Today's featured Cannabis Investor is Christine De La Rosa The Cannabis Investor Series Sponsored by TWO12 is back for the Fourth year. This year, the Series will feature eighteen of the cannabis industry's top investors, reviewing the previous 12-months and sharing their 2022 investment strategies. On today's episode Dan Humiston is joined by Christine De La Rosa co-founder of The People's Ecosystem to explain their new fund specifically designed for BIPOC run businesses. Produced by PodConX TWO12 - https://www.two12.co/ Raising Cannabis Capital - https://podconx.com/podcasts/raising-cannabis-capital Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston Christine De La Rosa - https://podconx.com/guests/christine-de-la-rosa The People's Ecosystem - https://thepeoplesecosystem.com/
Today's featured Cannabis Investor is Christine De La Rosa
The Cannabis Investor Series Sponsored by TWO12 is back for the Fourth year. This year, the Series will feature eighteen of the cannabis industry's top investors, reviewing the previous 12-months and sharing their 2022 investment strategies. On today's episode Dan Humiston is joined by Christine De La Rosa co-founder of The People's Ecosystem to discuss their new fund that's specifically designed for BIPOC run businesses.
TWO12 - https://www.two12.co/
Raising Cannabis Capital - https://podconx.com/podcasts/raising-cannabis-capital
Dan Humiston - https://podconx.com/guests/dan-humiston
Christine De La Rosa - https://podconx.com/guests/christine-de-la-rosa
The People's Ecosystem - https://thepeoplesecosystem.com/
RC Christine
Dan Humiston: [00:00:00] Today on the MJ bulls podcast, we are continuing this year's cannabis investor series with Christine dealer Rosa from the people's ecosystem. Christine, welcome to the show.
Christine De La Rosa: Thanks so much, Dan, I appreciate you having me on.
Dan Humiston: Well, I've been wanting to have you on.
since I heard you. Mentioned the people's group fund during your women's leading in cannabis interview. And, just raising capital is extremely difficult for all businesses, but statistically it's nearly impossible for women and minority run businesses. And this is where I kind of wanted to start today.
Christine, why is it so difficult for women and minority owned businesses to raise cash?
Christine De La Rosa: I mean, I think it's a lot of things. I think it's a layered, you can't just say, oh, we live in a patriarchal society and white supremacist society, a white male society. Like it's a lot of different things. And a lot of the things that I always think about is yes, it's that's those three big things, but also.
People are used to use to invest in people. They know they're used to [00:01:00] investing in people that look like them, and they're used to investing with people. Who've kind of grown up with them. And one of the things that we know around women and especially around BiPAP folks, is that we are not going to like, Harvard, Yale, Princeton.
I mean, some of us are, but not a lot of us are. And a lot of. Very close relationships, not just friendships, but financial relationships happen when you're in college. Like I went to college. And so you kind of know people and, people who know people who know people and founders of color and women founders don't normally have.
To that group of people. So I say it's a lot of different things, but you know, there's systemic racism and all that other stuff, but it's also just connection. How do you connect if you've never seen me, you don't know who I am. I didn't go to a college or to another college that one of your friends can vouch for me for.
How do you know what kind of founder I am? I think that's one of the major things. And one of the things that I really try to demystify for investors is that [00:02:00] learn to step outside of your comfort zone to be investing in different kinds of people, because sometimes your ROI is going to be triple, quadruple of the regular people you normally invest in.
Dan Humiston: You make so many good points and on the surface. It doesn't make any sense because to me a good business is a good business, but I know. Investors are like super data-driven. What type of stats the advantages to investing in minority and women owned businesses?
Christine De La Rosa: Well, there's a couple of really, I think, great statistics. One of them being that the way that BiPAP. Minority founders or women, the way they handle budget is very, very different than their counterparts. Right? That's an easy thing. That's documented how they handle budget. You're not normally going to see a founder of color and even a female founder.
Not normally. I'm not going to say. Nobody, but normally we're not going to go buy a $4 million house in the Hills with our paycheck. We're going to give our money to our employees. We're going to use [00:03:00] that money wisely because we know we have to leverage it in a different way. And we know that we don't have endless checks.
I always think about, the woman for Toronto's right. How she spent the money was very much the way that I've seen a lot of like tech companies spend the money. There are no longer tech companies anymore. So she was like an exception.
That's why I can't say no women and no founders of color.
Dan Humiston: Yeah.
Christine De La Rosa: A good 90, 95% just spend money differently. And so investors should look at that. They shouldn't just look like, did you go to Harvard? Did you go to Princeton? They should be looking at how do you spend your money? How do you budget your money?
