Posts Tagged ‘Category Design’
095 #1 Tech Startup In Africa w/ Matt Brown
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Entrepreneur, CEO, and top podcaster Matt Brown joins us today for another no-BS conversation about being a Techpreneur in South Africa. He gives us a glimpse of the South African Tech scene, as well as his successes, as he was voted as #1 Tech startup in Africa in London Tech Week. Matt gives practical insights on business and life design as well.
#1 Tech Startup
Matt Brown, a very down to earth guy, recounts to Christopher his experience at London Tech Week, as organizers named him the #1 Tech Startup in Africa. Although he admits he now has unnecessary pressure due to the title, he claims it was a great opportunity for international development in the technology space.
“It was pretty insane when a government like the UK gets behind an idea. So what they have done is, they mobilized literally billions of pounds just for Africa Tech, 1.2 Billion pounds available for distribution.” – Matt Brown
The Storytelling Technology
Matt runs a firm called Digital Kung Fu and he candidly shares with Christopher his elevator pitch — “we’re the world’s fastest tech story production business.” He further shares that Christopher’s books Play Bigger and Niche Down inspired him in this business.
“The truth is were evangelizing this idea — which I totally started from your thinking by the way — category design thinking and creating a point of view that is unique and different.” – Matt Brown
He further shares that through his firm, they are connecting that point-of-view at scale to a market a way that it creates value. In his case, it is the storytelling technology.
“It’s about taking proven powers of storytelling and marrying that with technology — data, automation, AI — and delivering stories essentially at a scale that makes very complicated things in ways that are memorable and relatable and understandable.” – Matt Brown
The South African Tech Scene
Matt also talks about the South African tech scene, as other countries do not exactly know what is happening locally. He shares about the different challenges and opportunities they have there and the similarities in terms of trends.
“I think Africa has some unique challenges. We have infrastructure challenges, connectivity challenges, bandwidth challenges, and these things don’t typically exist in developed markets.” – Matt Brown
Amidst these challenges, Matt shares how these forces techpreneurs to innovate, especially in the mobile phones market.
“African tech has got a bad name in many respects. Basically at a type of expansion into emerging markets, it’s less competitive in many respects. But, the economic opportunities are huge because there is no competition.” – Matt Brown
Bio:
Matt is the CEO of Digital Kungfu. It was named as “Best Tech Startup 2019 – Africa Tech Week Awards.” The company is a lead generation and storytelling production company purpose-built for technology businesses.
Links:
The Matt Brown Show in partnership with London Tech Week creates State of X Season One on Prime
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
094 How We Make Stuff Now w/ Jules Pieri
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Today’s episode features a highly informative discussion between our host, Christopher Lochhead and Jules Pieri. She’s the first designer to graduate from Harvard Business School. She shares some amazing lessons on how to create legendary new products and how to make sure those products succeed in the world.
Industrial Designer Turned Legendary Marketer
Fortune named Jules as one of the Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs.” She is the Co-Founder and CEO of the product launch platform The Grommet.
Jules shares that before she formed the company, she observed the huge shifts in technology — specifically the internet, like the development of 3D printing. 3D printing enabled a huge new class of entrepreneurs with physical products.
“Creative people have access to inexpensive tools, they will use that. Physical products are less abstract than software, so they’re gonna inspire more people to participate.” – Jules Pieri
What We Can Learn From Squatty Potty
Jules shares with Christopher the story behind the product Squatty Potty — a stool that raises the leg of the user during elimination. Christopher labeled the product as legendary because it created a new need for consumers.
Jules admitted that it is often quite a challenge whenever they start a new category. She pointed out the importance for companies to be as bold as possible when launching a new product.
“They hired a great agency to get the ads done and they had more vision and courage than most companies tend to have at the early stages. That’s a super insecure stage of a company and they paid large money. Your reputation is aligned with these ads.” – Jules Pieri
Category Creation Is a Must
Jules remarked about the importance of category creation. She believes that it is very hard to cut through in a crowded world. She added that through The Grommet, they can create categories that enable them to study product searches of users.
“Category search, ‘cause names are not usually as memorable as descriptions.” – Jules Pieri
Christopher and Jules discussed more about Legendary Marketing, the differences between creating demand and capturing a demand. They also touch base on to have an invention and bring it to the world in a way that it would be connected, unique and distinct.
Jules also shares some important parts of her great, new book out called How We Make Stuff Now.
