The Cannabis Society 1X1 Executive Conference - San Francisco
Event Information
Description
The Cannabis Society, with support from ours sponsors, has put together a unique Invite-Only Executive 1X1 Conference.
With the goal of forming strategic partnerships and investment deals, the 1X1 Executives Conference is a unique way to interact with and hear pitches from vetted cannabis brands, infusion products, credible technology companies, retailers, cultivators, licensed producers and large enterprises.
Among our various partners, a team of industry experts vet presentations in advance to ensure each investment and venture opportunity is a viable and strong business case.
Attending and taking meetings with presenting companies include executives of the largest licensed producers and multi-state operators in Canada and the US, as well as investment groups that focus on the cannabis industry.
The Cannabis 1X1 Executive Conference is structured to include investment deck presentations from companies, followed by scheduled one-on-one meetings to be held between the Presenters and the Attendees. Meetings are scheduled in advance of the Conference.
CONFIRMED ATTENDEES:
Mary Dimou, Director, Investment Team, Canopy Rivers
Mary is the Director on the investment team at Canopy Rivers, the largest cannabis and hemp-focused venture capital vehicle in the world. In collaboration with Canopy Growth, Canopy Rivers identifies cannabis and hemp companies looking for financial and operating support. Her expertise covers the life sciences and agri-technology fields.
Mary is a former ag-tech entrepreneur and held senior-level positions in portfolio management, venture capital, and foreign direct investment for the Canadian government, private capital, and private operating companies. Mary is trained as a nutritional scientist focused on nutritional genomics and biochemistry.
Gian-Paolo Veronese, Business Development and Policy lead for Big Rock Partners
Gian-Paolo Veronese is a hospitality, finance and policy leader, and the Business Development and Policy lead for Big Rock Partners. Gian-Paolo is the founder of Aventine Hospitality and Vero Enterprises; Finance manager of Law Offices of Mayor Joseph Alioto and Angela Alioto. He has decades of experience in California Cannabis policy advocacy work, which began with the unanimous passage by the San Francisco Board of Supervisor of Prop O in 1991.
Joyce Cenali, Founding Partner and Chief Operating Officer for Big Rock Partners
Joyce leads operations at Big Rock Partners, a strategic advisory firm serving investors and companies at the intersection of food, hospitality and cannabis. Their portfolio includes PharmaCann, Cannacraft, Phylos, Kikoko, Sonoma Hills Farm, Garden Society, Sava, and others. She previously founded a boutique artist management firm, and lead business development, licensing and partner integrations for e-commerce start-ups. A long time craft cannabis cultivator, she co-founded an Emerald Cup winning operation, and served as Co-Chair for Women Grow, Sonoma. She attended Smith College, and lives with her wife and puppy children in San Francisco.
Adrian Z. Sedlin, CEO, CANNDESCENT
A lifelong entrepreneur, Adrian Sedlin builds brands and cash flow businesses. Over his 25-year career, Mr. Sedlin has raised over $175MM in early stage capital, created 5 successful exits, and thrived in diverse industries including B2B ecommerce, B2G SaaS, direct response, and consumer packaged goods.
Co-founding his first company at age 21, Mr. Sedlin served as its CEO and sold the business to Student Advantage (NASDAQ; STAD).Following this early career success, Mr. Sedlin served as a C-Suite executive in companies such as Credit2B (EVP; sold to S&P in 2001), Bargain Network (COO; Sold to Vertrue in 2004) and CrimeReports (Acting CEO; sold to Motorola in 2014).In addition, Mr. Sedlin served as CEO of Ocenture from 2006-2010, growing sales over 20x, achieving 25% EBITDA margins, and earning Inc. 500 honors for three consecutive years.
In 2015, Mr. Sedlin left early retirement to launch CANNDESCENT, a California leading luxury cannabis brand.In 2017, CANNDESCENT became the #1-selling brand of cannabis flower in California and the company was the first cultivator in the world to abandon strain names and move to a consumer-friendly, effects-based architecture—Calm, Cruise, Create, Connect, and Charge.As CANNDESCENT’s CEO, Mr. Sedlin has co-chaired the Policy Council for the NCIA, has written for mg magazine and New Cannabis Ventures, and has regularly appeared on Fox Business’ Varney & Company as a category expert, was named to HT’s 100 Most Influential Cannabis Leaders list for 2018, and has been written about by Bloomberg, Inc. Magazine, Vogue, CNBC, Forbes, Playboy, Moneyish, PopSugar, LA Times, US News & World Report, The Hollywood Reporter, USA Today, Refinery 29 and Mashable.
