Lessons learned while working for a startup. Meet Claire Moloney, the first woman to work in cannabis tech and the first employee at LeafLink. Claire joins Karson Humiston to share her story and discuss her journey as LeafLink's first hire and all of the lessons she has learned along the way. Claire shares advice for other women looking to break into the cannabis industry and shares tips for how to be successful in a rapidly growing startup. Produced by PodConx Proud To Work In Cannabis - https://podconx.com/podcasts/proud-to-work-in-cannabis Karson Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/karson-humiston Vangst - https://vangst.com/ Claire Moloney - https://podconx.com/guests/claire-moloney LeafLink - https://www.leaflink.com/
Lessons learned while working for a startup.
Meet Claire Moloney, the first woman to work in cannabis tech and the first employee at LeafLink. Claire joins Karson Humiston to share her story and discuss her journey as LeafLink's first hire and all of the lessons she has learned along the way. Claire shares advice for other women looking to break into the cannabis industry and shares tips for how to be successful in a rapidly growing startup.
Proud To Work In Cannabis - https://podconx.com/podcasts/proud-to-work-in-cannabis
Karson Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/karson-humiston
Vangst - https://vangst.com/
Claire Moloney - https://podconx.com/guests/claire-moloney
LeaflLnk - https://www.leaflink.com/
Claire Moloney: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Claire Maloney. I'm the senior director of expansion at leaf link. I'm proud to work in the cannabis industry because it's an industry full of startups. There's nothing more rewarding than building a startup that helps other growing startups to scale.
Karson Humiston: Hey everybody. And welcome to the proud to work in cannabis podcast. I'm your host, Carson Thomaston, the founder and CEO at banks. And today I am so excited to have Claire Maloney. Joining us. Claire was the first hire at leap link today. She is the senior director of expansion. Claire, you are definitely one of the first females in cannabis.
Period, not to mention the first hire first female hire at leaf link. What an honor it is to have you on our show today. Welcome.
Claire Moloney: Thanks so much for having me Carson. And I have to say, I think you were probably the other first female in cannabis that I met because we were launching leaf Lincoln bank stride around the same time. So I'm so excited to have this conversation with you of all people.
Karson Humiston: Yeah. And [00:01:00] it's so funny, Claire and I were talking a little bit before this podcast. We both remember before either of our companies had offices, we were sitting in the same. Open coworking space galvanized in Colorado, both getting the companies off the ground. Leif link was one of our first clients.
Claire was like, she said, one of the first people.
that I've met. So it's crazy to fast forward five and a half, almost six years later. And be sitting here talking today. So, so Claire, it's so great to have.
Claire Moloney: Yeah, really excited.
Karson Humiston: Let's let's jump right in first question. How did you end up being the first hire at leaf Lincoln?
And how come you made the decision to join a cannabis technology company back in 2015.
Claire Moloney: Yeah. So I actually have been a hot first hire, maybe five or six times now. So when I was graduating Cornell, one of the last classes I took, there was an entrepreneurship series where. Founders who graduated from Cornell, talk about how they started their companies. And I was so inspired by [00:02:00] that class. I knew leaving college that I wanted to be a first hire at a startup that made it.
I also took a leadership class , where I identified that I'm really an operator, which is why I wanted to be in that first higher role. So I did a lot of networking and I met founders and I worked as a first hired a number of different startups, typically in an operations or marketing role. , but none of them worked out.
They all kind of either stayed small businesses or went out of business. And so after a few goes, I eventually just gave up and went to a marketing role at a really big corporate company that had over 30,000 people. And I was miserable because I just really wanted to be in startups. So essentially I had met Ryan earlier, , in my twenties when my sister worked at Colgate, Ryan was at Colgate, , speaking at an entrepreneurship series.
He, of course, as a student had launched startups already that were successful. So he was talking at this event and my sister said, Hey, Ryan, you should really meet my [00:03:00] sister. She wants to be a first hired startups. You want to be an entrepreneur? You're newer. You guys should have. So we met back then we kept in touch and then he called me right when I was at this corporate marketing job, I was unhappy.
And I had always wanted to work with Ryan, but the timing had just never worked out. So he called me and told me about leaf link. And at first, like when I, when he was calling me to offer me a job, I practically said yes, before I even knew what it was. And then he told me that it was in cannabis. Oh, I'm going to have to think about this because back then in 2015 in New York, no one was working in cannabis.