Bio:
Jules Pieri is Co-Founder and CEO of the product launch platform The Grommet.
The company’s Citizen Commerce™ movement is reshaping how consumer products get discovered, shared, and bought.
Jules started her career as an industrial designer for technology companies and was subsequently a senior executive for large brands, such as Keds, Stride Rite, and Playskool.
The Grommet is her third startup, following roles as VP at Design Continuum and President of Ziggs.com.
She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan and people tell her she is the first designer to graduate from Harvard Business School, where she is currently an Entrepreneur in Residence.
Fortune named Jules as one fo the “Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs” in 2013.
In June 2014, White House Maker Faire invited Jules to launch The Grommet Wholesale Platform, connecting Makers with Main Street Retailers.
Links:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
091 Crowd Funding For Good w/ DonorsChoose.org’s Charles Best & Oliver Hurst-Hiller
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Today’s inspiring guests are from DonorsChoose.org, CEO and Founder Charles Best and entrepreneur Oliver Hurst-Hiller. These two, together with a small group of people, came together and made our world a different place, through crowdfunding.
DonorsChoose.org
Donorschoose.org is a non-profit which enables teachers who need help to go straight to the public and seek financial assistance. Charles Best, a former high school teacher turned activist founded the organization. Together with Oliver Hurst-Hiller, the Chief Technology Officer of the org, they have pioneered the category of crowdfunding.
“I was like teachers all over the country. I was spending my own money on school supplies for my students. My colleagues are doing the same. We would talk about all the stuff we want our students to have, but we couldn’t go into our own pockets to buy.” – Charles Best
Merging Technology with Advocacy
Charles Best and Oliver Hurst-Hiller share the current education situation in the US — it is underfunded — and teachers and students need help. In the past, millionaires have been the common benefactors of organizations. Charles, however, thought about regular citizen donors and how their collective power can benefit this cause.
Regular donors will have the ability to pick, choose, donate and hear directly from the beneficiaries. All the donors — whether they donated 50 dollars or 5 million dollarngets the same appreciation, feedback, and transparency direct from their beneficiaries.
“If the internet/technology can enable a regular person giving 50 bucks to have that experience of directness, transparency, reporting and feedback, something magical might happen and 840 million dollars later, I think it has.” – Oliver Hurst-Hiller
The “Philanthropic eBay”
Stanford Business School and Amazon dubbed DonorsChoose.org as “the most innovative non-profit.” The organization is for school front-liners who have an idea or project and is seeking microloans to fund it. The organization connects them to patrons and philanthropists.
“The first news story about our site compared us to a philanthropic eBay. That’s the only parallel that they could draw at that time — with its two-sided marketplace and people connecting.” – Charles Best
Charles Best and Oliver Hurst-Hiller talk more about the organization, crowdfunding. Further, they discussed more on the power-houses backing them up as board of directors. They are Stephen Colbert and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, to name a few.
To hear more about the DonorsChoose.org crowdfunding for good and more information about Charles Best and Oliver Hurst-Hiller, download and listen to the episode.
Bio:
Charles Best, Founder / CEO
Charles Best leads DonorsChoose.org, a nonprofit website that enables anyone to help a classroom in need. He launched the organization in 2000 at a Bronx public high school where he taught history for five years. To date, teachers at more than 80% of all the public schools in America have created classroom project requests on DonorsChoose.org, and more than 3 million people have given to those projects.
DonorsChoose.org is one of Oprah Winfrey’s “ultimate favorite things.” It made the cover of Fast Company as one of the “50 Most Innovative Companies in the World.” It is the first time any charity has received such recognition.
Oliver Hurst-Hiller, Chief Technology Officer and Head of Product
Oliver is responsible for the technology and user experience that power DonorsChoose.org’s unique philanthropic marketplace.
Prior to joining the team in 2006, Oliver managed product engineering projects for Microsoft’s new search engine, now called Bing. He helped start Microsoft Live Labs, an applied research laboratory for Internet technologies. Further, he is also the co-inventor of 22 issued U.S. patents related to Internet search technologies.
In 2011, the Microsoft Alumni Foundation honored Oliver with the Integral Fellows Award. He is the Chair of CTOs For Good and on the Advisory Council on Computing & Information Technology for Brown University.
Links:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
007 Category Creation is the Strategy
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In this episode, Christopher Lochhead discusses why category creation is the new growth strategy for legendary marketing.