James McMillan, VP Business Development of Hexo Corp
James McMillan brings more than 20 years of executive experience in strategic sales, marketing and business development with an entrepreneurial spirit, strong negotiating skills, and expertise in developing growth markets to his role as our Vice-President for Business Development. A graduate of Concordia University (Bachelor of Commerce, Marketing/Finance), James has an established track-record of creating successful business development opportunities, building growth organizations, and establishing lasting customer relationships in diverse fields including communications, emerging technologies, energy management and now cannabis across both Canada and international markets.
As Vice-President for Business Development, James plays a leading role in identifying strategic opportunities in the expanding cannabis market. From the development of new and innovative product lines for the medical and recreational markets, to building strong relationships with commercial partners, James is responsible for establishing and expanding our market position in Canada and beyond.
Morgan Paxhia, Co-Founder & Managing Partner of Poseidon
Morgan Paxhia is a co-founder and Managing Partner of Poseidon, one of the longest running funds in the cannabis industry.
With over ten years experience in investing and finance, Morgan has developed a deep understanding of individual company analysis, portfolio construction, and risk mitigation. Since 2012, he has dedicated his investment focus primarily to the cannabis industry. Given the limited amount of information in this emerging vertical, the lack of institutional research, and relative industry immaturity, Morgan embraces an active approach of working closely with companies. He utilizes a “boots on the ground” methodology to better understand individual companies and the industry. Through his extensive travel across the US and Canada, reviewing hundreds of business plans and overseeing several existing cannabis investments, Morgan has developed Poseidon’s investment methodology tailored specific to the business of cannabis. Poseidon’s proprietary process is driven by the time spent in the industry and the considerable data collected over the last several years. He has created frameworks for analysis depending on sub-sector, company stage, and participation across the capital spectrum through our database of contacts, valuations, metrics, and other relevant factors.
Morgan started his investment career at UBS Financial Services working in a Wealth Management/ Investment Banking hybrid training program. The training brought a wide range of first hand experience working through several facets of the organization, including advisory teams managing assets for high net worth individuals and municipal bonds trading. Following UBS, Morgan transitioned to a Providence-based Registered Investment Advisor as an Investment Consultant. During that time, he worked under the partners of the firm doing fundamental portfolio management.
Steven Yoo, VP, Corporate Development, Tilray
Steven Yoo, CFA joined Tilray in June 2019 to manage the corporate development efforts, which includes M&A and strategic partnerships. From 2015 to 2019, Steven was a Director at Privateer Holdings, which is the parent company of Tilray and one of the first institutionally-backed private equity firms in the cannabis space. Prior to joining the cannabis industry, Steven worked for more than 10 years in the private equity and financial consulting space.
Heather Molloy, EVP Business Development, TerrAscend
Heather Molloy has 20+ years of experience in strategic management consulting, finance, structured credit solutions, capital markets sales, and debt and equity investing for the legal cannabis market. Prior to joining TerrAscend, Heather provided project management, new business development, and operational and management support to clients, including insurance companies and alternative asset management firms.
Brett Fink, SVP, Old Pal
Brett Fink is a Senior Vice President and founding team member of Old Pal. As employee #1 he helped launch the brand in California and spin up new markets in Nevada and Oregon. Prior to Old Pal, Brett led part of the accelerator at 500 Startups in Silicon Valley where he worked with hundreds of companies from 0 to 50M in value, and was an employee of consumer brands such as Snapchat and Casper through growth rounds.
David Hua, Co-Founder & CEO, Meadow
David Hua is the CEO and Co-Founder of Meadow, a software company built from the ground up for California cannabis. Meadow’s powerful all-in-one point of sale software powers retail and delivery businesses across the state.
Meadow has partnered with dispensaries and delivery services of all sizes throughout California, utilizing technology to maintain compliance with local and state regulations, scale with the Adult Use market, and create operational efficiencies that allow these businesses to thrive in a regulated industry. Hua also sits on the board of the California Cannabis Industry Association and the Cannabis Distribution Association.
Steven J. Schuman, Managing Director of Halley Venture Partners, L.P.