I didn't know a soul in the industry. And I remember asking my family, my friends, everyone, what they thought about it. And fortunately, Everyone was extremely enthusiastic and really supportive. There was not a single person who had a stigma about cannabis or the industry. So that's when I decided to jump in and thank God I did because here we are now we have over 300 people been [00:04:00] here for six years.
and we're a series C company. It's a really exciting place.
Karson Humiston: So holy cow, , let's go back to you. Get off the phone with Ryan. You decide I'm going to take this job. The job starts it's you, Ryan and Zach, then what happened?
Claire Moloney: Yeah. So I remember my first day we opened our tiny office in a, we work in New York. And essentially what we were doing during that time is looking for our first customer. And then building the platform at that point, it was about 60% complete to an MVP stage. So we finally got our first customer going and we were building towards a launch and I can still remember we were flying back and forth to Colorado to understand their operations and to build a platform to meet their needs.
And then when we went live, we were working on bringing on all of the dispensaries that were ordering from that company. And then from there, my role was figuring out how to get more customers onto leaf [00:05:00] link. I was in marketing and operations, so I essentially called operators all across the state of Colorado.
I remember I talked to someone at Dixie who just told me about their day to day. And I looked for clues on how to figure out how to get brands and retailers to have a network effect on the platform. And I realized that brands and retailers already knew each other. I know that's kind of a, if you work in the industry, you're like, of course they already know each other.
But at that point, this was news to me because I hadn't worked in an industry like this one before. So that's when we started our referral programs. That's what I stood up from the ground up. So essentially I worked with our sales team with our first client to get the referral program going. And essentially the brand could bring on any dispensaries they worked with.
And then that's a program we launched across every new state we went live in and it generated about 60% of all of our retailers. Sign-ups.
Karson Humiston: Wow. The referral, the referral programs, which just goes to show you how important relationships in this industry continue to be for people listening that [00:06:00] might not know, of course leave link has wildly evolved and grown and offers so many things. But can you tell us at the core, what leap link is for people that don't know and how it started and what it's grown to?
Claire Moloney: Yeah. So leaf link started as a marketplace. So essentially a place where cannabis brands and retailers can do commerce. It's licensed operators only. So it's a safe place for everyone to shop and do business. Over time we've grown into a supply chain platform. So what that means is that we offer.
Obviously the marketplace, but then also payments and logistics services. So we're really this end to end supply chain solution. And essentially our goal is to take that kind of busy operational work off of the shoulders of brands and retailers so that they can focus on specializing in what they do best, which is building a brand or running their dispensary store and not having to worry about all of those operations behind the scenes.
Karson Humiston: Yeah. So I just wanted to get that out there for people listening to. Track what we're [00:07:00] talking about in case they weren't aware with what Leveland goes, which I imagine at this point, most people are. So, so, all right. So , it's early days you're working on helping sign more customers up relief, length, the team's growing.
Talk to us about those early days. Pre-seed how you want to. Finding employees bringing them into the business, what you were looking for. And then over time, how that changed? I think a lot of people are deciding, do I want to join a really early stage startup? Or do I want to join something a little bit later stage?
So from your perspective as employee number one, how does that employee profile and journey evolve over time?
Claire Moloney: Yeah. So that's a really great question. Of course, we lean very heavily on banks, especially in the early days. I still remember you hired our first salesperson who was very fundamental in building out our early stage. Shout out to Molly.
Karson Humiston: And by the way, Ryan and Zach interviewed her in like a creepy [00:08:00] Airbnb somewhere, but it just seemed completely normal, can you imagine now? But,
Claire Moloney: because right. They were visiting on one of their trips in Colorado and had to meet in a weird kitchenette or something, and she still took the offer. So,
Karson Humiston: it was amazing.
Claire Moloney: Exactly. So back in the early days, we really leaned on you and recruiters because at the time we really didn't have many connections in the industry.
And I think the key difference between what we were hiring for back then, and what we hire for now is the degree of specialization we look for in Canada. So you can imagine our first 15 to 30 employees were all people who could wear multiple hats because we didn't have that many employees and we had a lot to accomplish.