Great companies do not focus on incremental growth, rather, they focus on being exponentially different. These leading companies introduce people to new businesses and provide them with new ways of doing things.
Making A Different Future
Legendary companies shape our lives and design a different future. They are on a mission to make the future different. Further, these companies create something exciting — a new way of living, thinking and doing business — category creation. Through category creation, these companies are pioneering the way to the future.
“Many times they are solving a problem we didn’t know we had—or a problem we didn’t pay attention to because we never thought there was another way.” – Christopher Lochhead
These legendary companies make ordinary companies run for their lives. These ordinary companies want to profit from the world for offering it the same set of products and services.
Big Es and Small Es
Lochhead cites different big enterprises as well as small enterprises as an example. Huge companies now started as small when they changed our way of thinking. Companies such as AirBNB, Google, Amazon, Palo Alto Networks, Cisco and Salesforce not only created great products—they created a good company and a great category.
“They had to courage to stand on their own to create a new category of products / services they niched down. And by designing a different niche, they got to own it.” – Christopher Lochhead
Category First, Brands Come Second
Categories make the company, not the other way around. In relation to this, if we carefully examine big brands, there are no legendary companies in a bad category. There will be no customer-recall of brands if these brands are not tailored to cater to a category.
“Brands only matter if they dominate categories that matter. Category design is a new lens, play with it!” – Christopher Lochhead
To hear more about Category Creation as the new growth strategy and more relevant information from Christopher Lochhead, download and listen to the episode.
Bio:
Christopher Lochhead is a Top 25 podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.
He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.
Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.
In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive — which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2006 for $4.5 billion.
He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; was the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.
Link:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
003 What is category creation?
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On today’s episode of Lochhead on Marketing, Christopher Lochhead delves into the concept of category creation. He discusses why legendary entrepreneurs, CEOs, and marketers see category creation or category design as the new approach to winning.
What is it?
Category design is a new management discipline that is focused on creating and monetizing new markets. Moreover, Lochhead sees category creation or category design as a radical differentiation of oneself.
“Winning today is not about beating the competition. The most legendary entrepreneurs, CEOs and marketers are the people who invent a whole new game by defining a new market category, developing that market category and ultimately executing, so that they dominate it over time.” – Christopher Lochhead
Distinguishing Oneself
Legendary marketers and innovators refuse to be in comparison to what came before them. Due to this, customers look at legends as unique, or someone who broke or took a new ground.
Most importantly, legendary marketers want others to be compared to them. They are the agenda setters. They’re the ones defining the game and the rules.
Moving the World
Legendary marketers educate the world about an idea or a problem. Therefore, they provide a solution in a completely different way. They also have the ability to create value and urgency around the idea or problem.
“When the world accepts your point of view about a problem and solution, you change everything. That is what category design is about.” – Christopher Lochhead
Lochhead also discusses the fact that categories are everywhere. Further, he states that category comes first and the brand comes second. According to him, “category is the human filing system that we have, so we can relate to things and most importantly, value things.”
In the end, Lochhead poses the question any marketer should ask oneself, “are you playing someone else’s game or do you have the courage in creating and designing your own category?”
To hear more about category creation and more relevant information from Christopher Lochhead, download and listen to the episode.
Bio:
Christopher Lochhead is a Top 25 podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger.
He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur.
Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist.
In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive — which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in 2006 for $4.5 billion.
He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; was the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient, and served as head of marketing at the CRM software firm Vantive.
Link:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Lochhead on Marketing™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
087 9 Lies About Work w/ Ashley Goodall
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The author of a ground-breaking new book called Nine Lies About Work, Ashley Goodall, joins us today for a fun, smart and unpredictable conversation about work and life. Lochhead and Goodall discuss what’s wrong with work and what to do about it, work-life balance and nurturing the human spirit at work.
Nine Lies About Work
Ashley Goodall is SVP of Leadership and Team Intelligence (LTI) at Cisco. He built this new organization to focus entirely on serving teams and team leaders. Through this, they are able to research and study the most challenging questions about work.
His work at Cisco focuses on defining what is special about the best teams and how does one create the best team for the company. Other than this, he is also the co-author of Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World.
“There are very few things in life that you can’t or shouldn’t smile at. At some point, the more serious the topic, the more important it is to find little moments of levity and humor.” – Ashley Goodall
Work-Life Balance
Ashley points out his opinions about achieving work-life balance and why it is such an unapplicable paradigm in today’s world. Christopher shared how this mindset creates two persons: one that is working and another one, who is living his life.
