After witnessing firsthand, the innovation and eclecticism among cannabis startups Sherri launched CannaAngels LLC: an Angel Investor Consortium focused specifically on businesses within, and supportive of, the cannabis industry. With years of experience as an alternative investment leader she has a solid knowledge of how to vet companies, structure deals, raise capital, and establish trust. As cannabis transitions into the mainstream, her accomplished team is prepared to bring a unique blend of investment intelligence, technical savvy and steadfast integrity to this industry.
We Talk About
- What are some of the different verticals of the cannabis industry?
- What new laws or regulations are being discussed that will impact cannabis investing and the companies in the industry?
- When will we see Wall Street enter the picture?
- Where will the money be made in the industry? Where is the hidden value that investors should know about?
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Pre-Intro 00:00
You’re listening to the Silicon Valley podcast.
On today’s show, we sit down with Sherri Haskell after witnessing firsthand the innovation and eclecticism among cannabis startups. Sherri launch Canna Angels LLC. An Angel Investment Consortium focus specifically on businesses within and supportive of the cannabis industry with years of experience as an alternative investment leader. She has a solid knowledge of how-to vet companies, structured deals, raise capital and establish trust as cannabis transitioned into the mainstream. Her accomplished team is prepared to bring a unique blend of investment intelligence, technical savvy and steadfast integrity to the industry.
On today’s show, we talk about what are some of the different verticals of the cannabis industry? What new laws or regulations are being discussed that will impact cannabis investing and the companies in the industry? When will we see Wall Street enter the picture and where will the money be in the industry? Where is the hidden value that investors should know about? This is much more today’s episode. And remember, please share and like and leave a review on iTunes or other podcast platforms and encourage us to create great content like this. All right. Now let’s start the show. Enjoy.
Intro 01:19
Welcome to the Silicon Valley podcast with your host Shawn Flynn, who interviews famous entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and leaders in tech. Learn their secrets and see Tomorrow’s World Today.
Shawn Flynn (01:36)
Sherri, thank you for taking the time today beyond the Silicon Valley podcast that we are in a treat today, because, I mean, normally we talk about, you know, 5G smart homes. But today we have an interesting topic that we have not covered yet. And it’s cannabis and it’s getting bigger and bigger than I think most people realize. And on today’s show, we pretty much have the expert in the cannabis industry with us today, the founder of Canna Angels. Sherri, can you give us a little background of your career, your history up until this point?
Sherri Haskell (02:08)
Absolutely, I’d love to thank Shawn. I’ve been in the financial arena for the better part of my adult life. I started out as a stockbroker, trading stocks, commodities, and actually became an expert in tax advantaged investments/limited partnerships, which is kind of interesting because in a way, we’ve come full circle now. But I’ll get back to that later. After that, I sort of pivoted and launched my own hedge fund, which was Capital Dynamics. That was at the urging of several investor people that I knew that had known about my track record and trading. And they really, really wanted me to trade them. And as you know, I couldn’t do that legally without having my RIA license. So, then I needed to go and get that as well. Launched the hedge fund under, as we’ve discussed, what’s probably the very worst year ever in history to do that. Impeccably bad timing. So, I launched the hedge fund in the very beginning of 2008 and it was great while it was great. And then the stuff hit the wall and we actually ended up liquidating the fund in 2009. But thank goodness, with minimal damage, something that I might mention to you that was maybe one of the preceptors to launching that fund. I had developed quite a bit of expertise in technical analysis and was actually featured in a best-selling financial book called Entries and Exits that was written by Alexander Elder. And I was his featured first chapter. Not that I was the best in the book, but I was luckily positioned in the beginning of the book and it was a book about traders that have special expertise or strategies, or methods, or maybe even some had devised indicators for trading. And I was featured in that book. And so, word got out and there you have it. And it was it was me being in the right place at the right time. And so that worked out really well. After I closed the hedge fund, then I sort of pivoted and went into some investment banking activities, definitely where I was raising money for both privately held and publicly traded companies. Primarily in those days, it was for the publicly traded companies, micro to small cap companies, trading and raising capital through what we call PIPEs. That’s private investment and public equities, and at that time really tried to avoid startups. We’ll circle back on that later as well. Shortly thereafter, I was recruited to help launch a private equity fund, some technology, but we ended up going very heavily into real estate. That worked out beautifully. And I ended up doing private equity, primarily real estate, syndications and deals for about 10 years before I got into cannabis, ended up launching a total of somewhere around a dozen funds, maybe give or take one or two. That was good timing in that situation. That was pretty much it until I came into the cannabis space. And I think you asked about
Shawn Flynn (05:33)
Well, you have to tell us what excited you about the cannabis space versus everything else you’re doing. Why take the leap? Why kind of spearhead this new initiative in uncharted territory?
