Steve Albarran, CEO & Co-Founder of Confident Cannabis
Before co-founding Confident Cannabis, Steve developed his career in New York with experience in startups, the finance industry and growth capital investing. He founded Left Lane Capital to invest in, incubate and co-found branded consumer-facing businesses. His investments include Health Warrior, one of the fastest growing superfood snack companies in the US. Steve then moved to California to study at Stanford Graduate School of Business where he met his co-founding team. Driven by the opportunity to create a vibrant industry where every ethical cannabis business thrives, he co-founded Confident Cannabis. Steve and Tony Lewis now determine Confident Cannabis company vision and strategy, lead hiring, fundraising, and product development. Steve has a BA in Finance and a Master's in Management from Stanford GSB where he was a Sloan Fellow.
https://confidentcannabis.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-albarran-78b380b/
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Thinking Outside the Bud where we speak with entrepreneurs investors thought leaders researchers advocates and policymakers who are finding new and exciting ways for cannabis to positively impact business society and culture. And now, here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
[00:00:30] Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier. Checkout Thrive Roundtable thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community created by Inc. Award winning CEO and certified scaling up business coach Bruce Eckfeldt. Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For details on the program visit Eckfeldt.com/thrive. That's E C K F E L D T.com/thrive.
[00:01:06] Welcome, everyone. This is Thinking Outside The Bud. I’m Bruce Eckfeldt, I'm your host and our guest today is Steve Albarran and he is co-founder and CEO, a Confident Cannabis. We're going to learn a little bit more about him, his background about the cannabis company he's founded and running fascinated about this one. This is a really interesting kind of platform based company, looking at really the business, the business side of things.
[00:01:28] So fascinating as this industry grows kind of the new segments, the new industries, new businesses that we need to make it work, to make it fluid, to make it highly effective. And this is one of those. So I'm touristic to kick out a little bit about what's going on behind the scenes. How do we make this market more fluid and more available with that? Steve, welcome to the program. Thanks. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:47] So why don't we start with a little bit of background, sort of what's your pre cannabis story? What were you doing? What kind of what was the professional focus prior to get involved in cannabis? And then tell us how you got involved in the industry and then we'll talk a little bit about coffee, cannabis and what what problem you're trying to solve and what you're finding that's working what's what's not working, the trials and tribulations. But let's start with the background. Tell us about you.
[00:02:13] Yeah. Yeah. So I guess I'll start from the beginning. I was born in the US, grew up in Mexico City and moved to the U.S. for college. I went to school in Boston and worked in New York City and had a career in finance for eight years. I did a number of things. I did M&A, investment banking, I did growth, equity investing and different startups, won an internet and marketing services.
[00:02:37] And in 2014, I moved to California. I went to grad school. And when Stanford got a business degree. That's where I met my co-founders. And then we started getting cannabis out of out of the school library. And it's been company cannabis ever since, you know, and what I guess why?
[00:02:52] Like, what was the. Was it just a fascinating business opportunity? Was there a connection prior? Most.
[00:02:59] I generally find that zoids interesting story about how either with a Y or how people got involved in cannabis. What was the connection? How did it start?
[00:03:07] Yeah. Yeah. So first of all, I've always been a fan of cannabis. I'm a light recreational user, I guess you could say. And I have been since pretty much high school. And I always believed that it should be legal. It would be a good thing for the world. Likewise, for lots of reasons. But as I mentioned, I grew up in Mexico. And, you know, like in the US, people are told, you know, drugs are bad. I don't do drugs. They're bad for you. And all these things. And so it kind of had that sort of brainwashing from from the war on drugs. However, in Mexico, there's an additional layer, which is that it's not just bad for you, it's bad for the world. Right. So because a lot of the problems that Mexico has as a country can be traced back to the narcos in the drug Danica's. Right. The criminal cartels. And, you know, they create a lot of poverty, a lot of political unrest and things like that, which is continuously bringing the country down. So, you know, working in the US and seeing what was happening in 2012, 2014 in Colorado and Washington, I said, well, this is this is really a big deal.