And I want to make sure that you're not paying yourself $450,000 plus bonuses, and you're a startup.
Dan Humiston: Such a good point I even know, like in businesses when there's some really, really trying times, that's when you have to figure out a way to make $2 into three, you know what I mean? ,
let's jump ahead. Tell everybody about the people's group fund.
Christine De La Rosa: Sure. So, I have a company on the people's ecosystem, which [00:04:00] is a cannabis company. One of the things that we've always had trouble doing was raising capital. And not because we don't have a great business plan nor do we have really awesome financial modeling. We have really great statistics ourselves, but really just generally speaking, it's not because of Christine.
When you look at the VC capital, I think Crunchbase just puts something not last year, 4%. All VC capital goes to people of color and of those 4%, it's like 2% goes to women. And of that 2%, like 0.6% goes to women of color. So I kind of hit it on all girl. Like I'm a woman, I'm a woman of color, and so like, it's really difficult to be, have access to the capital. Even years and years and years after people say, Hey, you should invest in women. They manage budgets better. They have higher revenues like that. It doesn't really seem to matter. And so I was like, I need access to capital.
I know other founders who need access to capital, other women, founders, other BiPAP founders that need access to capital. What if I just [00:05:00] became the access to capital because I am that person. Right. And I wanted to create a fund that I wish I had had in 2015. And the way the founders of color and the way that women founders need to be valued, not just from a financial side, but also from an impact side.
It's really different from the way that VCs currently value companies, that they have, the DCF model, they have the VC model. Everybody has a model, but they really take away some of the creativity of the founders of color and what they've had to do to get to this place, to be able to ask you for capital.
And so that's why I founded the people's group because I wanted to be able to create all the products that I wish I had had as a.
Dan Humiston: That's the true entrepreneurial spirit you saw need and you filled it. That's exactly what you should be doing. This is what entrepreneurs do. This is what investors should be investing right. If the company is [00:06:00] interested in getting an investment from you, what sectors are you interested in and how do they get on your radar?
Christine De La Rosa: Sure. So, we're interested in all the sectors in cannabis, including ancillary and tech. So our. Investment stack is very mixed. We want that to be of most importance to us. They can just go to the website, the people's group thought fund, and there is a way for them to sign up there.
We answer all the emails. Last year we ushered groups through our accelerator to get them prepared for investment. And right now in our pipeline is about 10 additional groups. Because one of the things that a lot of people and this happened to me, like I just want to be fully transparent.
I remember the first time somebody asked me for a data room and I'm like, what are you talking about? I come from the legacy market. We don't have data rooms, we have grow rooms very different. And so when I meet a lot of the founders founders that are new founders, founders that are coming from the legacy market, they don't have the language.
And they don't understand the language. So by being able to put them through the accelerator and be like, this is what a data room is. This is what's [00:07:00] needs to be in the data room. Like very explicit needs. Not like just saying, oh, give me the data room. Okay. What does that mean? I actually give a class around what is needed in a data room before you get to me.
And I'm not expecting you to be fully. But my team will work with you to get your data room. We have an internal due diligence team that works with the founder before it ever goes to the transactional lawyers for them to look at it so they have everything that they need already because that due diligence list that the lawyers give you
it's scary. It's scary. If you've never had that due diligence list, it can be overwhelming.
Dan Humiston: Yeah.
they, a lot of those are just cover your butts from those lawyers. They're like, we better just give them making sure they have everything. You don't always need everything that they tell you, but they have to cover their butts. So they make sure, oh, I told you that you need that. Like you have, you told me a thousand other things too, and I know, I know.
Well , for investors that want to participate, are there opportunities for them to participate in your fund?
Christine De La Rosa: There are [00:08:00] opportunities. We're still raising our fund.
Dan Humiston: Oh good. Okay. So same thing. They would just go to your website and, okay,
Christine De La Rosa: They can reach out to me on LinkedIn. They can do all of that.
Dan Humiston: Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. So we have all the links to the people's group fund in the show notes. So if you're looking to raise capital or you're an investor that wants to invest in it, this seems like a no brainer, but if you want to invest in a really good opportunity, I would suggest clicking the links in the show notes are going to the pod connects website. I know Christine or somebody from her team would be happy to speak with you about this, Christine. I wish we had more time. We're going to have to do this again, because this is exciting. And it's also important that we get this message out.
So thanks for being on the show today.
Christine De La Rosa: Thank you so much, Dan.