest 

Joe Bayern has been the CEO of Curaleaf, one of the biggest multistate operators in the cannabis industry, since 2019. Bayern is a beverage industry player specializing in business transformations. He spent six years in three C-suite posts at Snapple Beverage Group, four-plus years at Cadbury Schweppes in two C-suite posts, and eight years at Voss of Norway, where he was chief operating officer and group CEO. Bayern left Voss in 2019 to break into cannabis with Indus Holdings, from where he joined Curaleaf. He also played for lacrosse for his alma mater, Adelphi University, where he met his wife.  

Katie Stem’s journey to a career in cannabis started with traditional Western medicine studies in college. That path took a left turn, however, when she was introduced to natural remedies while researching at Oregon Heath & Science University. She switched gears and completed a master’s degree in Chinese medicine instead. She decided to ply her entrepreneurial skills and medicinal expertise to launch Peak Extracts. Katie’s expertise, however, didn’t shield her from sexism and homophobia in the cannabis industry, nor the challenges of Oregon’s saturated market.

Katie positioned Peak to thrive by:

• Intelligently introducing automation into her extraction facility.
• Recognizing and creatively maneuvering around barriers that others tried to place in front of her.
• Operating leanly in a saturated marketplace.
• Taking a hands-on approach to bringing innovative products to market.

Who is Katie Stem?

Katie Stem is the co-founder and CEO of Peak Extracts, a Portland, Oregon-based company that manufactures vape cartridges, edibles, tinctures and topicals. The Washington state native was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in the early 2000s, which led her to use cannabis as a personal treatment and become her own test subject for developing strain-specific products.

When wildfires struck Northern California a few years ago, much of Erin Gore’s life literally went up in smoke. The CEO of the Garden Society, a vertically integrated craft cannabis company in Sonoma County, came dangerously close to taking a finance deal that could have led to professional and financial disaster. But an astute and supportive business coach suggested another path for Erin, and today the Garden Society is on the cusp of going multistate.

In this episode of “Seed to CEO,” Erin shares:

• How her experience in winemaking helped her navigate the cannabis industry – and how it didn’t.
• Why turning away money with the wrong terms can be a boon for your business.
• Why saying “no” is a critical skill for executives – and how to hold yourself accountable for it.
• Why you can’t be afraid to fire someone who isn’t doing your company right.

Who is Erin Gore?

Erin Gore began using cannabis to deal with pain earned from a college basketball career at the University of Wisconsin. Before long, however, she was baking edibles and hosting marijuana parties for her girlfriends. Her professional career includes 10 years at Henkel, an international adhesives company, where she became the first woman to lead a business unit at the company, all while moonlighting as the co-founder of her husband’s successful wine business. Erin left Henkel to launch the Garden Society in 2016. Since then, she’s also become a passionate advocate and ambassador for women. In 2021, she was a winner of the North Bay Business Journal’s Women in Business awards.

In 2014, Sundie Seefried was six months from retiring as CEO of Partner Colorado Credit Union when she learned about the banking barriers for the cannabis industry. She postponed retirement to create a program that would provide safer, better banking options for operators. The result was Safe Harbor Financial, which has since processed more than $12 billion in cannabis-related funds and plans to go public on the Nasdaq soon.

In this episode, Sundie shares:

• How she got dragged into the taboo conversation of marijuana banking.
• Why transparency is a key to making lives easier for regulators and marijuana business owners alike.
• How she overcame the compliance challenge by embracing it.
• How the marijuana industry can educate regulators and improve industry interactions with authorities at the same time.

Who is Sundie Seefried?

Cannabis banking pioneer Sundie Seefried is the president and CEO of Safe Harbor Financial, a cannabis banking program she developed in 2014. Sundie entered the credit union industry in Germany in the 1980s and joined Denver-based Partner Colorado Credit Union in 1995. In 2001, she took on the mantle of CEO and held that role until 2021, when she decided to turn her attention to Safe Harbor full time. She is also the author of the book “Navigating Safe Harbor: Cannabis Banking in a Time of Uncertainty,” published in 2016.

When Washington DC and Louisiana launched their respective medical cannabis markets, many entrepreneurs questioned whether the restrictive frameworks could be viable for businesses. But Chanda Macias saw opportunities to help shape those markets into communities focused on helping patients. Now, Chanda operates a dispensary in Washington DC and one of two licensed cultivation and manufacturing operations in Louisiana. Her deep roots and efforts at community-building led to one of the oldest Mardi Gras parade krewes anointing her Queen Zulu in 2020.

Chanda shares:

• How having a keen patient focus helped her become a market leader in Washington DC.
• Why relationships are critical for maintaining reliable supply in restrictive markets.
• How a business owner can actively effect regulatory changes in developing markets.
• How her science background shaped her approach to cannabis as medicine.

Who is Chanda Macias?