Sherri Haskell (05:48)
Probably because my brain got damaged from all that, from all the injury with the market crash days. But now I am seriously, seriously, if you think about where I had been and the people that I had been surrounded by and my whole financial career, it was Wall Street. It was typical Wall Street and the typical Wall Street kinds of personalities, kinds of characters, kinds of culture that you can probably already tell wasn’t really me. When I left private equity is very interesting. I left on my own without a destination. It’s kind of and you say, you know what would tempt me to do something like that? Well, many people ask me the same thing, saying, what are you doing? But I just knew that I needed to get out I needed to get away from some of the worst kind of mentalities that I had been around. And I was just sort of. Incidentally, invited to a cannabis event that was in San Francisco. It’s what I would call extremely primitive, it was, I think, about five or six years ago, so you can imagine how primitive it was back then. There was no structure.
Shawn Flynn (07:11)
When you say primitive, no structure was at the event itself, was that the companies that presented what do you mean by primitive?
Sherri Haskell (07:19)
Great question. OK, so what I mean by primitive is that this event was tagged as being a pitch event, companies coming to Pitch for Capital. Now, compared to my background, having raised large sums of capital for large endeavors with deep pockets. This was primitive. This was no Armani suits. This was no Rolex watches. But beyond that, it was people that were very well intentioned but very uninformed. OK, so there were people there that were pitching to raise money for their enterprises. And what attracted me initially, let me get to that, I walked in not knowing anything about this space. Really all I knew about cannabis was what I knew from younger years when we bought a plastic bag of pot and what do they call them? Easy roller papers and hope for the best. That’s all I knew. OK, so this was really a curiosity trip for me. I went to this event and there was no dress code of Armani or Giovanni or any other kind of suits, but what there was and it was actually almost palpable, was an energy of enthusiasm and positivity, which I realized what was extremely a huge deficit from where I had come from. These were people that were happy to be there. They were happy to mingle and share their stories with others on an authentic basis, and I thought, well, I don’t know if this has staying power, but I want to know more about it. So, I stayed for the entire evening. I listen to every pitch. I talk to as many people as I could. And just was more and more curious and intrigued and trying to understand if this had legs or if it didn’t, and some of the presenters that I saw that night were very bright. Some of them weren’t. But what I realized throughout the evening of talking to so many people that were so hopeful is that they needed direction. They all really needed an education on what was capital markets? How did you approach them? Who were they? How did you speak to them? How did you message? How did you articulate your unique business model? I mean, it was just a whole dearth of information there. OK, so the first thing I had to do was to discover if this was worth my time or not. From that moment forward. And it was just. Absolutely serendipitous because at that moment, I didn’t, I wasn’t committed to anyone, I wasn’t employed, I wasn’t a partner, I was a free agent so I could spend one hundred percent of my time, if that’s what I chose, investigating the industry, learning more about it and learning, you know, what the challenges were, what the roadblocks were, who was being successful, who wasn’t, what was going on legally, politically, everything. And to see if there was the potential for this to be a success and to grow and to be scaled. And after a few months of intense discovery, I was still intrigued, and I actually knew that I had all the skill sets. It could be very helpful to people in this industry to learn how to cross that bridge from where they were. To be communicating with the people who could help them financially and the interesting thing is, is that I was still very, very connected and attending very many social events and