Cannabis technology company Lantern's CEO Meredith Mahoney Lantern is an ecommerce marketplace built for cannabis delivery, and CEO Meredith Mahoney joins Vangst CEO Karson Humiston to chat about the challenges and benefits of building a startup in the industry. And as federal legalization is among the hottest topics in the country, the discussion gets interesting: Is federal prohibition holding companies back, or is it creating a "competitive moat" that will make it harder for incumbent players to break into the kingdom being built by the first-movers? Hint: Probably a little bit of both. All that and, of course, what Lantern is looking for when it comes to new hires and building a healthy culture. 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/ Lantern - https://lanternnow.com/ Meredith Mahoney - https://podconx.com/guests/meredith-mahoney
Cannabis technology company Lantern's CEO Meredith Mahoney
Lantern is an ecommerce marketplace built for cannabis delivery, and CEO Meredith Mahoney joins Vangst CEO Karson Humiston to chat about the challenges and benefits of building a startup in the industry. And as federal legalization is among the hottest topics in the country, the discussion gets interesting: Is federal prohibition holding companies back, or is it creating a "competitive moat" that will make it harder for incumbent players to break into the kingdom being built by the first-movers? Hint: Probably a little bit of both. All that and, of course, what Lantern is looking for when it comes to new hires and building a healthy culture.
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/
Lantern - https://lanternnow.com/
Meredith Mahoney - https://podconx.com/guests/meredith-mahoney
Meredith Mahoney: [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Meredith Mahoney, co-founder and CEO of Lantern, and I'm proud to work in cannabis because I get to solve fun problems every day.
Karson Humiston: Hey everybody, and welcome to the Proud to Work in Cannabis podcast. I'm your host, Carson Hoon, the founder of Angst, and today I'm very excited to have the founder of Lantern Meredith Mahoney joining us. Meredith, thanks so much for being on the show. How are you today?
Meredith Mahoney: Yeah, I'm good, Carson. Good to see you.
Karson Humiston: Meredith, before we get into some of the, the, the main questions, it would be great for us to hear your background and how you decided to co-found Lantern and you know, what you were doing before.
Meredith Mahoney: Yeah, so my entire career has been in consumer and like early in my career, that was brick and mortar stores. I started in merchandising. So visual design, also buying product assortment planning. I've worked in every product category you can imagine. I've worked in like apparel, home toys, baby gear flowers, plants, like everything.[00:01:00]
Halfway through my career, I transitioned into D to C eCommerce with Wayfair. I was there for eight years, and while I was there, I helped start and run three of the portfolio brands under the Wayfair umbrella. After that I went in and joined a founder of a clean beauty startup. So add beauty to the list.
Interestingly, beauty has a lot of correlation and consumer behavior to cannabis which is interesting and fun. And then after that startup and beauty, I took a few months off and really thought about what I wanted to do next with my life, and decided I wanted to work in cannabis. So here I am.
Karson Humiston: So you decide that you wanna work in cannabis and. Then what? How do you go from one day waking up, deciding you want to, to running, one of the leading companies in this space?
Meredith Mahoney: Well, I was lucky to be in Boston and know, you know, Boston's a. Small startup tech community. I knew the founders of drizzly, the alcohol e-commerce marketplace and delivery platform. And they had been thinking about starting up a [00:02:00] cannabis business, sort of with the same technology, same go-to-market strategy.
And you know, just talking to the two founders of drizzly one day said, Yeah, this sounds like a fun thing to do, Let's go for it. And I think, you know, I could probably bring a lot to the table with all of my consumer tech background and experience and. You know, just like I said, there's actually a lot of other product categories that kind of relate and consumer behavior to cannabis, so I was really, really interested in, in like solving a hard customer journey.
Karson Humiston: And so for people not listening, could you give them the rundown on Lantern as a business and, and what you all do?
Meredith Mahoney: So Lantern is an e-commerce marketplace. We aggregate SKUs products from many, many retailers into one shopping destination lantern now.com. Also an app. and customers can shop product first, which is very different than how customers shop today in cannabis, you're usually shopping dispensary first.
Our thesis is that customers will shop product first in marketplaces [00:03:00] like they do in every other product category. If you think about the way you shop for any product, any consumer good that you use, you're rarely buying directly from the brand or from. One store that only carries a handful of brands, you're usually shopping in big marketplaces.
So, you know, we do the consumer acquisition, we're building a consumer brand, and then once the consumer sees all the products available to them, they place an order and then we facilitate the delivery. We don't actually do the delivery. We're a software business, but we help facilitate all of the logistics and customer service and everything that the consumer.