“The implication of that is, all that stuff in work is bad and all the stuff in life is good. Your job — in order to lead a fulfilled life — is to have enough sugar to sprinkle into all that bitterness of work.” – Ashley Goodall
In this mindset, we are taught that life is the antidote to work — but that is a huge misrepresentation of life. Further, Ashley says that work-life balance is such a disservice to the wonderfulness of work. It mutes employee curiosity of finding out what work will be like if one is high-performing or say, growing and making a huge impact.
“If the prescription is to take over the toxicity and balance it with life, you’ll never get to ask those questions, that is such a shame.” -Ashley Goodall
Language, Love, and Life
Ashley shares a wide array of stories and opinions in this podcast. He poses his standpoint on giving weight to context, as opposed to just taking words as it is.
He further gives advice on how to grow the human spirit in the workplace. The discussion turns into an interesting discussion about love.
To hear more about the nine lies about work and more relevant information from Ashley, download and listen to the episode.
Bio:
Ashley Goodall is an executive, leadership expert, and author, and has spent his career exploring large organizations from the inside.
He looks for lessons from the real world that help people and teams thrive. Further, he focuses on what makes work a more human place for all of the humans in it.
His first experience of teams and leadership were as a student musician and conductor. He was fascinated by the unspoken understanding between people playing together and carried this fascination into the corporate world.
He currently serves as the Senior Vice President of Leadership and Team Intelligence (LTI) at Cisco. It is a new organization built to focus entirely on serving teams and team leaders, and which aims to reveal the answers to some of the most challenging questions about work. What is special about the best teams?
Why do we follow one leader and not another? How can we make more teams like our best teams and more leaders like our best leaders?
The new approaches he has pioneered address everything from performance management to feedback, to team activation technology, to real-time team intelligence, to social network mapping, to strengths-based leadership—and together this challenge much of the conventional wisdom of work today.
Ashley is the co-author, with Marcus Buckingham, of Nine Lies About Work: A Freethinking Leader’s Guide to the Real World (Harvard Business Review Press, April 2019), and of two cover stories in the Harvard Business Review: The Feedback Fallacy, (March/April 2019), and Reinventing Performance Management, (April 2015).
Links:
CISCO Executive Bio – Ashley Goodall
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
081 American Immigrant Dreamer Entrepreneur, Diego Corzo
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Young immigrant and entrepreneur dreamer Diego Corzo joins us today in an insightful conversation about entrepreneurship, investing and achieving dreams in a different country. This episode takes the theoretical discussion about the immigration debate in the US and makes it real through Diego.
Being an Undocumented Immigrant
Diego Corzo entered the US with his family when he was nine. He understood the implications of being undocumented when he applied for a driver’s license. He got denied because of his status. These obstacles continued when he found out he was not eligible for any financial grants or student loans.
“I saw the sacrifices that my parents had, from not speaking English to finding work. My mother, from working in a bank, she was cleaning toilets and houses, without having a day off for a long while.” – Diego Corzo
He was a straight-A student at Florida State University and was working part-time and doing some internships with small business and non-profits organizations. He was handpicked by some companies for work after graduation but unfortunately, he does not have a work permit.
Windows of Opportunity
After these obstacles in finding work to fund his schooling, he conducted research on Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and found out he can start a company under LLC set-up. He then registered an IT consulting company with a colleague and took in as clients the small business and NGOs.
“I always had the mindset that no matter what happens, there is always a way here in the United States. As my dad always says, ‘The US is a land of opportunities and its up to us to find it’.” – Diego Corzo
Back in 2017, Diego also posted a commentary to President’s Trump, as he plans to remove DACA. His post went viral and was able to reach some Dreamers like himself. Dreamers are defined as immigrants who entered the US below 16 years old, have finished high-school and have zero criminal records.
Celebrating the Good Life at Age 28
Part of being viral, he was able to meet some millionaire entrepreneurs from the mastermind group, Gobundance. Although Diego started with 25k net worth, these men saw the potential in him and pledged to mentor him to become a millionaire himself. Diego, at 28 years old, now earns 10x of his initial net worth and owns 19 doors in 13 properties.
“When I shared the story, I’m sort of breaking the paradigm. They think that undocumented immigrants don’t pay taxes. They just take jobs and they dont really support the community.” – Diego Corzo
At present, Diego is into real estate investing and is a financial freedom advocate, especially targeting Dreamers like himself.