[00:04:03] I think it'll happen. At the time, nobody really thought it would go as mainstream as it has quickly as. But that really interested me. And the more I kind of learned about it, the more I realized, you know, from an economic perspective, social justice, health, in all of these reasons, you know, legalization in the U.S. is a good thing. But also, I really got excited about the idea of taking money away from bad guys with guns that ethical licensed entrepreneurs in the United States or wherever they may be. So that was kind of the tipping point for me in 2014. Like I said, I was at grad school, so I had, you know, a year vacation to think into training things and look above the grass for a little while. And I realized I didn't really want to be an investor anymore. I had a good career, went well, but I wasn't really excited every day. I was much more interested in being an operator. Both my parents and my grandparents, all four grandparents are entrepreneurs.
[00:04:55] And maybe there's something to that. It's a blood. Yeah, I guess.
[00:04:59] And so I always said to myself, if I could focus on one thing, I think I could do that I'm a lot better than kind of, you know, spreading chips around a table. Yeah, I guess so. So that was kind of the beginning. Those two those two events converging. Right. Thinking, you know, more Long-Term about my career, what I want to do and being a founder of a company in general and then looking at cannabis and how that was progressing and and really finding that personal motivation for ever getting involved in the industry. And so kind of going into what we do and the Genesis story there. So my co-founders. I rather than come up with an idea and go and see if it works, which is what I think a lot of startups do. We we we chose not to do that and we said let's spend a bunch of time finding a problem that we think we can solve. If we could solve that problem, a business will come out of it. And so that that's that's useful context for understanding our business model, because it's a little bit indirect and a lot of people kind of scratch their heads to hear how it all works. So what we did was just interview a bunch of operators. So we went to Colorado and Washington and all over the medical states and asked retailers and growers and manufacturers and everybody in the in the supply chain what's hard for them. We said, you know, when was the last time there a problem that you wish you could solve that that you couldn't? And so we kind of gathered a lot of this feedback and and we tried to spot trends in some of these problems.
[00:06:13] And over and over and over, we heard variations of the problem that trading business to business is too hard. And so clearly people don't phrase it that way. But retailers would say, for instance, you know, it's really hard for me to assess product quality and get the right brands off of my shelf. It's hard for me to coordinate with my vendors. They're flaky. They don't show up on time. It's the metric reporting and the whole supply chain and transfers and cash payments. All of that is really hard. So that's those are the things that retailers would say which are, you know, doing business with counterparties B to be right. You know, growers would say, you know, how do I know what strains are going to sell? What should I plant? Now, how do I get my my brand name out there? I need more distribution. How do I stand out from the crowd and differentiate? Those are all similar, you know, related problems. And it goes across the board. So we said, OK, well, that's a really big unsolved problem. And it's a kind of problem that grows as the industry grows. And it's the kind of problem that every cannabis operator faces. And by the way, it's mostly unsolved. So somebody's going to solve it.
[00:07:11] So let's let us go to it.
[00:07:15] I mean, honestly, it sounds like a very kind of well executed Stephen Blank, customer development.
[00:07:21] You know, go out into the world and discover the problems, analyze the problems, figure out what potential solutions are. Validate those, you know, with real world examples. I mean, I you you were inspired by, you know, kind of lean startup and recent blank.
[00:07:33] And those folks are the kind of serendipitous.
[00:07:35] Yeah. So we started this company, I guess it out of Stanford Business School.
[00:07:39] And Steve Blake teaches a class that we didn't have that lean startup class.
[00:07:44] We took another class that, you know, the whole the whole lean startup philosophy permeates our business.
[00:07:49] Yeah. So, yeah, we definitely drank the Kool-Aid on Lean Startup and, you know, design thinking and user focused design. So you had a problem finding empathizing with customers first and then going and solving a problem around that. That's really how he started. And I'd like to think that we we employ a lot of that in our in our company's culture today, which I think has been, you know, part of the reason we've been successful.