Karson Humiston: So what's been the hardest or most different part of working in cannabis compared to the other industries? I know you talked about some correlations, but what has been the like the biggest difference?
Meredith Mahoney: Patience . I don't have a lot of patience and I think that like in other unregulated categories, you can build your business as fast as you have a great team, a solid thesis and product market fit and capital like. If you've got those three things, [00:04:00] you're unstoppable and you just basically build your business as fast as you can, like stay up late every night, you know?
And that's just not true in cannabis. You have this external factor, which is probably the, the biggest determination of your business growth, which is regulation. And you know, also you can't build, I think in tech, one thing we're used to in the unregulated space is like build an mvp, scale it to v2.
Scale it across country, like rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. And the way that the markets are regulated at the state level, obviously every market shapes up a little bit differently. So you're constantly building market specific product. It's pretty labor intensive and capital intensive. But I also think that's what allows us to be really innovative and creative and you know, you're just not, you're not executing the same playbook over and over.
You have to really think about how to go to market every time you launch a new.
Karson Humiston: And so when you think about that and you've thought about building your team and the differences in cannabis and the, the [00:05:00] patient element and the differences in building in cannabis versus building outside of cannabis, how have you thought about building your team and what kind of. Teammates, are you looking to recruit?
Meredith Mahoney: Yeah, so I think we have a really good mix of the best consumer tech people in the US and like the best cannabis people. Whether that's from a, on the cannabis side, whether that's business development or policy or advocacy. And when you. Paired that group with, you know, like the best product leaders and engineer engineering leaders and, and brand building in the consumer space.
It's a pretty, pretty winning combination. But you have to have that, that cannabis experience. And I think for everyone listening like please do come work in cannabis. We need people. Because there's nothing that can replace that depth of experience from people that have worked in cannabis for a few years.
their onboarding time is shorter. They are productive and like they're driving results quicker. It's just, [00:06:00] it's really, really needed.
Karson Humiston: And you know what's so interesting? It's like a couple years ago in this industry, there really wasn't a pool, a huge pool of candidates who had worked in the industry and had had previous experience outside of the industry. And so that. Finding a diamond in the rough. Now that we're several years into this, there are a lot of people that have industry experience.
And so like for people listening three years from now, we're gonna be sitting here having the same conversation and saying someone with three years of cannabis experience is very experienced in the space. And so if you join now you're setting yourself up to be very experienced as the industry inevitably keeps growing.
Like one thing that I. Kind of forget is that today there's 450,000 people in the space. Five years ago, there was only 45,000 people in the space. In a decade from now, there'll be a million people in the space. So there's gonna be over 500,000 brand new people that enter the space. And so if you're listening and you're not in, like, you can find a great [00:07:00] job and build off of that experience very quickly.
You know, in, in, in Meredith, for your team members that didn't have cannabis experience that entered. What do you think was the biggest learning curve outside of, you know, regulation and, and just like learning the space? What other learning curves should people expect as they come into the space?
Meredith Mahoney: So I think that, you know, you have to leave your assumptions at the door of how things worked in whatever category or whatever industry you worked in before. Like obviously there'll be some, some similarities, but, you know, in our world, in consumer, in a lot of unregulated categories in cpg, it's like there's this playbook of building the, the frontend experience for the customer.
And you know, you like create how many steps to car, the cart to check out and then. , and that's just not how people shop for cannabis. I think a, a huge thing is consumer research, whether you are a consumer or you're b2b, like know your audience, know your customer, whether your customer is like the person standing [00:08:00] in front of you in the dispensary or if it's, On the B2B site, every dispensary in North America, you just need to know what they're looking for.
And that changes a lot. Cuz the industry's changing. So you can't, you also can't speak to your stakeholders once you need to constantly just be understanding what the stakeholders need that your product serves. So yeah, like definitely having an openness that this is a category that's quickly changing.
It's not like anything. We're the ones creating it. And you know, I loved your point about like the expansion of the, people that work in cannabis. I, I think all the time about, yeah, we're gonna build a big thing that's gonna be worth a lot of money and serve a lot of consumers and all that. But I hope we also turn out like the next wave of CTOs, CEOs, Chief Product Officers.
Chief people officers. That's to me, As much of a, you know, success as lantern becoming a household name.
Karson Humiston: Right, and, and people [00:09:00] entering the space and quickly being able to move up. Another cool thing that we've seen is people enter the space as an entry level trimmer, and they show up every day and they work hard and they learn the business and next thing you know, they're. A grow manager and then they're a director of cultivation, and then a new state is opening up and a new business wins a license, and they wanna recruit someone from Colorado who knows how to build out a cultivation facility and they have a life changing offer to move across the country.