investor events in the investor community. And people were whispering, I mean, actually whispering in corners of rooms at that time. What do you think about cannabis? Well, I am interested, but don’t tell anybody, kind of a lot of what I heard. So, I saw it as an opportunity to bridge that gap between the two sides. That was the impetus for Canna Angels. I knew that the entry level would be a cannabis format, I’m sorry, an angel format because it’s early stage and that’s what we needed at that point. There was no later stage funding. It was all entry level. So, I had been active in a number of angel groups. I had invested as an angel. I had put together Roadshow’s and big investor events for publicly traded companies all the way down the line. So, I knew that I had the skill set to create what needed to be created. And it was very, very interesting. I spent one whole year mapping out how I would do this, how I would go about it, how the infrastructure would be together, the legal documents, the branding, the messaging, the look, the whole thing. And I also knew that in order for this to be very credible to a number of people, that I needed a team. I knew that I was credentialed, but couldn’t be the Sherri show, so I went out to get a team and I went out and I spoke to 12 different, quite varied business luminaries from very different industries to tell them what I was considering doing and why I was approaching them, because I would love to have individual expertise to draw from not just for myself, but for my entrepreneurs as well. And I figured if I got three or four yeses, that that would be a slam dunk. That’d be a great success. And I ended get ended up getting 12 out of 13 and I was really blown away and just kind of had “oh my gosh, what do I do now?” Moment, because I, I was surprised that so many people agreed to jump on with me. And I think that was a statement to their consideration that this had potential as well. And the fact that they thought the timing was hopefully opportunistic and that they also had confidence in my abilities. So, I was thrilled to have that team to start out with. And we went from there. We opened up with our first showcase event where we were featuring that first showcase event. We featured five outstanding companies. By the way, two of those original five have since had exits, now that I think about it. We had a standing room only crowd, I know that a lot of that was due to curiosity rather than full intention of investing, but that’s OK. People came, they wanted to see who was going to be there. And was it going to be dreadlocks and tattoos or was it going to be, you know, a Wall Street professional performance presentation? And I think that everyone was very pleased. We did it with the utmost of elegance and professionalism. And it was like the racehorse out of the gate at that moment because it never slowed down after that, it never slowed down. There’s been an extreme dedication and diligence to being very, very selective in the companies that we bring in that we present, we’re all about quality, not quantity. So you’ll see if you’ve been an angel investor, you know anything about that format, you’ll know that it’s not uncommon to go to an angel investor pitch event and see a dozen companies or 15 companies will never do that. Never. I think it minimizes whatever you see. After that first event, we trimmed it down to four and they are four, you know, very highly selected companies that I personally would invest in that I personally have confidence in. That can go the distance. It can talk more about what the criteria is. But does that answer your question?
Shawn Flynn (15:54)
And for our listeners at home, when Sherri mentioned two companies exit, so an exit, another company either acquires or any event happens where the investors can get their money out or some very important event.
Sherri Haskell (16:09)
So, it’s a financial event. It can be through a merger acquisition, through a public offering. It can be through a partnership. It can be in. But it’s a financial event which brings liquidity.
Shawn Flynn (16:21)
Now, Sherri, I have to ask, in this four or five year span from when you went to that first event to now, how have you seen the industry as a whole kind of change or the companies that you’ve encountered? How have they changed?