[00:08:10] Yeah. Well, what's interesting. I mean, I see this a lot in tech and some of these kind of mature or, you know, more kind of established startup be kind of industry is or where there's a very established, healthy, rigorous startup culture.
[00:08:22] And I think in cannabis were just starting that to somebody. People is kind of getting into cannabis kind of sideways or, you know, because they they love the plant or they you know, they're passionate growers and things like that. They're not sort of fundamentally business innovators, you know, startup innovators. So it's exciting to see you guys approaching it, sort of taking the best of this startup culture and applying it to this burgeoning cannabis industry.
[00:08:44] Well, I was just gonna ask, like, what have you given that you had a background or that you've had some experience in non cannabis industry is doing this or or working with folks that are in kind of the innovation sort of space in other industries?
[00:08:55] What was different? I guess what kind of things did you run into that were just uniquely cannabis or that Canada's pose this kind of challenges or that you had to rethink their approach that otherwise and other industries you would do it one way. But the fact that were dealing cannabis, you had to change.
[00:09:07] Yeah. Yeah. I think I think one thing that's that's really unique about cannabis is that it's I to be cliche about this, but it's a new industry that requires new solutions. And so I used to be in the consumer products world and in consumer. There's a certain way to do things. There's certain ways you think about packaging, design and advertising and distribution and you know how to get how to get that promotion done at stores. So all of that is is very much entrenched in these traditional industries because that's the way it's always been. And to try to disrupt that is very challenging. And those solutions in those other industries might not be optimal. They're just kind of the well-laid evolve. Right. Same thing with alcohol, pharma, tobacco, agriculture, any any of these industries that people like to draw analogies to cannabis. Right. So people often say, you know, is cannabis going to look like agriculture or is it going to look like farmers and look like alcohol? So I always tell people it's not going to look like any of those. It's going to have elements of them, but it's going to be as distinct from each of those other industries as those industries are distinct from each other.
[00:10:06] And it is a new thing. We can't wrap your head around and give it its own kind of standing as a unique industry that has its own unique solution. So on the one hand, the industry needs new solutions and we do need to reinvent the wheel with respect to solutions and strategy, business strategy. But what we don't need to do is reinvent the wheel on tactics. So, yes, we need a new startup here and there. Yes, we need to do that, but we don't. I need to say, well, what's the best way to start a startup there? There's lean startup methodologies and other great methodologies that work really well. So let's just use that. How do we get distribution? Well, yeah, we need new forms of distribution and getting in front of retailers. But, you know, things like buy one, get one free or, you know, trade collateral, that stuff works. Right? We can't use social media advertising very well. But consumers think similarly. So let's think about how to tap into their psyche and position our brand that way. So on the one hand, we do need to reinvent, but on the other hand, we can just use best practices that have been refined in other industries.
[00:11:03] As you're saying, I've run to this on the coaching side all the time, whereas yes, cannabis is uniquely different and very dynamic market relative to tack, relative to real estate, relative to professional services, you know. But the fact is we could still use a lot of the same growth frameworks and leadership models and tools that we can borrow from our organizational development and growth coaching perspective from other businesses. We have to apply them in in sort of different ways. And we have to we have to adjust them to fit with the challenges and the dynamics of cannabis. But, you know, we can leverage all those things.
[00:11:34] And if we don't leverage them, you know that that's unfortunate. Right. You're not taking advantage of that stuff. So I think it's smart. You're kind of bringing in these these, you know, tested best practices and models and approaches and then, you know, figuring out how to how to deal with these cannabis situations. Right. So talk to us about the business model. And you say you spend a lot of time working or going to the industry, doing the customer development and finding the problems, figuring out potential solutions.
[00:11:57] Where did you land in terms of what problem are you primarily focused on and what is the nature of the solution that you've been developing and why does it work?
[00:12:05] Yeah, yeah. So when we when we saw that, the biggest problem was that B2B commerce is too hard. We kind of deconstructed that. And we said, well, why? What makes it hard? And we realized that fundamentally it's a data problem and a software automation problem.