Halley Venture Partners, L.P. is venture investment firm Steven J. Schuman founded in 2017 that focuses on building the best cannabis-related technology companies. Mr. Schuman has 15 years of public and private equity investment experience, and spent an additional 5 years in agriculture-related manufacturing. From 2010-2016, Mr. Schuman was a Senior Analyst and Portfolio Manager for Passport Capital, LLC, a multi-billion dollar investment management firm headquartered in San Francisco. Prior to Passport, Mr. Schuman was a Senior Sell-Side Equity Analyst at Prudential Equity Group covering the agriculture and chemical industries. Mr. Schuman started his career in manufacturing at Cargill and Dow AgroSciences. He has worked for Fortune 100 corporations as well as multiple start-up companies.
Mr. Schuman received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from The Ohio State University and an MBA from The Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was a Mayfield Venture Capital Fellow.
Sheldon Owen, Founder, President and Co-CEO of Muncheez
Sheldon is a marketing technology professional and is recognized as an industry expert. Sheldon has over 20 years of experience in marketing technology, digital advertising, and social media. Prior to launching Muncheez, Sheldon was the founding CEO of Unified, a leading marketing intelligence company that tracks over $4 billion in digital advertising spend across all major social media networks. During his tenure as CEO of Unified, Sheldon successful raised over $65 million in funding, grew revenues from zero to $30 million within 48 months, built the company to over 150 employees, and built strategic partnerships with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snap, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
Prior to starting both Muncheez and Unified, Sheldon held multiple executive positions including GM of Traffic Marketplace, the 5th largest digital advertising network in the industry, which sold in 2010 for over $100 million. Sheldon was also an executive for CA, Technologies (a Broadcom Company, NASDAQ: AVGO) where he led all marketing, strategy, and business development efforts for a $300 million business unit. Sheldon is an active angel investor, board member, and start-up advisor for technology-related businesses.
Viken Douzdjian, General Partner & Co-Founder for Argonautic Ventures SPC
Viken is COO of Trellis, a compliance software company, and investor at Argonautic Ventures, an early-stage investment fund. At Trellis, Viken implements processes and builds a team to scale a compliance software company in the rapidly growing cannabis industry. Trellis’ clients include operators in California, Canada and other global cannabis markets. Prior to Trellis, Viken was an investment professional at Marlin Equity Partners, a technology-focused private equity firm. Viken evaluated platform and add-on investment opportunities and worked closely with management teams to ensure growth and value initiatives are being implemented effectively. While at Marlin, Viken specialized in restructurings and complex corporate carve-outs of technology and technology-enabled services companies. He assisted with Marlin's public equity presence with investments in publicly traded technology companies, such as Tangoe Inc.’s take-private. Prior to Marlin, Viken worked in the M&A technology group at Wells Fargo's Investment Bank in San Francisco where he focused on software, hardware, internet and semiconductor verticals. He specialized in Mergers and Acquisitions, Debt Financings, and Strategic Advisory. Viken earned a Bachelor of Arts in Financial Economics from Claremont McKenna College, where he graduated with honors and as a Bill Gates Investments Fellow. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Claremont McKenna College's Financial Economics Institute.
Lincoln Johnson, Founder & CEO, Encann Solutions Inc
Lincoln is a co-founder and current CEO of EnCann Solutions Inc., a Standard Processor applicant based in engineering and pharmaceutical principles with a focus on extractions and white-label services. A trained mechanical engineer, lean six sigma green belt, and graduate of the University of British Columbia, his extensive previous experience includes being the founder of a technology start-up in the industrial analytics space, consulting engineering, and sales.
An enthusiast of extractions and the science of it, Lincoln has been making personal extractions since the early 2000s. The emergence of the proposed Bill C-45 sparked his entrepreneurial spirit once more and so, what started out as a passion project to join the burgeoning cannabis industry has quickly developed into a living breathing entity now known as EnCann Solutions Inc.
A forward-thinker as well as a statistics and data geek, Lincoln has always been driven towards optimization of processes and all that entails. This has led to him devising a patent-pending, proprietary extraction system to bring cannabis extraction into the modern day by breaking the prosumer to industrial scale barrier. An undeniable advantage heading into the “next stage” of Canada’s legal market, cannabis concentrates.
