Cannabis compliance headaches are creating opportunity. Ever-evolving state regulations present a multitude of problems to running a compliant cannabis company. Dede Perkins the CEO of ProCanna joins Dan Humiston to talk about how their cloud base, SaaS platform keeps operators compliant with real-time updates on regulatory and legislative changes. She discusses their crowdfunding campaign on WeFunder and why she believes it's so important for cannabis companies to stay in compliance. Produced by PodConX Cannabis Crowdfunding - https://podconx.com/podcasts/cannabis-crowdfunding Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston Dede Perkins - https://podconx.com/guests/dede-perkins ProCanna - https://procanna-usa.com/ WeFunder ProCanna Campaign - https://wefunder.com/procanna
Cannabis compliance headaches are creating opportunity.
Ever-evolving state regulations present a multitude of problems to running a compliant cannabis company. Dede Perkins the CEO of ProCanna joins Dan Humiston to talk about how their cloud base, SaaS platform keeps operators compliant with real-time updates on regulatory and legislative changes. She discusses their crowdfunding campaign on WeFunder and why she believes it's so important for cannabis companies to stay in compliance.
Cannabis Crowdfunding - https://podconx.com/podcasts/cannabis-crowdfunding
Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston
Dede Perkins - https://podconx.com/guests/dede-perkins
ProCanna - https://procanna-usa.com/
WeFunder ProCanna Campaign - https://wefunder.com/procanna
CC Procanna
Dan Humiston: [00:00:00] Hello, everyone. Welcome to another episode of cannabis crowdfunding, where each week we examine an active cannabis crowdfunding campaign. And on today's episode, we are looking at pro Khanna's campaign, which is hosted on we funder and joining us to talk about the campaign is their CEO, DD Perkins, DD.
Welcome to the.
Dede Perkins: Thanks, Dan. It's great to be here.
Dan Humiston: Well, we are happy you could join us because we're always looking for exciting cannabis, crowdfunding opportunities, especially ones that fill a niche which pro Canada certainly does. by now most people understand. Cannabis laws vary from state to state and they're constantly changing.
So this may sound like a really dumb question, but, , why is it so important for companies to stay on top of their constantly changing regulatory and.
Dede Perkins: That's a great question. And I think staying on top of your regulatory environment is important for so many reasons, including just [00:01:00] culture , in your company. Right? If everybody knows what's expected of them, if they feel empowered, they know how to get answers to their questions, it just makes day-to-day work.
Life go easier. But I think beyond that, certainly there are the obvious risks, I hate to use the fear thing, but there are fines, there are licensed, risks. Those are go without saying some people understand that. Just pretend, not just try not to, but I think more important though, as the industry gets more mature, what's going to be really important is that's going to set companies apart, are this, is that brand consistency, brand trust and loyalty.
And so it's your internal policies and procedures that we're looking to systematize and, and protect as well. So, having standard operating procedures that everybody can access, training people in the same platform, being able to conduct internal audits, you hear something's going on in your packaging facility.
Do an audit on the fly, collect the information. If you're the regional manager, literally you can have actionable information in an hour and hour and a half, and then it's, documented. So , it's not only regulatory compliance, but I think it's just best practices for operations.
Dan Humiston: Oh, and you think about how [00:02:00] expensive it is to get a license. This just seems like a really inexpensive insurance policy, nope. No pro can is a cloud-based SAS platform. Is it designed for any specific sector?
Dede Perkins: You know, It's funny. So when , we first launched, we really expected to hit that multi facility operator in the middle of the space. Right. So,
Dan Humiston: Okay.
Dede Perkins: More facilities than the. Owner or the operator can manage a little bit, so once you get to about 50 employees, right?
What's happened though is as soon as we went sort of forward facing in the market, we were approached by attorneys and accountants and cannabis consultants and people that wanted to be in the platform with this. Customers, we had pre-licensure companies that were still in the application phase that wanted to build the recipes and wanted easy access to the rigs.
And we've actually had some conversations with MSO. So we're very surprised at , the breadth basically , of people that we're talking with and are interested in using the platform. You never know until you get started, it's been very interesting.
Dan Humiston: So it's not just the retail sectors or cultivation sectors , it's pretty much everything along the supply chain[00:03:00] can use your planet.