So for example, I remember our first product designer focused on product design, but also would help us on marketing design because we didn't have an on-staff designer. That's like one really good example. Over time as we raise more rounds of funding that to be a much larger company. We hire much more for specialization.
So now, for example, on the product [00:09:00] design team, , it's a much larger team and we have people who just focus on UX or just focus on product design on one portion of the platform. So that type of specialization over time, I think. Based on your skillset and background, when you might want to join a startup.
For me specifically, I think of myself as a biz ops profile. So business operations or strategy and operations. And for me, I'm able to wear a lot of hats and had to be dynamic based on the task at hand. So for me, joining early was really exciting because I got to work on a lot of different things. I have a lot of variety in my day to day.
And now in my role as director of expansion, I'm able to similarly be dynamic in terms of launching a new state and adapting to the market conditions in that given state New York and New Jersey, even though they're neighboring are completely different market structures with a completely different set of needs.
And I love that dynamic flexibility that I have in my [00:10:00] role. Whereas other more specialized roles are really focused on their area of specialization.
Karson Humiston: Most people that are employee number one in a startup, don't make it to the finish line, because like you said, how the business becomes much more specialized, but for you, it's such an amazing, amazing. Success story of how you've stayed through all these different iterations and you've found your place.
That's proven to be extremely successful and valuable to the business. How is your role as the first hire wearing so many different hats, doing all different things. How has your role changed over all the years? I know you touched on what you're doing now, but how has that journey evolved over the last six years?
Claire Moloney: Yeah, that's a really great question. So I'll actually say it was a pretty hard muscle to learn in the first two years, I would say, because I've read a really great article about this. It's called like letting go of your Legos. And essentially. When [00:11:00] you have a lot of new people joining a company they're joining and they're taking over parts of your job.
That's the goal, right? When we had 15 people and we went to 150, some of those people had to give up their responsibilities to other new people who were specialized in that thing. And at first that can be really scary because you're like, Hey, I thought I was good at that thing. What if this person comes in and does it better than I did?
How will that make me look or feel. But I learned pretty quickly that when specialists came in and they were able to do their job, they did do it better than me. That was better for the overall company. The company grew a lot more quickly because of it. And then I was also freed up to do things that I was better at.
So over time I actually think that because we've hired so many people, I've been able to specialize more and more in what I like to do. So instead of just being a business operations person who covers a lot of gaps instead now in business operations person who is specialized in launching new markets, which is , a place where I really spike.
[00:12:00] Right. So that's really how it's changed for me over time. I'll also say I've really grown as a leader within the company. When I started, I had a couple of directors. Here and there, but now I lead a cross-functional team of about 15 people. And I definitely I'm among a lot of other amazing female leaders at the company in similar roles.
So it's really exciting place to be from that aspect as well.
Karson Humiston: I'm definitely looking up the article that was amazing what you just said there, because it's so common across all of our clients at some point you can't do every single thing and you need to let go of certain responsibilities and bring in the people that know how to do them and find your niche.
And a lot of people, frankly, can't do it and you've been able to super successfully do it. And to your point. Grown as a result of it. I mean, just to me, it's just amazing , to hear you say that, let's talk a little bit about leadership to the point that you made. You've gone from being first employee without any reports to now having [00:13:00] a team of 15 people.
I imagine it's your first time having this money direct reports. What tips do you have for people that are looking to gain leadership skills and become a leader as a first time within a company that maybe haven't done it?
Claire Moloney: Yeah, I think it's really important to be intentional about being a leader. I actually have been working with a career coach. Because I want to make sure that I'm doing a good job of being a leader within the company. And I feel that responsibility, not only because of the people that I work with and that I impact every day, but also because I recognize that I'm a woman in leadership and I feel a unique responsibility to the other women.
I work with to be a role model for women who aspire to become leaders. And then also to be a strong woman in leadership to show people who might have biases against women. Right. Women in business can be extremely powerful. For example, next week, I'm on a panel and I'm on a panel with all men.
And so I need to show up in those [00:14:00] moments because I know that eyes are on me as the woman in the room. And so I think it's really important to reflect on what your leadership style is. And a big piece of that as a woman in leadership is that you need to identify what your strengths are, not just what your weaknesses are.
I read this really illuminating Harvard business review article that was talking about how. Men tend to emphasize their strengths and women tend to emphasize their weaknesses because women tend to look at their weaknesses as ways they can improve, and then they can become a great employee. But actually what you're supposed to do is emphasize your strengths because then if you highlight those people tend to forget your weaknesses.