Sherri Haskell (16:39)
OK, that’s a big question. And it’s interesting. Obviously, it’s very interesting. It’s sort of like I don’t know if you compared it to a child’s evolution or a sporting event or something like that. We were in just the very, very, very beginning innings where people didn’t even know the lexicon of how to communicate with each other. And that was a lot about what we provided to the entrepreneurs and mentoring them and teaching them. It was a level of sophistication now, primarily with business acumen, I think is the biggest difference is that now and over the last couple of years, we’ve seen a constant evolution in the quality of the companies, the quality of the founding managers, the team of the company. They realize now that this is the real deal. This is real business. It requires financial audits. It requires mental audits. It requires big boy kind of behavior. And in the beginning, we had a lot of sort of wild dreams that would come to us. And I could tell you some stories, but I’m really happy to say that now and in the last couple of years. The quality of the people, their experience levels, their expectations, their level of achievement, as far as forecasting the reality. Now I will tell you that in the beginning years, there was so much exuberance in the industry, not just from the entrepreneurs, but from the investors as well and from those opportunistic financial people seeing what may but what riches may come to them by working in this industry. Things were exaggerated, they were disproportionately exaggerated, such as company valuations, expectations, forecasts, things like that. Well, that’s a long story that we could get into now or some other time about what happened as a result of that, but. It wasn’t surprising. OK, if you live through the technology boom, what was that 15, 20 years ago, you saw a very similar thing. So, it wasn’t a surprise. It was almost like I was wondering when this was going to happen, the fact that it did happen and that there’s been an equalizing. Now it’s a good thing. It’s a good thing. Weak companies, weak business models are being washed out. Those that have strength and infrastructure and good acumen behind them, they’re remaining. And so now we’re seeing stronger companies that are supporting the industry with more realistic valuations. And I think that those are going to be the companies that are going to end up sustaining and scaling hugely, some of them globally. And that’s what we’re seeing now.
Shawn Flynn (19:58)
So with these companies, I’m guessing most of our audience has no idea how many different sectors a cannabis company could be in. Could you kind of go into a little bit of detail of all the different sectors that are considered cannabis on plant, off plant, what that means, all of this.
Sherri Haskell (20:20)
I wish I had my cheat sheet in front of me, but I’ll try to do it from memory, you just said on plant off plant and that’s a typical perspective of people that are on the periphery looking at the industry, you know, as you and I discussed earlier, they looked at it, either they grew the cannabis are people that sold the cannabis. So, in other words, you’ve got a broken down to the cultivators, i.e., the farmers are the retailers, i.e. the dispensaries. But there’s a whole wealth of various business sectors between those two that are actually those that support. The sustainability and the growth of the industry and to me, those are the more important, because as you know and you’ve probably seen. The actual product. Is like you would think of an agricultural product, agricultural products are commodities, they will rise in price and drop in price based upon supply demand. But so many other things, the weather, but the industries, the sectors that support the industry, they’re going to be able to sustain no matter what those end prices are. And some examples you asked me about sectors we call them verticals within the industry. Some examples would be biotech, data tech, software infusion, manufacturing, Agri-tech. So, what have I forgotten? Hardware, lab technologies and real estate, AMP has become a sector, and we used to have a sector that we don’t see so much anymore, and that was security and that was you’re looking curious. And that was because if you remember in the beginning, people were stealing, OK, or were coming in with armed weapons. You know, there were a lot of mischievous things going on. And so putting up cameras and protecting the facilities was a business was a real business. One other sector that I didn’t mention specifically because it falls into the software hardware is compliance technology. That’s another thing that’s very important in our industry, is tracking from sea to sale because this is. Considered a medicine and a Schedule One product, every part of the supply chain needs to be tracked and labeled and accounted for. You could imagine if you took a medicine and you had a very bad reaction, very bad reaction, you’d want to know where did that medicine come from? What was it in? You’d want to be able to warn others and to stop it. And so, we have the same kind of framework in the cannabis industry. There are there are a number of software products which you might think, well, why? Why can’t you just get that off the shelf or get that from an existing big software company like Oracle? Well, that’s a good question. But the reason is the cannabis industry is so regulated and there are so many different, very, very complicated. And minute details to it that the big companies don’t create that kind of software. So eventually maybe they’ll buy it from those we hope that are in our portfolio. But that’s why we have our specific companies that do those that that do those technologies for the cannabis industry.
Shawn Flynn (24:02)
And then for the industry itself, what’s kind of the growth rate that we’re seeing?