At her core, Chanda is a wife, mother, biomedical researcher, entrepreneur and mentor to many in the marijuana and hemp industries. For more than 15 years, Chanda has focused on advancing the careers of women and minorities while improving the quality of life for patients suffering from various ailments. She now serves as CEO of National Holistic Healing Center, an MMJ dispensary in Washington DC; Ilera Holistic Healthcare, a cultivation and manufacturing facility in Louisiana; and Women Grow, an advocacy group focused on empowering women in cannabis.

On a trip to India in the late 2000s, Raj Grover walked by a paraphernalia store selling glass pipes for pennies, accessories that would retail in Canada for $20. While he wasn’t a cannabis user at the time, Raj saw an opportunity. He parlayed that New Delhi encounter into a 500-square-foot head shop in Calgary with two employees. That lone outlet has grown into High Tide, a Canadian retail powerhouse with more than 100 cannabis stores. In this episode of “Seed to CEO,” Raj shares:

• How he grew from an accessories shop to a vertically integrated chain.
• How to find and seize opportunities before others do.
• Why the best plan isn’t always the winner – and how “fast hands” helped build High Tide.
• The role franchising played in funding High Tide’s expansion.
• How he adapted to an ever-changing competitive landscape.

Who is Raj Grover?

Raj Grover cut his business teeth at the knee of his father, who still operates an import-export business in India. As a teen, Raj had more interest in learning the ins and outs of that business than in playing Nintendo, leading him to becoming a serial entrepreneur at 22. Today, he oversees Canadian cannabis retail chain High Tide, which trades on both the TSX Venture exchange and Nasdaq. Raj also leads High Tide’s partnership with World Vision, sponsoring more than 200 children in 2021, and is also a longtime supporter of Operation Smile, an organization that works to deliver free, safe cleft surgery to children in need.

When Tripp Keber co-founded Denver-based Dixie Elixirs, he didn’t fully understand the ride he was stepping onto. Dixie quickly became one of the best-known brands in the market, and Tripp became a face of the industry, appearing on several mainstream documentaries about the newly legal product. After years in the limelight, Tripp realized that he preferred starting new businesses than managing established ones and made a graceful exit to remake himself – as a cannabis advisor via his new venture, Right Side Advisory Services.

In this episode of Seed to CEO, Tripp shares:

• Why it’s important to control the narrative rather than letting it control you.
• The importance of humility and collaboration to success in the cannabis industry.
• How to leverage your talents, experience and relationships for new ventures.
• Why its critical to set aside your ego and personal desires to ensure your clients succeed.

Who is Tripp Keber?

Tripp co-founded Dixie Elixirs in 2010 and became CEO in 2014, a position he held until 2017. Tripp’s professional life started in the communications industry where he held sales executive roles with companies such as eLink Communications and Winstar Communications, before pivoting into realty and a five-year stint as COO of Bella Terra Realty Holdings. After Dixie, Tripp launched Right Side Advisory Services, a consulting business that advises cannabis executives on exits. He also returned to the hospitality industry via his newest venture, Etc. Eatery in Denver.

Meg Sanders has been paving the way for cannabis industry pioneers for more than a dozen years. As an early advocate for Colorado’s medical market and CEO of Mindful, one of the state’s first cannabusiness, Meg possesses a rare institutional knowledge of what one of the nation’s first marijuana markets looked like and what it took to survive. She then brought her Western U.S. sensibilities to Massachusetts’ red-tape heavy rec market, establishing Canna Provisions.

In this episode of Seed to CEO, Meg explores the differences in doing business in these vastly different times and places, sharing insights that include:

• How raising capital has changed over the past decade and what it requires today.
• Why developing relationships with regulators and being involved in the rule-making process is critical.
• How consumer preferences can vary in different markets and how to adapt your business to prepare for additional trend shifts.

Who is Meg Sanders?

Meg Sanders is the CEO of Canna Provisions, a vertically integrated cannabis business in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, which she launched in 2018 with her partner, Erik Williams. But her cannabis career started back in 2010 when she launched Colorado-based Mindful. She is also co-founder and partner at the cannabis consulting firm Will & Way. Before cannabis, Meg held high-level positions in the retail, finance and nonprofit worlds.

Ricardo Baca made his cannabis industry name as the first marijuana editor at The Denver Post. The skills and connections he garnered in that career gave him the confidence to launch his own public relations venture, Grasslands, in 2016, but journalism didn’t provide him the business acumen required for success. In this episode of “Seed to CEO,” Ricardo talks with MJBiz CEO Chris Walsh about learning the ropes to create a successful firm.

Ricardo shares:

• The critical role mentors played in the learning process.
• What it really means to differentiate your offerings.
• How to survive having your bank accounts closed – and how to find a new bank.
• How to make smart and transformational hires.

Who is Ricardo Baca?

Ricardo Baca is the co-founder and CEO of Denver-based Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency, which represents cannabusinesses such as Cookies and Wana Brands. He spent more than 20 years as a journalist, including 12 years with The Denver Post, before launching Grasslands. Ricardo was chosen one of Fortune magazine’s “7 Most Powerful People in America’s Marijuana Industry” and has been a Clio Awards juror and TEDx speaker. Grasslands was awarded the Denver Business Journal’s 2020 Small Business Award and today has 26 employees.