I mean, that's hard to replicate in industries that aren't moving as fast as our, So as much as we kind of complain about. The pace that Meredith and I would like to run at the industry still is moving quickly in comparison to the pace other, other industries are moving at. switching gears a little bit of topic that we actually had a couple investors on last week, of course fundraising for any of us running tech businesses, the landscape has changed a bit over the last I guess year.
What has your experience been? [00:10:00] Fundraising. And how do you, how are you thinking about fundraising going forward as the PC environment has become a bit more challenging?
Meredith Mahoney: We've fortunately not had to raise yet because we when drizzly joined Uber about a year ago, , they basically let us take all of the capital with us to, to spin out with Lantern, which was amazing. But I do keep in touch and talk the investor community a lot. One of the best ways to know what's going on in your industry.
I tell people all the time, if you get into a new industry, go talk to the investors and the investment bankers. Like they know what's going on. It's not easy out there right now, but I think that there's still capital to be deployed as long as you've got a strong business, a good founding team, a you good leadership team.
And you don't get over your skis on your valuation. I mean, there's still, there's still capital to deploy. . We can't expect every business that kind of gets founded on the fly to succeed and we can't be greedy about our valuations. I think that's, those are the two biggest learnings over the past year and a half.
This like [00:11:00] flash in the pan, it's the cannabis show. Like we we're starting to have to like, get back into reality around like, this is gonna take a while. Capital needs to be patient. That's the other thing is like if people are listening that are looking to get their businesses funded, just make sure you're not taking any money that comes along.
Make sure that you're taking the right money that fits your timeline that you click with, cuz , you're gonna know them for the life of your business.
Karson Humiston: Right. And, and like the timeline thing is so important, right? I mean, people that may have invested five years ago might have been operating on under the assumption that something would've happened at the federal level. , and while of course we've seen positive signs, it, we know what actually knows.
And so I completely agree with Meredith It's a marriage that, you know, actually in real marriage, I guess you can get divorced in business marriage, I think it's much harder to get actually divorced. So, So the right capital versus any capital in this industry seems like the most critical.
And, and, and then I guess in that same timeline, [00:12:00] I hate when people ask me this question, but I'm gonna ask you the question because I'm curious, what do you think the timeline for something at the federal level happening?
Meredith Mahoney: Um, We had a board meeting last week, and the, at we, you know, seven or eight people in the room started having this discussion and went on and on, and finally I said we are not saying the word legalization again. Okay. Like, we don't know. I have no idea. No one does. And if you ask 10 people, you'll get 10 different answers.
We plan our business and we operate as if there will never be legalization. And then when legalization happens, it will for our business, throw off a number of unlocks that will accelerate the business wildly and we just need to be ready for that moment.
Karson Humiston: I think that's the best answer I've ever heard to the question. Just forget about it. Just build the business If it doesn't happen. If it does happen, it's a good bonus.
Meredith Mahoney: you know what I think about, not that I wouldn't love to see federal legalization, I certainly would. Professionally, personally, you know, I think our country would be better for it, but the lack of federal [00:13:00] legalization is what is creating the competitive moat for a lot of us. This is a hard thing to do and there's only so many people that can do it.
And so we, the cannabis community are building the hard thing and it's really solid. When legalization does happen, it's gonna be really hard for incumbent players just to come and take all of that market share. So it's not great, but silver lining is it, is what is, you know, kind of pushing us to do the hard thing right now.
That's gonna be hard to compete with.
Karson Humiston: Right. And create, create moats around your business that people aren't gonna try to , swim across the moat to the castle.
Meredith Mahoney: Exactly. Exactly.
Karson Humiston: And I think that's a good point too, because I think a lot of people that are maybe thinking about getting into the industry are saying, I'm gonna wait until that moment that legalization happens because it could be very risky for my career.
And I think that's a false narrative. I think it will be riskier to wait to get in until it's too late, right? That, that the opportunity's not gonna be as interesting once it's legal, as it's [00:14:00] gonna be de-risked.
Meredith Mahoney: I agree, and I think if you're the type of person. Would even think about going and working in cannabis. You're not likely to go into something next that would have a negative view of cannabis, if that makes sense. Like I, I, I think that this hike, is it risky for my career thing? You know, you come outta cannabis and you show that you can be decisive without a lot of hard information.
You could be flexible. You understand like a hard regulatory environment. You're innovative, creative, like all of those things translate into almost any other industry really well, and I have this thing I tell people, which is, I feel like working in cannabis is like hiking at 9,000 feet. Like you're still hiking.
