Judson Hill

Georgia Market President at Fine Fettle

Panel: Panel 1 – June 5, 12-12:45pm

Tentative Panel Topic: Evolving Trends in the Cannabis Industry

Bio: Judson Hill is the Georgia Market President for Fine Fettle, one of 6 businesses licensed to cultivate, manufacture and dispense medical cannabis products in Georgia. Born and raised in Atlanta, this is a real homecoming for Judson to combine his cannabis industry experience with his passion for Georgia!

Over his career, he has developed sales teams and raised capital for start-ups spanning fintech, SaaS, cannabis, and fashion. Judson has been focused on the cannabis industry since 2017 and helped launch multiple companies while building a deep nationwide network of both operators and investors. Prior to Fine Fettle, he was a founding team member of Bespoke Financial, the first cannabis specific fintech lending firm focused on providing operators with working capital. They financed ~$1B in cannabis transactions over 4 years across15 states. He also helped launch the first California focused seed-to-sale inventory management software which provided deep regulatory understanding of Metrc and connections with licensed operators across the state. Lastly, he has experience on the brand side of the industry and has been a partner at Higgs, a California based pre-roll brand since 2017 that is also in Michigan, New York, and Canada via licensing deals.

Background in Cannabis: Over the course of my career, I have developed sales teams & strategies across multiple industries spanning fashion and apparel, to ecommerce and subscription start-ups, to SaaS and fintech, and finally landing in cannabis where I’ve worked on both the ancillary and plant touching side. Currently I am raising equity capital and doing business development work to bring established brands into emerging east coast markets. Despite the tough fundraising conditions this year, I have been able to raise over $10M in equity capital and I believe it would be helpful to share with the audience what it took to make this happen!

The past 7 years I have been fully focused on the cannabis industry and have 360 degree exposure, originally getting involved in the California medical market as a partner in the brand Higgs, the first multi-pack of pre-rolls, in 2017. From there I worked closely with Casa Verde Capital, one of the first VC’s focused on the ancillary sector. There I was able to help launch 2 portfolio companies: Trellis was the leading seed-to-sale software platform in California in 2018 as cannabis operators were suddenly required to submit compliant inventory data into Metrc on a daily basis and we educated the top companies on best practices; Bespoke Financial was the first lender providing working capital solutions such as lines of credit and inventory financing specials to cannabis operators, we helped many of the largest brands such as Jeeter scale from relatively unknown to $100M+ revenue generators!

In 2022 as capital began to dry up in the industry and many of the mature markets began to get saturated, I saw an opportunity to combine my industry experience with my political + capital networks on the east coast to help raise capital and bring brands into new markets.

QUOTE

“What excites me the most about cannabis in 2024 is the continued growth into southern states and the massive support for the industry from the American public!

A recent Gallup poll showed that 70% of Amercians support legalization…at a time when people can’t agree on anything in politics!
Just a few years ago Massachusetts was a “”new market”” but now it’s begun to mature while southern states such as Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi are rolling out medical programs and Florida has recreational on the ballot in November.
At Fine Fettle we are 1 of the 3 businesses with a medical cannabis license in Georgia which presents a huge opportunity with 11 million people in the state and Atlanta has grown into the 6th largest metro area in the US while being the de facto “”capital of the south!”””

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