[00:12:19] So it's a data problem because there's very low transparency into what's being made, who makes it and what it's made of. If the industry knew what's out there and they could assess product quality immediately and vendor quality, then buyers can make informed purchasing decisions. And, you know, vendors can differentiate and stand out from the crowd because they can highlight their unique value props. It's all software automation problem because logistics are just challenging. Right. There's a lot of compliance. There's metric. You know, all these different systems that they need to work with. There's no infrastructure, really. A lot of cash payments still happen. So the transaction workflow is is very cumbersome. And that's the kind of thing that's offers really good at automating. So if you can automate, you know, bits and pieces of that workflow, you can save a lot of time. So we said, OK, well, how do we get the data about what's being made, who makes it and what it's made of? And by the way, we need to get that in real time and nationwide. Otherwise, it's not really going to be enough. So we thought that everything that gets sold from one party to the other for the most part in most places has to be tested by a third party lab. And so these labs are are naturally aggregating the supply side information. They put out these certificate of analysis reports.
[00:13:28] And on that piece of paper, there's the growers name, their license number, the contact information, the inventory strain name, batch size. And then finally, this new layer of information, which is the lab results, which informs the quality and therefore the price. And so these labs are already doing this and they have to do it all the time for everything that comes to market. So we looked at the labs and we saw that they're very underserved. There there aren't many labs out there and nobody is building software for them. So we said, well, if we can build software for the labs, you know, we can make their lives easier and, you know, give them a piece of software that they really, really need and make them happy. But in so doing, all of their clients can then create accounts with us and they can order lab results and see their results and do things that are much more dynamic as opposed to just getting e-mail to a bunch of p.d.'s. And so that was step one. So we built lab software. We shipped it to as many lives as we could across the country for the first three years for free, basically. And we got to about 50 percent market share nationwide. So today, a little over half of the legal cannabis produced in the US is going through our platform in states that regulate testing.
[00:14:32] And that was sort of step one, acquire the supply side with this free or achieved lab software. And in step two is could a buy button on it. So all of that inventory that is being produced in a particular market should then be able to be sold and transacted and buyers should be able to order or that inventory. So a year ago we launched our hosting marketplace in Oregon, which, you know, when we launched, we had eighty five percent of the supply in the state. Today we have about ninety five percent of the supply in the state. So a retailer in Oregon can go in and see all that inventory from all their vendors that they're currently working with, some new ones that they don't know yet. And, you know, fine like kind of AutoTrader style where you could say, show me all the blue dream, over 20 percent THC under this price range and then boom, click to send an order or request that the sellers can then get those orders. And then we integrate with metrick and begins when we streamline the workflow. We're launching our our wholesale marketplace now in California. And that's our second state. So bit by bit, we'll be rolling out our wholesale marketplace across the other 30 or so markets where we operate.
[00:15:34] And how do you make money and what's your in terms of how do you generate revenues, whereas your financial model inside that sort of transaction model that you've set up?
[00:15:42] Yeah, yeah. So it's it's very levered to the orders being accepted by the seller. So when a seller accepts an order from a buyer, they then pays a fee for that order. We have other forms of monetization featured listings to premium features that they can do with. The majority of it is based on sellers accepting orders from buyers.
[00:16:01] And didn't see you mentioned you sort it out. You it sounds like the first was becoming kind of a platform of choice or the dominant blah from the market. How? I mean what were the financial models at that point? Was this kind of classic start up? We need to invest in the business to get that market penetration before you can generate revenues or what was the financing like in the early stages?
[00:16:21] Yeah. Yeah. So very transparently with our investors and frankly encouraged by investors was too. No, don't worry about monetization. You know, build your life software. Give it to as many people as you can. We understand the strategy, you know, develop your mode. And so, yeah, we were, you know, classic QVC subsidized growth for the first three years, three and half years, really. And then, you know, last year we announced our series. So we put in a bit more money, which at that point the the pitch was more, okay, now it's time to monetize. And so that's when we built our marketplace. That's, you know, higher sales team, you know, do all of that. So you do have a number of mean.
[00:16:56] Did you know that you need to get to a certain percent of the market or a certain adoption rate, you know, to get as I. How did you model that or what were your breakpoints?