You still can do it, but it's really, really hard. And then the next thing you do that's outside the industry will be like at C level, and you'll do the same stuff, but , you'll be like an Olympic athlete.
Karson Humiston: I [00:15:00] literally love that because it's like, I've, I've heard that athletes actually like train high, and then they go back to wherever the heck the Olympics is at sea level, and they just crush everyone else.
And I also think, whenever I hear that question, I'm like, I think that the stigma piece around cannabis and working in cannabis is, is somewhat of a thing of the past. Like I already got to hear. People work in cannabis and then try to go work somewhere else and they say, Oh, no, no, no, no, no, you worked in cannabis.
Like unless you're trying to work. I don't even know what industry it would be unaccepting. But like you said, chances are if you're drawn into cannabis, you're not going to go work for some I don't know, industry that doesn't accept cannabis.
Meredith Mahoney: Yeah, it's just not gonna be in your dna.
Karson Humiston: it's not gonna be in your dna. , what's the culture like Atlantan and if, like, what, what do you try to attract and bring in more?
Meredith Mahoney: I think the key to the culture is we have to have longevity. And that that means you're building a team that like, frankly is full of good people that like to work together. I mean, I know it's like kind of [00:16:00] buzzy to say no assholes, but like no assholes. Like this is supposed to be fun. People that are curious, like how can we solve a problem better, differently?
What's more interesting really interested in how the consumer thinks, and this is a little bit different than being. You know, like the consumer's always right or whatever. Like this is like really interested in getting into the head of the consumer and how they shop for cannabis. You know, I want people on the team that build each other up.
I want people that like see their direct reports. Successes is their successes. You know, we have this concept of Lan lantern alums. We haven't had a lot of people move on to the next thing, but when they do, we like celebrate them and we wanna create this really strong alumni network for Lantern. So, I've done a lot of things in my career.
I've worked with a lot of great and terrible people and when I did started this, I'm like, We're gonna hire people. We wanna show up and see every day. Like if we're gonna still do hard feedback and or candid feedback. learning and development [00:17:00] cuz people should leave land turn better than they came more, you know, professionally having learned a lot.
But like, I don't wanna show up and like not wanna work with a person who's sitting across from me. Like I wanna enjoy working with them every day. So.
Karson Humiston: Yeah, what's the point of starting a company if you have to work with people that you don't like? like?
you
Meredith Mahoney: I,
Karson Humiston: work somewhere else?
Meredith Mahoney: and I think another thing is I. I was really personally interested in working with a lot of people not like me because I've worked with people who are just like me for a really long time. Although mostly men, to be honest. And I was just really interested at this point in my career of like, people of coming from different parts of the country, different like backgrounds, educational, race, age, like I just, I wanna like soak it all up.
And so I think we've done that at land firm. We have created a very diverse team and, and again, not just racially diverse.
educational, professional backgrounds, and I mean, I'm learning more now from my team than I've ever learned in being in my career for the last like 20 plus [00:18:00] years.
Karson Humiston: Are you guys all in Boston or is it totally remote? , ma how have you guys built around remote versus in person?
Meredith Mahoney: We started the company in January, 2020, and so we were only in an office for about two months, so we're fully remote. We hired almost everyone on the team remotely, and I about a third are in the Boston area. I'm really glad that we are remote because. there is some, definitely some cannabis talent in the Boston area, but we can really draw on the best, best, best talent, which is around the country, which is not necessarily in New England.
We're a younger part of the industry. So drawing on folks from Cal Colorado, from California that's just been almost like a game changer for.
Karson Humiston: So if you're listening, you can be anywhere and apply for jobs at Lantern. Speaking of which, do you have any open jobs? And if you do what are they? Let's start there and because maybe people are listening, I would, I, I'm interested in applying now that hearing about your team. So how can other people get [00:19:00] in touch and what jobs are you hiring for?
Meredith Mahoney: We are actually full right now, but,
Karson Humiston: wait list. Wait list folks. You gotta get on the wait list.
Meredith Mahoney: Get on the wait list. Now we're putting together our 2023 plan, so I think we'll probably have some stuff opening up in the new year. But engineers are always in high demand. Product folks, ux, like that whole side of the business always seems to have a need.
So yeah, engineers, product folks come work in cannabis who need you.
Karson Humiston: Sounds great Meredith. Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. I'm excited to see you in Vegas next month and we'll, we'll send the listeners an update , when the 2023 hiring plans come out.
Meredith Mahoney: Sounds good. Thank you so much, Carson.