Sherri Haskell (20:20)
You know what I used to quote those kinds of things because they were mind blowing, they were just mind blowing, and it really gave people a jarring awakening as to the potential, I quit quoting because they’re humongous numbers and they’re all over the place. But let me just say this. Cannabis is a global industry. Last time I looked, it was in a, I think forty-five different countries legalized. The numbers are astronomical. It’s the fastest growing industry in the world, and when we look at this, you know, some people may also be from years ago where they think of pot as just being hypnotic or increasing psychotic or I shouldn’t say psychotic, psycho results getting high. But there are so many other components of the plant now that we’ve discovered over time the actually the Israelis are the leaders and clinical research in the world as far as the medicinal or therapeutic benefits of the plant. It’s been discovered now that there are cannabinoids, hundreds of cannabinoids within the plant. We’re learning now about each one of those and what the properties are and not just about the properties, but how to genetically sort of modify those to create results, therapeutic results that might really help people with various disease states. So it’s become a huge, huge product with enormous potential that we can’t really, even at this moment, put a price on. Because if you think about all the therapeutic opportunities, I mean, I could name off a few for you, but it’s we’re just in the discovery mode. I talk to scientists all the time that come to me that are PhDs that are in the lab that are doing these discoveries primarily in other countries, because the US, we have some primitive ideas about doing research here on cannabis, but there are amazing discoveries being made that will help people in years to come.
Shawn Flynn (26:33)
Now, you had mentioned Israel, what’s kind of the development or the industry of the US compared to maybe Canada, Colombia or all these other countries out there in the world? How would you compare what’s going on here and overseas?
Sherri Haskell (26:47)
Uruguay and Canada are the first of the G7 countries to be completely legal. Canada has been legal now for two years, well, medicinal has been legal for a couple of years, recreational just became legal last year. But if you think about it, the population of Canada is almost the same, exactly the same as the population of California. We’re thrilled that Canada actually was the front liner because we can follow and learn some of their mistakes. At first, we weren’t thrilled at first. At first, I was disappointed that we wouldn’t be first. But now we realize that we can see some of the mistakes that were made and hopefully do better. Canada has some restrictions as far as delivery forms or factors of what they can provide to the customers or to the patients. With that said, they also have research. They also have no restrictions on research, not only no restrictions, they have government funded research, they have government funded, growing government funded insurance, OK, and also government funded reimbursement. Or pharmaceutical delivery of a product. Israel, as I said, is a world leader, Israel’s focus has always been on the medical side. Their licenses and their legal product are always for the medical. They are absolutely world leaders in clinical research, actually doing medical research in a clinical setting, collecting data for many different medical data points, determining what formulations are best for what disease states. They are way ahead of us, way, way ahead of us. But they have had a ban over the years against exporting and they have very many restrictions on what can be grown and where and how and so on. Now, I just read this morning, I think it was that they have overtaken Germany as the number one importer in the world. So as their licensing and their research is constantly growing and evolving, they’re bringing in more product in order to be able to do the research that they’re doing pretty cool. Now, there are a number of other countries that are legal, the Norwegian countries. Denmark is a big one, but there are many other countries that are evolving. And very quickly, South America, Australia, South Africa, many countries in Europe. Portugal, I hear from Greece, I hear from I mean, I hear from a number of different countries all the time.
Shawn Flynn (29:53)
What laws are being talked about currently in the US or maybe California that maybe people at home might be interested in knowing?
Sherri Haskell (30:02)
All right, well, one that kind of angels as a supporter for investments, I mean, we’re always have our eye on the banking, the banking bill’s. Because some investors have reservations about going into investments that don’t have a clear path for not just banking, but when you think about banking, you think about the credit facilities that banks provide to companies, to any kind of companies. Well, those are still marginal. So, we’re always keeping an eye on those. The House has been has done a good job of progressing that forward. The Senator is always the roadblock. Don’t get me started on politics. I’ll go I’ll go wild on you. But right now, it looks like there is another proposal on the floor trying to get the Safe Banking Act into the new stimulus programs that are being considered. And if you think about it in this time right now of economic distress, horrible distress, it just makes sense. We know now that forty-two of the states are public. I’m sorry, are legal medical, 11 are legal recreational, and people haven’t, you know, jumped off high buildings like was thought would happen decades ago. And this is generating and could be generating an enormous amount of revenues to help municipalities. So, we’re hoping that the safe banking pack will get passed and that will be able to drive revenues into municipalities and help everybody out.