[00:17:06] So our our goal is about 50 percent of the market. So we achieved 50 percent. But that that's really kind of more of a vanity metric, because all we really need is over 50 percent in the market where we want to launch our marketplace.
[00:17:21] So, yes, it is, because I mean, all this you know, I mean, most people at this on the podcast have a general understanding of those. But let's talk about a detail. You know that all these markets are a state by state because of federal law restrictions of being able to cross state lines. How do you do you see this as, you know, a dozen or so individual markets that you're participating in or how much do you look at this as one national or North American or global market?
[00:17:46] And how much do you see this as a bunch of fragmented, interconnected markets?
[00:17:49] So right now, it is very much a fragmented state by state market. And our aspirations, like many in the industry, is at some point federal legalization changes and interstate commerce will be allowed, in which case it will be a North American or global market, presumably. But for now, it is very much state by state.
[00:18:06] So our market share in Oregon doesn't help or hurt our market share in California in any way, or Nevada or Michigan or you name it. So on the one hand, it's a good thing because that means we can go into a market and learn and iterate and, you know, maybe make some mistakes and then learn from those mistakes and take those learnings to a new market without really kind of betting the farm. So that's why we launched in Oregon first. It's a great market, has a lot of favorable characteristics. We is actually our first market when we launch even with our lab software. So we have a lot of friends in that state. And it was kind of a nice place to to try this new market, new product, that wholesome marketplace. And we've learned a lot. And so now we feel ready for California and as other states across the country grow. So, Francis, Massachusetts is still a little early. Michigan's still a little early. You know, we need we need markets that are very liquid with lots of operators, lots of supply. And some of these markets a little bit more constrained so far. But at some point, those markets will become attracted to us and we'll we'll going with our marketplace.
[00:19:06] And what makes them too early and constrained? I mean, what are you looking at? Like no number of growers, number of dispensaries. What are the things that start making it more attractive for you in terms of the nature of the market dynamics? Metrics, yeah.
[00:19:19] Yeah. So in general, we do well when when there are many players in the market. So when I say many that it's, you know, at least hundred grower manufacturers, at least 100 retailers, and perhaps more importantly, it's also the supply and demand is roughly balance. You don't have a perfectly balanced. We don't have to wait till maturity. But if there's a spring in Michigan right now and for the last year or so, there's been extreme supply shortage. So, you know, they just look like a belt used and there just aren't enough stores in the stores that are up have empty shelves and license operators are having a hard time making enough.
[00:19:52] So when a grower manufacturer sells out before they even make the thing, they don't need a marketplace
[00:19:58] So it's not their problem. Right.
[00:20:00] We need to wait for that supply to catch up. And then that'll be attractive in Massachusetts, for instance. I think that there are many players. And so it's fairly constrained. I think maybe there's 50 companies or so, a lot of them vertical. So we need to wait for it for those markets to fragment a little bit more and and balance out.
[00:20:18] And I'm curious in terms of how you see the federal legalization kind of potentially playing out. I mean, there's a couple different ways that it could. How? Do you see? Do you anticipate, as does your strategic plan? I guess, you know, how have edits, you know, potential options or outcomes that you're planning against. You know, in terms of how individual states respond to this. I mean, I'm always working with companies and looking at the different possibilities of how we get federal legalization. But, you know, states have invested a lot in their local cannabis markets. You know, are they going to fully go to an open national market or state's going to put up protectionist walls, or are they going to start potentially invoking state control to actually limit the fluidity of the market across the country and across, you know, outside the country?
[00:21:02] What's your guess? What's your take or what's your prediction on how that might play out?
[00:21:06] Yeah. So let me say, whatever I say is most likely going to be wrong.
[00:21:10] Had you heard it here? I heard it here, ladies and gentlemen.
[00:21:14] But my hunch, I think this is true. But also, I think this is what what I want to be choosing. I'm sort of biased, so I don't think rescheduling will happen. I think rescheduling to schedule two or three would be the worst outcome, in my opinion. I think could be even worse than than keeping status quo, that we'll just make cannabis a farm product and pharma will will overtake it. And then we'll have this conflict between the existing businesses and pharma. And I don't really know what that future looks like.