Codie Sanchez, Managing Partner, Cresco Capital Partners
Codie Sanchez is a Managing Partner at Cresco Capital Partners, a private equity fund in the legalized cannabis space. She previously lead First Trust's Latin America Investment business and held positions at Goldman Sachs, State Street, and Vanguard. She started her career as a journalist where she won the JFK award and the Howard Buffett Foundation grant for covering human trafficking. Sanchez is a pundit and columnist on investing, cannabis and startups, highlighted on The Today Show, Forbes, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, People en Español, Business Wire, etc. She has an M.B.A. from Georgetown University, a master’s from ESADE and Fundação Getúlio Vargas, and a B.A. from Arizona State University. She sits on the board of Magma Partners a venture fund in Chile, Hispanic Executive publication and is actively involved in AEI.
Paul Holman, Chief Operating Officer, The Grow Standard Co.
Paul Holman has 20+ years of managing high tech businesses in the semiconductor, disk drive, mobile phone and medical device spaces. Expertise in lean operations, regulatory compliance, finance, sales & marketing, HR and M&A. He has helped guide multiple businesses from start-up through public offerings, acquisitions and consolidations. Most recently he led the due diligence of an acquisition by Philips Healthcare of Electrical Geodesics where he had been General Manager since 2005. Paul holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from Kent State University with additional executive level education from Harvard Business School and MIT’s Sloan’s School of Management.
Patrick Barry, Director and Chief Investment Officer, Granite Hall Partners
Pat Barry is Director and Chief Investment Officer of Granite Hall Partners. As Chief Investment Officer, Mr. Barry oversees fund construction, the firm’s investment processes and underlying manager due diligence. He is a member of the Investment Committee.
Prior to joining GHP, Mr. Barry led the efforts of Frontier Partners as it expanded into private equity by assisting domestic and European private equity firms in raising institutional assets domestically and abroad. Prior to Frontier Partners, Mr. Barry spent eight years with JP Morgan Asset Management and its heritage organizations focused upon alternative asset programs, including construction of customized products for Institutional and Sovereign Wealth Fund clients in the Middle East and Europe.
Mr. Barry earned a B.S. in Business Administration from Georgetown University in 1996.
Nathan Yagoda, VP of Strategy & Growth, Plus Products
Larry Lisser, SVP of Business Development, HelloMD
A seasoned entrepreneur and specialist at helping new-gen companies get to market and in building partner networks that leverage industry ecosystems for growth. Larry combines 25 years of road-tested strengths in strategy development, offer packaging and sales channel creation in helping next-generation companies get to market, succeed and exit.
Tom Zuber, Managing Partner of Zuber Lawler
Tom Zuber has advised some of the most iconic companies in the world on their patent and trademark portfolios. He is at the cutting edge of cannabis patent and trademark law. Tom holds a law degree from Columbia Law School, a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard Government School, and a biomedical engineering degree from Rutgers University, where he graduated with highest honors.
Origin Scientific is a cannabis company which is leveraging its clinically proven patented technology to improve shelf stability and speed of uptake in edible products. Origin holds a Type 6 Manufacturing License in California and intends to launch its first branded products in July.
There is limited seating for this event.
Please contact manager@thecannabissociety.org for any questions or inquires surrounding registration.
1:00 PMRegistration1:45 PMOpening remarks by The Cannabis Society2:00 PMOpening remarks by sponsors2:30 PM - 3:00 PMPresentations3:00 PM - 6:00 PM1X1 Meetings6:00 PM - 7:00 PMKeynotes & Panel Discussions7:00 PM - 9:00 PMDinner & Cocktail Party
*Tentative schedule, subject to change.
A Conference Program will be released within three to five days before the conference.
Conference Programs include:
- Bios on Expert Panel.
- Presenter information and ask.
- Audience (name, job title, company).
- Agenda.
*Conference Programs are shared internally to the conference participants, and are not distributed or advertised publicly.
*** PRE-CONFERENCE MEETING SCHEDULING***
One-on-one meeting scheduling will be available at the Conference.
You will be able to schedule 15 or 30 minute meeting blocks, and meetings can be scheduled three to five days before the Conference or day of within the deal lounge.
Booths (tables and chairs) will be allocated for meetings.
If you are an established national or international company, and are looking to learn more about the cannabis space, please reach out to manager@thecannabissociety.org for more information.
***
More information about the Cannabis Society here.
Bronze Sponsor
Community Sponsor