To hear more about being an American immigrant Dreamer and more relevant information from Diego, download and listen to the episode.
Bio:
Diego Corzo is a 20-something, Peruvian living in Austin, Texas.
He founded FreeBy26.com to help millennials realize that they don’t have to settle to what society expects.
Diego graduated from Florida State University in 2012 and moved to Austin, TX to work as a software developer for an IT Company.
In his spare time, he started learning as much as I could about financial literacy and the habits of wealthy people.
He became interested in real estate as began to explore different ways to increase his income.
He bought my first property when he was 23.
Fast forward 3 years, he now owns 8 properties which are the source of his passive monthly income.
Ultimately, his goal is to be financially free before he turns 27.
He shares more about his struggles, successes, and mindset through his journey, through his website.
Links:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
080 B2B & B2C Entrepreneur Strava CoFounder Mark Gainey
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In this episode, Mark Gainey, a serial entrepreneur with big-time success B2B and B2C, joins us for another insight-packed conversation. He is the co-founder and chairman of Strava, the athlete’s social network. Today, he talks about entrepreneurship and success, despite major setbacks in his life.
The Virtual Athlete’s Locker Room
The Swedish word for strive is strava, which is defined as “to make great efforts to achieve or obtain.” This is perfect for a team of individuals who have the ambition and attitude to achieve more. Strava’s mission is to build the most engaged community of athletes in the world.
Co-founders and former college colleagues Mark Gainey and Michael Horvath dreamt about this company way back in 1995. They had the concept of creating a virtual locker room and they called it “Kana Sports.”
“We had this concept at the back of our minds, how Kana sports morphed into Kana communications, we had a great time building that, no regrets.” – Mark Gainey
From B2B to B2C
Mark was previously the CEO of Kana Communications which went public late 1999. With a market capital of 11 billion USD and an upcoming new CEO at that time, Mark found himself moving to a different chapter in his life after.
“I distanced myself in a pretty meaningful way. I often joked to people, if you give your child up for adoption, don’t stay living in the house.” – Mark Gainey, after IPO of Kana Communications
Mark further shares his experiences working in a B2B setting, as a CEO and now B2C setting, as a stockholder.
18 Surgeries in 51 years
One of Strava’s irony is they serve the world’s cyclists, but Mark quips that he must have been one of the worst ones on the planet. For one, he had been in a major biking accident which required 11 surgeries. These surgeries are on top of other surgeries from skiing accidents and car accidents.
“Nobody is dying anytime soon but it is a test. You just get back to the saddle. You learn and say okay now I can have three more runs, good to play some other day.” – Mark Gainey
Mark continues narrating his accident and further says that when he is inactive, he feels like he is a different person. Mark shares that ultimately, this is their goal at Strava: to forget trying to push people to go fast and perform well, just encourage them to engage in activities and sweat at least once in a day.
“I think thats the balance. As much as I know that I take the risk everytime to go out there but the idea of not doing that, that is what would kill me.” – Mark Gainey
To hear more about B2B to B2C entrepreneurship and more relevant information from Mark, download and listen to the episode.
Bio:
Mark Gainey is a serial entrepreneur, co-founder, and Chairman of Strava – the social network for athletes.
Mark co-founded Kana Communications Inc. (Kana Inc.), in January 1996 and served as its Chief Executive Officer & President from January 1996 to June 1999.
He has been building successful companies for nearly 20 years. Prior to Kana, from April 1991 to September 1995, Mark Gainey served as an Associate with TA Associates Management, L.P. (TA Associates, Inc.), where he focused primarily on technology and business services investments.
Mark served as President and Chairman of SWK Holdings Corporation. Further, he served as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Kana Communications Inc., from July 1996 to July 2000.
In addition to these, he has been a Director of Clari Inc. since April 2014.
Mark serves as a Director of TA Associates, Inc.
He served as a Director of GlobalSight Corporation, AlterG, Inc. and BoardVantage Inc.
He served as a Director of Kana Communications Inc., from January 1996 to June 1999 and SWK Holdings Corporation since January 1996. Mark Gainey holds a B.A. in General Studies from Harvard University.