[00:21:41] It gets very messy and it doesn't allow the entrepreneurship than kind of innovation that I think the industry needs and and benefits from. But it also doesn't make our business model work. So hopefully that doesn't happen. So so so rescheduling is off the table. D Scheduling, I think is the most likely. I think taking it off the Controlled Substances Act list. What would be the best outcome? But then there will probably be something else that regulates things like interstate commerce and banking. I don't think it'll just be the same as selling herbal supplements, for instance. I think there'll be some new thing. And but I do think that the federal legalization will be light-touch.
[00:22:16] And so then the question will really be, is it a states rights issue or not? So I think that's where it will go. I think states will be allowed to regulate, you know, similar to gaming, for instance, where there's maybe some degree of anti-money laundering and oversight and thinking oversight and things like that. States can regulate it on a case-by-case basis. That's where I think will go. And when that happens, that's great, because then all of a sudden, you know, Massachusetts can buy cannabis from California. And so on. And we're we're very well positioned for that for that world.
[00:22:46] Makes sense. I'm curious in terms of your kind of entrepreneurial journey as you've gone from, you know, kind of early problem-solver, you know, finding the entrance to the market problem, solution set, getting it up and running to, you know, raising money, you know, multiple rounds to building a team, to developing a business operations around things where some of your challenges been around that and from your own kind of development and leadership journey.
[00:23:11] Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, like most cannabis companies, raising money is harder. On the one hand, it's you know, something's about to make it hard. Right. The universe of investors is small. We haven't been able to take money from Sandhill Road kind of this season. And for the most part, they haven't invested in cannabis businesses, even ancillary like us.
[00:23:30] But on the other hand, it's helpful because those who are interested in the industry are very motivated and there are a few companies for them to invest in. And so it's easy to get their attention and you waste less time pitching people who are just kicking the tires for the most part. So but, you know, we've been successful. You know, we raised three rounds. And each time, you know, we were oversubscribed and we were met.
[00:23:53] We were fortunate to be able to close it quickly. So we got lucky. But I don't think that that's always going to be the case, especially right now. The current environment is really not very good. We're not fundraising right now, but at time of recording in January. Twenty, twenty. This is not a funding environment. Hopefully it changes. And so that's that's a challenge.
[00:24:11] I think one thing that we've been careful of and I think we've done well with but has been something we've had to maybe work a little bit harder than other traditional startups is is finding the right people, you know. So, you know, we have we have a fantastic team right now and we haven't made certain hiring mistakes. And we found that there is a higher we get a good handful of people like, oh, I'm going to go work on this, you know, cannabis start up and just kind of bum out.
[00:24:36] It's going to be super chill and I'm going to smoke and work.
[00:24:40] And and we're not that where we're at cannabis tech company, whether we're a kind of company first or a tech company first isn't really the question.
[00:24:47] But we are high-growth, professional, hardworking, smart people helping big, important problems.
[00:24:53] And we want people who are excited about that. And yet we also love the plan. We also love the industry, want to help operators thrive. But it's not sort of a relaxed kind of let's go pet the dog on a beanbag kind of place so that we do get a lot of those people. I think maybe other stars probably get fewer of those kind of applicants. So just making sure that we're really intentional about culture, that's been a big deal while also being true to cannabis and what it represents. Yeah, those are some of the few things that I think off the top of my head.
[00:25:19] Yeah. Let's talk about the Taliban because I think that's that's something I see again and again, in part because, you know, this industry is growing so quickly. There's and there's so. It's not a established industry in the sense that we've got a deep talent pool. You know, I see a lot of companies pulling talent from other adjacent industries, whether it's agriculture or pharmaceutical or technology that they're trying to trying to bring people in the industry. I guess to what extent have you been able to do that? Is there anything that has been kind of indicators on who successfully can make the transition and make the jump into cannabis and who don't and why? As any insights in terms of finding talent, pulling people in and what makes it work and what doesn't make it work.