Dede Perkins: Absolutely. So if it's cannabis business lessons, whether it's cultivation, manufacturing, processing, retail delivery wholesale we even have the rigs for testing labs. If it's regulated in the cannabis space, it's in our plan.
So all our tools were available across all states with legal programs.
Dan Humiston: Okay. All right. So let's talk a little bit about the we funder campaign. Can you give us just some broad strokes about what you're raising and maybe what you're going to use the proceeds for?
Dede Perkins: Certainly we're looking to raise a $500,000. It's interesting. Cause when we first started, we didn't really understand what source funding was. And one of our advisors said, Hey, you should think about this thing. And some of his other companies had raised money and we started looking into it and it was just, he kept calling.
Democratization of investments. So, it's like, so we're looking to raise a half a million dollars. We funder, the way it works is , you have to raise $50,000 right outside the gate before they'll even let you be on the platform.
They have to prove that you've got some traction. So we put out the message we created. Information on, we found our [00:04:00] profile, send it out to our family and friends, raise the 50 and literally about two hours and, got to about 85 . At that point they said, okay, you're legit.
Dan Humiston: , yeah. So with the proceeds, what will you use the proceeds.
Dede Perkins: we will use the proceeds to basically build out the content in the next five states and also to increase our sales team. So, very specific it takes a team of people to basically put in that foundational content. So, , we'll expand it to the states and also expand our.
Dan Humiston: Well, the great thing about it is it's so duplicatable. I mean, it's just once it's in place. And, I think probably most large cannabis companies have a actual compliance department. And I suspect that it's just a matter of time before every cannabis company has at least a compliance officer.
, the potential market is huge. If this goes the way you see it going, where do you see the top line revenues going over the next three or four years?
Dede Perkins: The numbers are unreal to be honest because it's, it's just a booming industry and [00:05:00] we're just starting to, get into the maturity of the industry, and that's just in the United States. I mean, our platform is agnostic. So we've had people who just to build out the regulations in Portugal or Germany or Canada yeah, the numbers.
We're all on. We fund her and I would encourage people if they're interested to go take a look for themselves,
Dan Humiston: And there's a lot of opportunity for collaboration with other platforms. , maybe you can touch on that a little bit, like the seed to sale platforms and some of the other platforms, there's a lot of opportunity there at least seems like that's a natural.
Dede Perkins: Absolutely. Literally from , we first started putting it out on LinkedIn. We started having conversations with seed to sale providers with there's a background check company. There's LMS training systems that we're talking with. There's really a lot of potential collaboration and ways to work together , and, be stronger together.
And certainly even if we don't actually, combined with another company we're actively working on like that trusted partners resource, our goal is always to be a resource for our customers in the cannabis industry. So, if we can sort of vet and, and, just kind of put best practices and work with good partners out there, , that's the minimum [00:06:00] goal.
And certainly collaboration is a big.
Dan Humiston: , I don't want to get ahead of myself or ahead of you guys, but it puts you in a position down the road. , for possible exit strategy. I mean, the relationships that you build now and the collaborations that you build now, if you thought about , for an investor, what's that window look like, and what are some opportunities for you down the road for that cash?
Dede Perkins: Yep. We certainly thought about this and we do think that there's a good chance that there'll be an exit, in four to six years, or there'll be opportunities for an exit, whether it's other compliance kind of coming from other industries, looking to swoop in and make it, an impact in the cannabis industry and stringing a number of solutions together.
I mean, there's a lot of legs to the compliance table. Right. We're just one of them. So whether they're connecting us and seed to sale and licensing platforms certainly there's that. And then there's, just an existing seed to sale or compliance provider. Buying us and putting our product into their platform.
Dan Humiston: Yeah. And th they, like, we talked about it a little bit earlier. The IP is, once it's in place, , it's super [00:07:00] scalable and I think somebody will probably say, Hey, I want to get into cannabis, but I want to let somebody else figure it out.
Dede Perkins: And the beauty of the SAS model is that, you can keep tweaking it and fine tuning it. But basically once it's, like you said, once it's set, it's set and it's duplicatable. So.
Dan Humiston: That's great. Well, we'll have links to pro Canas. We funder campaign in the show notes and as always, please read and completely understand everything before you make any investment decisions. Didi. This is fun. I appreciate you talking to me today and good luck with this campaign.
Dede Perkins: Thank you so much. I've enjoyed talking with you. I appreciate the time.