Pillars of Competitive Advantage: Beverage Guru Wields Brand Building Powers in Cannabis

04/28/22 • 40 min

Joe Bayern wants to make Curaleaf the “first truly national cannabis company in the U.S.” and with operations in 23 states, Curaleaf is getting there. What did it take? Bayern leveraged decades of experience in the beverage sector and other industries. Once at Curaleaf, he executed, taking it from 2,000 employees when he joined in 2019 to 5,500 today.

Key insights he’s learned along the way include:

Don’t underestimate the amount of change and the pace of the industry; be ready to make decisions very quickly.
Maintain a start-up mindset.
The greatest opportunities in cannabis are with brands.
Create competitive advantage by investing in research and development to create great brands and products.
Build a broad distribution platform to get those products to consumers.
Allocate your resources scrupulously.

Guest

Joe Bayern has been the CEO of Curaleaf, one of the biggest multistate operators in the cannabis industry, since 2019. Bayern is a beverage industry player specializing in business transformations. He spent six years in three C-suite posts at Snapple Beverage Group, four-plus years at Cadbury Schweppes in two C-suite posts, and eight years at Voss of Norway, where he was chief operating officer and group CEO. Bayern left Voss in 2019 to break into cannabis with Indus Holdings, from where he joined Curaleaf. He also played for lacrosse for his alma mater, Adelphi University, where he met his wife.

Key insights he’s learned along the way include:

Don’t underestimate the amount of change and the pace of the industry; be ready to make decisions very quickly.
Maintain a start-up mindset.
The greatest opportunities in cannabis are with brands.
Create competitive advantage by investing in research and development to create great brands and products.
Build a broad distribution platform to get those products to consumers.
Allocate your resources scrupulously.

Guest

Previous Episode

Medicine Woman: How Peak Extracts' CEO Beat Bro Culture While Healing Others

Katie Stem’s journey to a career in cannabis started with traditional Western medicine studies in college. That path took a left turn, however, when she was introduced to natural remedies while researching at Oregon Heath & Science University. She switched gears and completed a master’s degree in Chinese medicine instead. She decided to ply her entrepreneurial skills and medicinal expertise to launch Peak Extracts. Katie’s expertise, however, didn’t shield her from sexism and homophobia in the cannabis industry, nor the challenges of Oregon’s saturated market.

Katie positioned Peak to thrive by:

Intelligently introducing automation into her extraction facility.
Recognizing and creatively maneuvering around barriers that others tried to place in front of her.
Operating leanly in a saturated marketplace.
Taking a hands-on approach to bringing innovative products to market.

Who is Katie Stem?

Katie Stem is the co-founder and CEO of Peak Extracts, a Portland, Oregon-based company that manufactures vape cartridges, edibles, tinctures and topicals. The Washington state native was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease in the early 2000s, which led her to use cannabis as a personal treatment and become her own test subject for developing strain-specific products.

Next Episode

Move Fast: Quick Decisions, Appetite for Risk are Cannabis CEO Requirements

When Ankur Rungta wanted to break into the cannabis industry, he didn’t study cultivation or extraction.

Instead, Rungta joined a top tier corporate law firm and later a Wall Street investment boutique where he sharpened his legal, finance and M&A chops.

That gave him the expertise to launch Michigan-based C3 Industries, a vertically integrated cannabis company now in four states and going for more.

But how did Rungta survive the challenges that finance and law couldn’t prepare him for in the cannabis industry?:

Surrounded himself with top talent, including the former chief cultivator of Green Thumb Industries.
Made quick decisions rather than dawdling when new opportunities arose.
Focused on premium brands and found they did well even in saturated markets.
Respected local cannabis cultures.