Shawn Flynn (31:49)
So when do you think or when does the industry think that big corporations or the people on Wall Street are going to start investing and start raising funds for investment in cannabis companies or have an investment arm looking at these companies?
Sherri Haskell (32:07)
All right, the conservative answer is 2-3 years, maybe that’s not so conservative, but what’s happening now is there’s no doubt, there’s absolutely no doubt at all that we will at some point in time achieve national legality. So, what’s happening now is that we’re starting to see some of the venture capital money coming off the sidelines, in many cases, those are boutiques. Those are not the big ones that the Sequoia’s in the benchmarks that we know about. But we are starting to see that kind of activity as far as the big nationals’ and when they’re going to come in. That’s already happened in Canada. I think that it’s not going to be too long until we start seeing that here. We’re going to start seeing that in beverages. You’re starting to see constellation, Lagunitas, companies like that that are coming in. There was some conversation recently about Coca-Cola, where we’re going to see big players coming in. And in the meantime, it actually does give our private companies a runway of opportunity to bulk up to do well and to be acquired by them. You know, everything at its pace. It’s going to happen. Definitely it’s going to happen. I mean, with CBD, that’s a whole another conversation about the consumer products companies coming in and infusing CBD into all kinds of products as a wellness to go along with nutraceuticals, wellness type of product, everything. I mean, it’s over the top, but as far as big nationals’ coming in, it’s happening. It’s already happening. But it’ll be at a at a gradual pace when we know that we have testing that’s consistent with product that’s consistent. We have supply chains that can handle the demand.
Shawn Flynn (34:09)
And then with all this news, all this excitement in the cannabis industry, can you talk about some of the portfolio companies that are in Canna Angels or just companies that you’ve seen over the last few years that you might have some good stories with?
Sherri Haskell (34:25)
I thought you’d never ask. All right. Let me let me give you a little framework for Canna Angels. Very shortly after we launched in the Valley in January of 2017, I took a definitive root and eliminated from our consideration companies that would fall under the vertical of cultivation. Or companies that would fall into the vertical of retail. There are a number of reasons why, but I just felt that they weren’t the best move for our investors. What we did do is we focused very heavily in the technologies. The technology that supports the industry, such as what I’ve mentioned in the past, while we’ve been talking, so within that we have quite a few Agri-tech, biotech, lab tech, Compliance tech, data tech, I mean, we cover the full spectrum, we’ve got an amazing portfolio of companies with amazing teams that are running them. Every now and then, I might take a chance on somebody that’s a little outside of our criteria, but that has to be really unique and really special, and that CEO must be so compelling that he just grabs my interest in and I get confidence. But generally, we stick pretty much to our playbook of technologies. There are some companies that are just rising to the top, but because we have this general concept of technologies and we’ve been so definitive and those and the criteria by which we accept them, I feel very confident about our portfolio. In less than three years, we had already had five exits. I mean, if you think about that, it’s just extraordinary. And four of those exits were by acquisition rather than a public offering, which in my mind is a much better way to go, especially in this industry and in this country. So some of those that I think are looking terrific are the things that have to do with plant engineering, with synthetic engineering, with engineering of different strains, different formulations with tissue cloning and tissue culture with various comprehensive compliance software programs that are complete when every single aspect of the sea to sail and that communicates seamlessly with Metric and some of the other big providers to the government of data. I mean, we’ve got some really, really brilliant people that are heading up some of our companies and makes some very proud.
Shawn Flynn (37:30)
And with that, I mean, the industry so young in most areas of tech, there’s a lot of mentors, a lot of advisors you can reach out to that have had exits that are in the same industry, same field. How do companies how to start ups in the cannabis industry, how do they find those advisors? How do they find those people to ask questions to? Because, I mean, the industry so young, you can’t find that person has had two exits in the space.
