Cannabis Capital Summit - Panel Discussions

Panel #2 - Colorado Cannabis 2.0

#2 – Colorado Cannabis 2.0

The first year of legal Cannabis in Colorado was a whirlwind. RVC held its first Cannabis Capital Summit last year and cleared the smoke on some of the risks and opportunities in this budding industry. This year we look at Cannabis 2.0 – the new landscape, the rapidly changing cannabis business environment, and how companies are branding and marketing themselves for national roll-out. Baked into that discussion is banking / regulatory changes, as well as what’s down the road.

Is Colorado the petri dish? Additionally, grow operations are having new challenges with profitability – many have gone from cash cows to cash constrained. What will happen to the wholesale price of cannabis as industrial grow operations continue to grow? What is the state of the industry in year 2? What will Colorado 3.0 look like? How can cannabis companies position themselves to scale nationally?

Moderator: Eric White, VP of Business Development at Rally4

Eric has 15+ years experience in capital markets, business development, marketing, and operations, specializing in the creation and execution of go-to-market, sales, and growth strategies for early stage companies. He is the founder and principal of Whitehaus Consulting, working with seed stage companies; VP of Business Development for Denver based start-up Rally4, a crowd-funding and messaging platform that optimizes individual and organizational fundraising; and Boulder Director for RVC. Prior to moving to Colorado in 2012, Eric was VP and Partner at a Chicago based brokerage firm where he directed operations and sales to top tier global investment banks and Wall St. trading houses. He holds a BS in Marketing from Miami University in Oxford, OH.

Christian Sederberg, Partner & Founding Member at Vicente Sederberg LLC

Christian Sederberg, Esq.,is a partner and founding member of Vicente Sederberg LLC. After graduating from the University of Colorado School of Law, Christian focused his practice on representing businesses with a primary focus on real estate, private equity, commercial, and corporate transactions. Since the inception of Colorado’s state regulated medical marijuana program, Christian and the firm have provided a wide range of real estate, transactional and regulatory assistance to the marijuana community. Christian was also an integral part of Colorado’s Amendment 64 campaign, acting as core volunteer for the campaign, representing the campaign on Governor Hickenlooper’s Amendment 64 Implementation Task Force, and leading the campaign’s legislative implementation team in the Colorado legislature by coordinating the implementation of the Colorado legislative and regulatory structure related to adult-use marijuana. Christian sat on the executive committee of the Committee for Responsible Regulation, which coordinated the campaign to establish statewide excise and sales taxes on the sale of adult-use marijuana in Colorado.

Corey Hollister, CEO American Cannabis Company

Mr. Hollister brings 15 years of corporate sales, marketing and management experience to American Cannabis Consulting. He was also a co-owner of a Boulder, CO based Medical Marijuana Center. Serving as head of operations Mr. Hollister doubled sales in his first quarter. Prior to moving to Colorado, Mr. Hollister lived in Boston, MA where he spent 10 years managing advertising projects for major brands such as Puma, DHL, Stride Rite, Thompson Learning and many others. During this period Mr. Hollister held such roles as President, VP of Client Services, Senior Account Manager, Director of Events and Field Marketing Manager. Throughout his career Mr. Hollister has combined the ability to understand a clients challenges with the know-how to develop and implement successful solutions.

Ken Greer, Co-Founder & Managing Director at Green Sage MB, LLC

Ken has 10+ yrs of experience in investment banking, corporate finance, business development, and operations. He is a Co-Founder and Managing Director of Green Sage MB, LLC, an investment firm focused on capitalizing the real estate and asset infrastructure of the Cannabis Industry. Prior to founding Green Sage, Ken co-founded Blue Sage Advisory, LLC, a Colorado-based financial advisory firm providing Private Placement, Mergers and Acquisitions, and Financial Advisory services for emerging Impact Enterprises in the Healthy, Active & Sustainable Living Industry nationally. Previously, Ken spent six years in investment banking with Wachovia as a Debt Capital Markets Analyst in Charlotte and Associate in London, where he managed transaction efforts to structure and execute deals for consumer retail, TMT, and international corporate clients. Ken received a MBA from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, and graduated Summa Cum Laude from Cornell University with a BA in Sociology.

Cheryl Shuman, CEO & Founder of Cheryl Shuman Inc.

Cheryl established Cheryl Shuman Inc. in 1984, a public relations, media, product branding, event production and business development firm focusing on merging mainstream with the cannabis industry. In 2006, Cheryl was diagnosed with cancer. After years of following failed allopathic medicine treatments, she opted for medical cannabis in the form of raw juice and oils as an alternative. Her success using medical cannabis led her to found the Beverly Hills Ca
nabis Club. Today, Cheryl is the most visible and recognizable entrepreneur in the marijuana reform movement, recently receiving the 2013 Activist of the Year Award at Seattle Hempfest.Cheryl has reached over 100 million viewers worldwide while appearing on suchmainstream shows as CNN’s Piers Morgan Live, The Katie Couric Show, The View, ABC’s 20/20, Good Morning America, Fox Business News and many other media outlets. She was recently featured on the cover of Adweek as Pot’s First Marketer as the first company to establish a luxury “Starbucks of Pot” Brand, in Elle Magazine as The Most Potent Women in the Pot Industry, named The Cannabis Queen of Beverly Hills by The New York Times Sunday Magazine as well as gracing the cover of The London TimesMagazine as The Cannabis Queen of Beverly Hills. Shuman has also teamed up to launch a luxury cannabis conference series with OSL Holdings, a publicly traded marijuana services company (OSLH), to focus on the affluent cannabis market and high-dollar investment vehicles for the rapidly growing space. Cheryl Shuman is represented for TV, film, book and lecturing deals by the prestigious William Morris Endeavor Agency in Beverly Hills. For more information, please visit CherylShuman.com.