[00:25:59] Yeah. Yes. So I can speak to our company. So we we found the best success in hiring people from the tech world who are passionate about cannabis for some reason. Most people here have some personal story. Not everybody is a consumer, by the way. So a lot of people work here. We don't consume cannabis and that's fine. Maybe 50 50.
[00:26:21] But the people who don't usually have some sort of reason, whether that's a family member who benefited from it or some other story. But usually they're from the tech industry. And the reason is fundamentally that's that's what we're doing. So this sales process, the engineering tech stack, is all pretty similar to other tech companies. So we want to find people who have that knowledge to, you know, to start.
[00:26:43] Yeah. Is there any anything that you've seen sort of indicators or people that don't make the switch as much or as is your. But it sounds like at some level what you do is sort of abstracted it now from, you know, actually touching the plant that you don't have as much kind of cultural kind of, you know, not conflict, but, you know, cultural integration issues, as I've seen kind of more of the plant touching folks. What's your what's your take?
[00:27:05] Yeah, well, it depends on the role. So, you know, an engineer doesn't talk to customers and it doesn't they need to understand that culture of the industry as well as, you know, our salespeople, for instance, are marketing. So are our sales.
[00:27:19] And marketing people are mostly from the cannabis industry. They were either salespeople at other cannabis companies or Brad Bogus or V.P. of Marketing was the general manager at the cannabis publication. And we had people from packs of people from different dispensaries and testing labs. And so our sales and marketing people are from the industry. But ah, but you know, maybe they came from outside the industry or they want to come into the cannabis industry. So they're kind of like these hustler, kind of hardworking people who are definitely looking to grow their career. So, yeah, it's a bit of a mix. I don't think that we are tone deaf for the industry.
[00:27:55] I mean, I hope that our customers tell us that they love it. I often so. We're doing all right. Yeah.
[00:28:01] And in terms of, you know, big things coming down the pike or any kind of anything is that you're kind of prioritized or, you know, you're gonna be tackling in the coming quarters what's on the strategic roadmap for you.
[00:28:11] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the big thing is launching our wholesale marketplace in California. It's a biggest state. It's our home state. We've got thousands of clients already. And just making sure that we execute on that well and drive lots of sales to our vendors. That's that's our most important job for 2020 rather than kind of spread ourselves too thin and go launch our marketplace in several different markets simultaneously.
[00:28:33] We'd rather go deep and narrow and get it really right in a few markets and really get that flywheel going. And, you know, if we find that it approaches autopilot, we can move resources to other states and we'll do that. But because it is a marketplace, we do have network effects and we do have, you know, chicken and egg problems that we need to solve. And so in the early days, it's really, really hands on getting it going. And we don't want to mess it up.
[00:28:54] Yeah, I love that flywheel concept. I use that word with my clients. And I'm assuming you've read the monograph by Joan Collins, but it's one of those real insightful thing of understanding how a business works and what you could do to really accelerate the growth. But, you know, it's a great a great tool that people haven't read it. Definitely. Check out the monograph. Steve, that's been a great conversation. Really insightful. I love talking with people that actually, you know, coming out of the tax base and know all the kind of lead startup customer development stuff and applying it to cannabis. So kudos for doing that. Thank you so much for taking the time. If people want to find out more about you, about the business, what's the best way to get that information?
[00:29:28] Yeah. Yeah. So our website is company cannabis dot com on there you can learn about our products and our job openings where we're always looking for great people. So if you're listening or know people, please have him apply. We're hiring engineering, sales, product marketing across the board. And if you want to hit me up, LinkedIn is the best way to do that. I check it pretty regularly. So just find me. Steve Albarran on LinkedIn.
[00:29:50] Great. I will make sure that those links are in the show notes so people can click through. And that's not against Steve. Thank you for taking the time. Great conversation. Look forward. Just keeping in touch and hearing how California plays out, how the business develops.
[00:30:01] Thanks so much, Bruce. Appreciate it.
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