So I've been working a lot with my career coach. On reflecting on what my strengths are so that I can make sure to highlight them in meetings and in daily interactions. And that will amplify myself as a leader. It's been a little bit of a tough exercise at times, cause I just want to focus on the things they can improve of which there are many, but I think it's really reframed how I [00:15:00] approach everything for the better.
So I definitely recommend working with their career coach. If it's something you can do or even just finding mentors or coaches internally and your current.
Karson Humiston: That's a great tip. And for people that are out there listening to this that are thinking, I need to go and find a career coaches. Do you think the best thing to do is ask for referrals, literally Google, how to find career coach. Some feedback we've gotten on this podcast is like actual tactical advice.
So I'm sure there's women out there listening, thinking. I need to find a career coach tomorrow. How did you find yours and how would you recommend others going through the process of finding a career?
Claire Moloney: Yeah. So I did a lot of research online. I did ask around for referrals, but I didn't get any that were exactly what I wanted, which is that I specifically wanted a woman. I wanted someone who had kids , because that's something I want eventually. So I wanted someone who understood that.
And then I also wanted someone who had worked with people in startups and VC. And it was really hard to find that person. I did a lot of searching online to find someone and I eventually triangulated on someone on LinkedIn. That's really where I did most [00:16:00] of my searches. And I found that this person actually had a mutual connection with my coworker, Susanna Rubinstein, who had worked with her in the past and then recommended her.
So that's how I reached out. I only interviewed one career counselor and then started working with her. And she's great. So, unfortunately I think it's pretty difficult to find, but I also think they're pretty expensive. And so I think being creative about different ways to get career coaching is also something I would recommend.
Obviously everyone always talks about finding a mentor. One thing I'll say about mentorship is that I think a lot of women want to find other women as mentors. Obviously it's much easier to ask a woman to be a mentor, but a lot of mentors can be kind of run down if they have a lot of mentees. And so I actually would encourage people to also look for male mentors to help them with their career.
I actually look at Zack Silverman, our co-founder and CTO is one of my biggest mentors. We meet once a month and he helps me with all of this advice related to my career. And that's [00:17:00] been extremely influential and it's great. So although maybe Zach will start charging me soon, who knows,
Karson Humiston: If he's listening to this, he might start charging. Great. In terms of what gets you really excited about where the industry is going? Talk to us about your general outlook on the industry. We've been, I'm sure what we thought in 2016. If we said let's talk about 20, 22, nothing exactly shaked out the way that we thought it would.
So if we're sitting here and we're looking ahead five years from now, what gets you most excited to continue defining this industry?
Claire Moloney: So that's a really personal question for me and I it's, because I've been in new Yorker, my entire. I grew up in New York. I went to school in New York and I've worked in New York for my whole career. And New York leaf link is headquartered in New York in the financial district. And so we've been sitting in these offices in fidei for the last six years, flying across the country to launch other markets and.
I got to launch New York, which is one of the biggest adult use Marcus coming [00:18:00] online. And I just think about markets back in 2016 and how little social equity came up, how little women in leadership came up. And now that is the primary focus of New York regulators standing up. This market is so inspiring to me.
And in my role, , I've gotten the ability to talk to a lot of these regulators and the amount that. Truly care about social equity and doing this right, is incredibly inspiring and amazing to be a part of. So that's what I think has really shifted and changed. And I think we have this really unique ability in cannabis to stand up a new industry for the first time, keeping social equity and social justice in mind.
And I can't think of another industry that has gotten to do that. , there've been a lot of attempts that haven't been successful, but I still think it's exciting that we're trying. And I personally think that New York has some of the most aggressive and ambitious plans in this [00:19:00] area. And I'm so excited to be a part of them unfolding.
It's really what keeps me going and is what I'm. So looking forward to in the next two to three.
Karson Humiston: And can you give listeners a little bit of an overview on social equity and the social equity program in New York specifically? Of course, everybody. The term, social equity out a lot. We've had a lot of folks on the podcast talking about it, but to your point, the way that New York is going about it, we've never seen done before.
It has the best chance to be successful. Because of people like you that are helping bring the program together, that it will be successful. Can you give listeners just a little bit of overview on what's going on in New York and specifically the social equity components that are going to define them?