Sherri Haskell (37:58)
I wish I had a better answer for you. I really do. I wish I had a better answer for you in a typical industry. There are many really great incubators. As you know, you’ve been involved, incubators, accelerators, bootcamps that young companies can go to really learn the ropes of doing business, there are very few of those in the cannabis space. Canopy Boulder has stood out, among others, and it’s probably about the only one right now. When people come through Canna Angels, they do go through a boot camp with us and with me in particular. And I know I seem very nice and friendly, but I can change my colors when I’m working with you because I want all of my companies to be absolutely the best that can possibly be when they get ready to present to my investors, and I think that’s one of the reasons why we’ve sustained such a good reputation, is because I will work with them as long as it takes to get them to that position. I wish there were more mentors, to tell you the truth. I really do. I’ve thought about expanding Canna Angels. To just create an incubator like that is just a matter of bandwidth at the moment.
Shawn Flynn (39:26)
And then, Sherri, what excites you for 2021?
Sherri Haskell (39:30)
OK, I’m going to have to behave now. What excites me? Getting out of lockdown. OK, getting out of lockdown, getting out of a shelter in place, getting out of socially distancing, being able to share with others in a live, passionate, energetic way so that people can see really the excitement behind some of these companies. I really look forward to that. It’s hard to emulate that same energy in a virtual environment and these companies that are so innovative and doing their best to create these amazing discoveries, they deserve that. So, I look forward to that.
Shawn Flynn (40:17)
And Sherri, what other information that we did not cover that you think people at home should know or think about in the industry, whether it’s from an investor’s point of view or from a startup that’s interested in beginning a company in this space?
Sherri Haskell (40:37)
Let me start with the startup. Years ago, it seems like it was decades, but it was only five, six years ago. There was this ridiculous fantasy that if you grew it, they would come. That’s just not the way it works, OK? And we did have many people in the industry. Where that had been the playbook for many years. But now that this is a real industry with real regulations and laws. People need to really think out their business plan. They need to think out how practical is what their idea is. How scalable is it, really, how scalable, how can they absolutely differentiate their concept, whether it’s a product or to service? How can it be differentiated and articulate that differentiation so that it’s compelling and exciting and that people want it? That’s what they need to think about going forward as far as the general public. What I would say is that. It’s just a damn shame that we don’t have research available in this country because so many people are still holding dear misinformation about this plant, this product and the opportunities and possibilities within it. Let me give you an example, OK, just came to my head. We all love fine dining. We all love to go out and have beautiful on our plate, you know, fancy things all over the place. We love to have certain kind of mushrooms on our salads, on our filet mignon, on our whatever. But some mushrooms will kill you. It is sort of like that, I mean, people just need to be educated as to what’s possible and the multitude of positives that we can derive from this plant in so many different industries, in so many different ways and quick thinking narrowly. And I don’t blame people. It’s because they have not had access to the right kind of education in the U.S., it’s just there’s been a horrible deficit and misinformation provided
Shawn Flynn (43:21)
And then, Sherri, if anyone wants to find out more information about you, Canna Angell’s, what’s the best way to go about doing that?
Sherri Haskell (43:30)
Go to our website or just Google us canneangelsLLC.com is the website, we’re going to be posting some major pushes on social media before too long. Yeah, there’s a lot of information. I do a lot of speaking at investment conferences. I love to do that because I’m a strong advocate of educating as you can, as you can tell. And I want the right information to be disseminated to both the investors and the startup companies.
Shawn Flynn (44:04)
Great, Sherri, thank you for taking the time to be on the Silicon Valley podcast, everyone, please write a review for this podcast and share amongst your network to help spread this information and educate as many people as possible. And once again, Sherri, I want to thank you for your time today.
Sherri Haskell (44:21)
It’s a pleasure. Thank you. Can’t wait till the next one.
Outro (44:26)
Thank you for listening to The Silicon Valley Podcast. To access our resources, visit us at TheSiliconValleyPodcast.com and follow our host on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn @ShawnFlynnSV. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decisions, consult a professional.
