FundCanna CEO Adam Stettner Sees

a Resilient Cannabis Industry

By Tom Hymes

A lot has happened (or almost happened) since CBE profiled FundCanna in January, including an HHS recommendation to reschedule cannabis and the SAFER Banking Act advancing out of the Senate Banking Committee.

 

Of course, during that same period, the cost of capital continued to increase, and serious headwinds continued to plague cannabis operators in markets throughout the country, where some states have even devolved into mismanaged minefields of ruin cloaked as opportunity.

 

Still, green shoots sprout in even the most limited license markets, and operators have shown themselves to be a resilient lot willing to forge ahead even in the face of uncertainty.

For FundCanna, 2023 has been a period of growth and transformation, from a company still proving itself to one realizing the benefits of having proved itself on the unpredictable and often uneven proving ground of the cannabis industry. Founded by Adam Stettner in 2021, the lending company recently announced significant partnerships with two supply chain companies in California, a raucous but eternal market as well as the genetic heartland of cannabis in the USA.

In August, FundCanna partnered with wholesale platform and logistics provider Nabis, profiled recently by CBE, and in September it partnered with seed-to-sale ERP platform Distru. CBE recently caught up with Stettner to get his take on the two partnerships, and while we had him, his opinion on the prospect for change in the industry anytime soon.

“My desire is to be where our prospective clients need us to be,” he said of the partnerships. “I simply don’t want people to have to work hard to find access to capital. When I think about how to make it easy to work with us, part of that – and it’s a small part – is to be where they already are. Partnering with companies like Nabis or Distru, or others for that matter, enables us to be part of what the clients are already doing.

It’s also a convenience factor for the client to know that if they’re transacting business and already have a relationship that they rely on, FundCanna can be part of the experience at their option.

If that provides them with convenience and added liquidity, that should be a good thing, and it’s part of why I wanted the relationships with both Nabis and Distru.

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”The other part is the ability to provide lending the platforms cannot provide, filling in gaps they can’t fill. “Because it’s a little bit easier,” explained Stettner, “and because it’s part of what they’re already doing, they’re more likely to try us, and by doing that we can demonstrate how providing access to additional liquidity smooths out cash-flow cycles and enables them to buy in a manner that meets their revenue cycle.

 

Because our product is already designed to be flexible for the client, if we make the process more accessible and more convenient for them to try, they can see for themselves how it works, which in theory should also make the value of Nabis or Distru more valuable, because Nabis is creating that convenience of access to capital in a place where they’re already transacting. Using Nabis, the brands are selling, the retailers are buying, and if Nabis or Distru put FundCanna in the middle of the process as an option, we can facilitate transactions with speed and with scale that otherwise couldn’t occur.”

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