Claire Moloney: Yeah. So in New York their regulations require that 50% of licensed. Are qualified social equity licensees. There's a number of different categories. You can fall into to qualify for that, but generally it's people of color, women, veterans, et cetera. And so with that, what we've heard [00:20:00] from regulators in New York is that they're prioritizing those social equity licensees.
So they will be the first to market. So a really good example of that is that the first 100 to 200 retail licenses, that will be. We'll be for people who were either convicted of cannabis crimes or their families were impacted by cannabis crimes. And they will actually be the first stores to come online.
So they'll get first to market advantage so generally there are other states that have tried to do something like this and have tried to have requirements for social equity licenses. It's usually a smaller percentage, but either way, they've tried. And one of the biggest challenges is actually getting those licenses off the ground because they need access to capital.
And the regulators are really thinking about this. It's very top of mind right now. And there's actually an allocated amount of funding that they're using just to be able to kickstart the social equity businesses, which is really innovative as well. I think it will take a lot of iteration and innovation over time, but that's where I find the fact that [00:21:00] the regulators are truly in the community.
You see them everywhere. Every conference I go to in New York, they're there, I've had a lot of conversations with them. Myself. They've had so many conversations with people looking for licenses, including in the legacy market. They're really trying to use everyone's feedback to make this successful. So even if I think in the.
Couple of iterations. There might be a couple of plot holes. I really do think that they'll work to fix them. And I think that's really encouraging.
Karson Humiston: , you mentioned today? 300 employees across multiple different departments. What's it like working at leaf link more broadly today now that it is a larger startup than three people flying around the country.
Lodging.
Claire Moloney: Right. Well, we have a talent team now, which is amazing and they recruit and interview people which has been really helpful. so in terms of what it's like to work for leaf link, essentially, we obviously have roles across a number of departments. So there's our tech team, which is product and engineering.
Sales marketing the talent team, people team, et cetera. There's almost every department you [00:22:00] can think of that you'd find in a typical startup. Working at leaf link is really exciting. I think that the coolest thing to me about working at leaf link now versus six years ago is that it's just as exciting as it was back then.
I think you really truly get to celebrate wins with your coworkers a lot, because there's so much going on at the company to celebrate across all of our different solution lines. I would recommend that if you were looking to get into leaf link obviously you can apply through our website, there's actually a general interest category.
So if nothing is on the website, that's interesting to you. You can apply there to share your resume and then you can be pulled back in if there's another role. And then there's of course always networking with leaf link members on LinkedIn. I'll say quite a few people have joined leaf link because they cold reached out to me on LinkedIn and I referred them to the talent team.
So definitely recommend that as well. I'm always happy to talk to people who are interested in working here to, to share a bit more about my.
Karson Humiston: And look, if people are listening to this podcast today, leave blinker. 300 people in a couple of years, they're going to have 600 people. And so new people that maybe are listening to [00:23:00] this podcast that join. Now, it's still the very, very early days for leap link and this entire industry, which declares point is why we're all so excited, because as we say , on almost every one of these podcasts, the cannabis industry is the smallest today that it will ever be.
So it's a great time to join the cannabis industry. New company starting that people can be employee. Number one at like Claire was there's amazing off the ground companies , like leave link where you can start now and still be an early employee in the grand scheme of things. And it's an incredible time.
So Claire, any final thoughts you want to share with us before we wrap up here? This one?
Claire Moloney: I know it really did. I would just say a big thank you to Carson for everything that you've done in this industry to build it up from the ground up, we're actually having. Uh, Meeting at leaf link yesterday, where we were talking about you specifically and how much banks has helped to bring people from outside of cannabis into this space.
And it's really made it the industry that it is today. So a big thank you to you and to banks. We wouldn't be [00:24:00] where we are without you. Leafly concluded. So thank you.
Karson Humiston: That is very, very nice to say and , there's a lot more people to hire. It's because of people like you that have been able to be so successful and pave the way that more and more great people like you are going to join the industry. So more like thank you to you and thank you to leaf link for being an early client and huge supporter of vanc, Stan.
Yeah, we absolutely loved team leaf link. So that's a wrap everybody. Thanks for tuning in and thank you to Claire for doing.
Claire Moloney: Awesome. Thanks so much.