Salveo Capital Press

Fyllo, a Salveo Capital portfolio company, believes it can streamline regulatory tasks for cannabis companies with a single platform. Legal teams can use the platform to obtain real-time documents regarding local and federal announcements, ballot measures, enforcement, fee schedules, forms, and filing instructions. Businesses can use the console to access information regarding specific areas of interest, including advertising, applications, banking, safety, labeling, operations, record keeping, regulation enforcement, taxes and zoning.

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Salveo Capital portfolio company AWH, a multi-state, vertically integrated cannabis operator, announced the resumption of plans to bring its transformative retail experience throughout Michigan with the opening of two Michigan Supply and Provisions (MS&P) retail locations in Detroit and Battle Creek this week. The two new locations are the second and third for MS&P in the state, after opening one of Michigan’s first recreational provisioning centers in Morenci in December of 2019. “We are excited to continue our mission to bring the highest quality products, service and knowledge to people all across Michigan. Now more than ever, patients and consumers deserve a care-free experience and products they can count on to relieve pain and stress,” said AWH Founder and CEO Abner Kurtin.

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Sprout, a leading cannabis CRM and marketing platform, announced their successful integration with Treez, a Salveo Capital portfolio company and enterprise-quality cannabis business management software platform used by dispensaries and cultivators in the United States. The Sprout integration enables dispensaries and cannabis brands to automatically synchronize their contacts and transactional data into Sprout's CRM and marketing software.

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Despite being founded just five years ago, Würk (a Salveo Capital portfolio company) has already signed on an impressive group of customers — including industry heavyweight Canopy Growth. The company has undoubtedly faced challenges, operating as a newly-formed business serving rapidly-growing clients in an emerging, volatile industry is no easy task. Fortunately, Würk has risen to the occasion and introduced a COVID-19 dashboard, mitigating the risks of Coronavirus and offering key resources.

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Salveo Capital portfolio company Ascend Wellness Holdings (AWH) announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Northern New Jersey based Greenleaf Compassion Center, a vertically integrated Cannabis company that holds one of the original six medical licenses in New Jersey. This acquisition will expand AWH's operations into a fifth state as the company continues to build its footprint in limited license states across the Midwest and East Coast. "We believe New Jersey to be one of the most attractive markets in the U.S. with over nine-million people who are underserved, in what will likely become an adult-use market in 2021," said Abner Kurtin, Founder and CEO of AWH. "We look forward to introducing our high-quality Ozone products and popular Cookies strains through our partnership to the patients of the Garden State."

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Stronghold and Treez, a Salveo Capital portfolio company, have launched an integration, as a part of Treez Pay, that combines Stronghold’s payments infrastructure and Treez’s software for cannabis retailers to deliver a seamless, secure, and compliant transaction experience for consumers. The Treez Pay solution became operational in early April 2020, coinciding with COVID-19’s impacts, and has enabled contactless curbside sales and delivery.

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Salveo Capital portfolio company Ascend Wellness Holding’s Collinsville marijuana dispensary is offering the city some insulation from economic damage caused by the coronavirus outbreak. The city currently collects a 2.25% sales tax on recreational marijuana sales, and that will jump to 5.25% on July 1. “This is a revenue source that has not been impacted, and it’s actually gone up.” said Collinsville City Manager Mitch Bair. Illinois Supply and Provisions, owned by Ascend Wellness Holdings, consistently sells the most of any dispensary in the state, between $4.5 million and $5 million a month, Bair said.

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Salveo Capital portfolio company Ascend Wellness (AWH) has continued to ramp up its operations by taking a deep approach in a few select markets rather than spreading itself as wide as possible. In an environment defined by capital constraints, AWH is only pursuing licenses and acquisitions that will generate significant cash flow in the near-term. The company is looking at opportunities in Illinois and Michigan. According to AWH Founder and CEO Abner Kurtin, the company will be operating cash flow positive over the next few quarters. By next year, he expects the company to be paying down its debt and potentially doing stockholder dividends.

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Prior to raising institutional financing from Salveo Capital and Hyde Park Angels, serial entrepreneur and angel investor Genevieve Thiers was the first outside money raised by Chicago-based Equilibria. “I’m a huge proponent of the product both from an economic perspective, but also because I back up anything that helps women. This helps women.” says Theirs.

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CuraLeaf CEO Joseph Lusardi tells New Cannabis Ventures that federal regulatory hurdles to the company’s acquisition of Chicago-based Grassroots Cannabis, a Salveo Capital portfolio company, are cleared. While there is still work to do with state regulators, Lusardi anticipates closing the transaction this “spring”. The $875 million stock and cash deal was first announced last July.

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Curaleaf Holdings Inc announced Monday a partnership with HERBL, a Salveo Capital portfolio company and one of California’s largest cannabis distributors. According to the agreement, HERBL will be the exclusive distributor of Select branded products in California. Mike Beaudry, founder and CEO of HERBL recognized the brand value of Select. “We look forward to rolling Select's products out to our network of more than 850 storefront and non-storefront retail licensee, while simultaneously creating efficiencies for their business by utilizing our team, technology, and infrastructure,” he said.