Links:
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
078 From Goldman Sachs To Cannabis Venture Capital Pioneer w/ Codie Sanchez
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Let’s get to know Codie Sanchez in today’s fun and insightful episode as she lives on the leading edge of venture capital and entrepreneurship. She is an investor, speaker and business builder. She is a partner at Cresco Capital Partners, one of the first PE funds in the legalized cannabis space.
From Great To Greater
Codie is a former mutual fund manager at Goldman Sachs and a consultant to Facebook, Apple, and Amazon. She earned her MBA from Georgetown University and received her Ph.D. from FGV in Brazil. Given her credentials, she is upfront about not staying long with her previous company nor working in the marijuana industry.
“After a while, everybody has to graduate from that realm and go do something in the world. I was feeling like it was time.” – Codie Sanchez
She started investing in cannabis privately until she saw the actual numbers and the industry growth potential. Aside from being a Venture Capitalist, she is an active advocate in lobbying for federally funded marijuana use research.
“We do a lot of stuff with Vets and see them come back from the war and have PTSD. You get them on opioids or cannabis and see the changes in their lives. Its kind of contagious at some point.” – Codie Sanchez
Lobbying at Washington
Codie recounts her story at Washington D.C. to Lochhead as she says that Cannabis is categorized as Schedule 1—drugs that have no medicinal benefit and are highly addictive.
Lochhead also shares his understanding of the issue. He says that since there is no federally funded research on the benefits, risks, problems, applications and use cases on cannabis, the country might be missing out on its potential.
“So many of them don’t know about cannabis. They know what we used to think about it, like in the 70s, the 80s, but they still don’t know the fact that this is a multi-million dollar industry.” -Codie Sanchez, on meeting with legislators
40,000 Different Uses of Mary Jane
Thanks to people like Codie, more established people are joining the cannabis movement. For instance, there is the UCLA Cannabis Institute, the only research organization branded by a school. They do have to get funding, though, from non-cannabis related companies.
Codie further shares in this episode why she thinks the cannabis industry is a generational wealth creation event. First, its a new industry, but is an overregulated one. Second, there’s no need to create a market for it. Third, the use cases are prolific—with 40,000 different ways to utilize it. Fourth, the audience’s expansion of cannabis is astounding.
Cannabis is definitely not a panacea or a drug that cures everything, but research can definitely back up how it can ease certain illnesses.
To hear more about venture capital in the cannabis industry and more relevant information from Codie, download and listen to the episode.
Bio:
Codie Sanchez is a reformed journalist, turned institutional investor to now a partner at Cresco Capital Partners, one of the first PE funds in the legalized cannabis space.
Throughout her career, she has worked at the intersection of marketing and money, finding contrarian ways to invest and spread the gospel.
She’s always balanced her profession with non-profit service to empower women, veterans and Latinos.
She joined Vanguard ETFs in 2008 ($870B) to build out their ETF business, quite the time, then moved to Goldman Sachs Alternatives group.
Following, she became an SVP at SSGA ($580B) in institutional investing tasked with a $3 billion region, finally coming to First Trust ($63B) to build the LatAm investment business from the ground up. Codie has led global teams in all asset classes, negotiating JV’s, product creation and market entry across the Americas.
Further, she is a board member at The Arcview Group, Magma Partners Venture Fund, Texans for Veterans. She is also a member of the free markets think tank, AEI’s Enterprise Club.
Codie invests in women-led startups through Plum Alley, WAVE and The Vinetta Project and cannabis companies through Cresco Capital Partners.
She received her degree in PR & Journalism from ASU’s Honors School, an MBA from Georgetown University and a Ph.D. from Fundacao Gestulio Vargas. A ballistic vest or bullet-resistant vest, often called a bulletproof vest, is an item of body armor that helps absorb the impact and reduce or stop penetration to the torso from firearm-fired projectiles and shrapnel from explosions. Visit Rotorm.com to find Best Bulletproof Vests on the USA market. Today, buying a bulletproof vest is a serious investment which means that you must carefully weigh many different options when committing to getting a vest. It is vital to choose only the best bulletproof vest and highest quality body armor that will meet all your needs. #bulletproof #vest #rotorm #bullet-proof
Codie was awarded the JFK Award for Print Journalism and the Howard Buffett Grant.
Links:
Marijuana investor insights: Q&A with venture capitalist Codie Sanchez
Top Eight Tips For Finding Startup Funding
We hope you enjoyed Codie Sanchez on this episode of Follow Your Different™! Christopher loves hearing from his listeners. Feel free to email him, connect on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and subscribe on iTunes!