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While much of Chicago and the world at large waits things out, Equilibria, a growing online subscription-based service that helps women personalize their CBD doses, just raised two million bucks. The company represents the twenty-first and likely final investment from the initial cannabis-focused fund managed by Salveo Capital. Salveo’s additional local Chicago portfolio companies include Fyllo – which raised about $20 million upon launch last year – and Grassroots Cannabis, which is set to be acquired by CuraLeaf in a deal agreed to be valued at $860 million. Hyde Park Angels (HPA), a coalition of investors tied to Booth, is now backing two Chicago-based cannabis-specific technology companies. The connective tissue is HPA member Tom Mazarakis, who serves as an advisory board member of Salveo.

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Equilibria, which sells CBD products to women via a monthly subscription, is on a roll. Like marijuana sales, CBD demand has remained strong since the coronavirus outbreak. “We just had our best week ever,” says co-founder Coco Meers.

The company has raised about $2 million, led by two Chicago investors: Salveo Capital, a cannabis-focused venture fund, and Hyde Park Angels, a syndicate of angel investors. As part of the deal, HPA investor Amanda Lannert, CEO of Jellyvision, joins Equilibria’s board. “We like the product,” says Jeff Howard, managing partner at Salveo Capital. “While CBD will be a competitive space, the founders have figured out the right marketing and demographics for their product. For women, by women. That’s resonating."

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Coda Signature, a Salveo Capital portfolio company, received the top award at the Hemp Connoisseur THC Championship as the THC Champion with Best Overall Score for its Strawberry & Rhubarb Fruit Notes. Coda Signature took home numerous wins at the competition across categories: First Place and People’s Choice in Topicals for the Symphony Bath Bomb collection; Second Place and Connoisseur's Choice in Topicals for the Calm Massage and Bath Oil; First Place in CBD Edibles for the Coconut & Lime 1:1 Fruit Notes; Second Place and Connoisseur’s Choice in CBD Edibles for the Cream & Crumble 1:1 chocolate bar; Third Place in CBD Vape Cartridges for the Uplift 1:2 Distillate Cartridge; First Place, People’s Choice and Connoisseur’s Choice in Botanical Vapes for the Balance Distillate Cartridge; and First Place, People’s Choice and Connoisseur's Choice in Recreational Edibles for the Strawberry & Rhubarb Fruit Notes.

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Grassroots Cannabis—a Salveo Capital portfolio company and vertically integrated cannabis business—announced the completion of a 20,000-square-foot expansion of their cultivation center in Taneytown, MD, significantly increasing their production capacity. By May 1, 2020, Grassroots will have 2 ½ times the product available to service and reach 2 ½ times the amount of patients. This expansion also provides a unique opportunity in this unprecedented time to provide jobs, as Grassroots will be increasing its headcount by 35 percent. "As an essential business, now more than ever our teams are leaning in to our mission and core values,” says Andy Cohen, Partner. "With this expansion, we are able to hire more staff to produce and deliver our trusted products to more patients in this time of need."

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Chicago-based Fyllo has developed a unique technology stack to support compliance in the cannabis industry. CannaRegs, acquired by the company earlier this year, supports compliance by helping users understand taxation, zoning, applications and other regulatory issues. The compliance data in the CannaRegs platform also drives Fyllo’s Compass technology, which uses AI image recognition to ensure creative assets are compliant with all regulations. With the addition of CannaRegs, the company has been able to gain support from additional funds including Salveo Capital, Phyto and Panther.

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Salveo Capital invests across the cannabis value chain. The Chicago firm, which launched in 2016, began by investing in businesses that don’t deal with cannabis directly. “Ancillary companies can operate across state lines and internationally and they also require less capital,” says Managing Partner Michael Gruber. “Touching-the-plant companies have fewer sources of capital as they grow.” He adds that “the murky regulatory environment and shallow executive talent” were challenges to investing directly in cannabis early on, but that has changed thanks to the influx of executives from other industries like technology, finance and pharmaceuticals. Salveo has since expanded the breadth of its investments. It currently has 20 portfolio companies that span growing and processing, manufacturing, retail, software and other cannabis subsectors. Gruber points to several areas of high opportunity…

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Jeff Gray, CEO and Co-Founder of SC Laboratories (a Salveo Capital portfolio company), has already signed up for endocoronavirus.org and was impressed by “the activation and engagement” of the scientific community. Gray continued, saying “if there is a clear path forward and the lab capacity is needed to fill a gap in testing volume, we need to prioritize the greatest good at that moment,” adding they “are ready and eager to join the fight when the path forward is clear.”

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Equilibria, a Salveo Capital portfolio company, is donating over $100,000 worth of CBD products to 1,500 women on the front lines of the pandemic. The women work at hospitals, grocery stores and other organizations helping locals during the pandemic.

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Ever since COVID-19 hit the United States, the ability to adequately test patients has been a constant problem. With roots in clinical and medical diagnostics, biotech company PathogenDx, a Salveo Capital portfolio company, has developed a new ultra-rapid genetics-based testing technology that is could provide relief. “What's different about what we've developed is that ability to test for up to 10 different viruses, all in the same sample,” says Milan Patel, PathogenDx CEO and Co-Founder.

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