Fyllo Archives - Green Market Report

StaffApril 6, 2021

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Cannabis tech company Fyllo announced it has closed an oversubscribed Series B round totaling $30M co-led by JW Asset Management and Sol Global. The company has raised nearly $60 million since 2019. 60% of the funds raised in the Series B came from outside of the cannabis industry, including companies like K2, Entourage Effect Capital, George Steinbrenner IV, Arcadian Capital Management, Salveo Capital, and 2 NRP Managers, LLC an investment group led by Ben Lurie.

In addition to the capital raise, Fyllo said that Peter S Kraus, chairman and, CEO of Aperture Investors and former AllianceBernstein CEO is joining its Board of Directors. The company said that Kraus brings nearly a half-century of financial and business acumen to the Fyllo Board. He currently serves as the chairman and CEO of Aperture Investors, an asset management firm which he founded in 2018.

Fyllo’s Compliance Cloud suite of SaaS software is used by multi-state operators that include Columbia Care and Grassroots Cannabis. Fyllo has rapidly expanded its suite of services via acquisitions such as CannaRegs in 2020, which provides a regulatory compliance tool, and DataOwl earlier this year, which provides retail marketing, loyalty, and point-of-sale solutions. Funds from raise will be used to double the company’s engineering team, scale operations and sales, and accelerate the delivery of compliance automation solutions to publishers, advertisers and operators. In addition, the team will be working to bolster its cloud-based enterprise solution, integrating the point-of-sale, CRM, and retail marketing technologies acquired from DataOwl into the platform.

“The cannabis industry has benefited from rapid growth and innovation yet has lacked the enterprise software solutions to enable it to scale akin to other regulated industries. When we founded Fyllo in 2019, we saw the void in the cannabis market for technology services and the opportunity to create a definitional and disruptive solution,” said Chad Bronstein, co-founder, and CEO, Fyllo. “This vision has played out in the last 20 months as Fyllo now works with nearly every major multi-state operator in the U.S., removing barriers for these companies to scale with the speed of their mainstream peers.”

Kraus said, “Fyllo’s has developed revolutionary enterprise solutions for sectors which have long struggled with achieving compliance at scale. As a board member, I look forward to working with Chad and Fyllo’s management team to help the company expand its market share within its core expertise of managing data and compliance activities in consumer-oriented highly regulated industries.”

Julie AitchesonDecember 4, 2020

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Now more than ever before, brands across all industries are attuning to the fact that an in-depth understanding of their audience’s interests and lifestyles is key to robust sales and longevity. The cannabis industry posted that message loud and clear this year, with one online cannabis marketplace, Jane Technologies, Inc. (which partners with over 1,600 dispensaries and brands across 33 states) seeing online Green Wednesday profits for 2020 up 241% over 2019. Failure to stay relevant to consumers could result in the recent sales boom going bust, yet a recent Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Fyllo, a leading innovator in data, media, and compliance solutions for highly regulated industries, shows many brands lagging behind. According to the study, only 38% of brands understand their customers’ interest in emerging product categories and just 34% can track the current interests and hobbies of their audiences.

The Fyllo-commissioned study was geared towards marketers at top multi-billion dollar consumer brands and how they might leverage cannabis consumer data to improve the ways in which they target audiences with advertisements and media buying. The information was highly sought after. More than three-quarters of brands recognized cannabis and consumer data as not only useful but essential to understanding existing and emerging markets. It’s not just about the ads, but about how and where those advertisements find people— connecting with consumers via their lifestyles and recreational interests.

As Chad Bronstein, CEO and founder of Fyllo observed, “This Forrester data confirms exactly what Election Day represented. The country might be divided, but not on cannabis. Marketers need to recognize that cannabis is no longer on the fringe, but a new opportunity for growth.” A new opportunity indeed. Post-November 3rd election results revealed that New Jersey, Arizona, Montana, and South Dakota all voted to legalize adult-use marijuana. Mississippi approved the sale of medical cannabis, bringing the tally of states where cannabis is medically legal to 33. It is now recreationally legal in 12 states and Washington, D.C. Brands would do well to tap into the power of relevant, personalized data to capitalize on the inevitable surge in consumption.

Almost all brands surveyed in the Forrester study use second-party data for insights into new and existing consumers, and 91% of them agree that staying ahead of not only current but emerging customer interests and lifestyles is a necessity. Yet these brands experience a deficit in their ability to understand their customers at a personal level and to apply this understanding to their media strategies. This is where companies like Forrester come in, with the ability to accumulate and activate data effectively and responsibly. With 80% of brands surveyed indicating that they would be interested or very interested in having insights into medical cannabis consumption, while 77% expressed interest in recreational consumption, both the supply of and demand for relevant data are there. Now it’s just a matter of application to create a holistic view of the cannabis customer so that the industry can fully engage its diverse audience and anticipate its evolving needs.

Debra BorchardtAugust 12, 2020

Fyllo has raised $10 million in Series A2 financing from both existing and new investors, bringing total funding to date to $26 million. The Series A2 round was led by existing investors JW Asset Management and K2 & Associates with participation from current investors Arcadian, Salveo Capital, and Phyto Partners. Fyllo said that the new investment would provide the company with resources to advance its market-leading data, media and compliance solutions and accelerate expansion into other highly regulated industries.

“We’re grateful to our investors for their continued support and commitment to our vision,” said Chad Bronstein, CEO of Fyllo. “Fyllo’s offering is well-timed with the rapidly increasing acceptance and consumption of cannabis and CBD, and the opportunity for brands to build relationships with a massive new customer base. As industry growth outstrips legalization, marketers and legal professionals will need our help now more than ever in order to keep pace with compliance and consumer demand.”

The Fyllo Compliance Cloud is a suite of enterprise-grade software and services powered by RegsTechnology, the largest database of cannabis laws and regulations at the federal, state and local level. Fyllo acquired CannaRegs earlier this year following the company’s capital raise of $18 million. At that time Amanda Ostrowitz, founder and CEO of CannaRegssaid, “In a short period of time, Fyllo has emerged as an essential platform for publishers and cannabis companies to build creative campaigns in a safe and compliant way.”

Since its launch in 2019, Fyllo’s customer base has grown to include many brands in cannabis. And with its recent release of the Fyllo Data Marketplace, mainstream marketers can now leverage previously inaccessible cannabis-endemic audience data for digital advertising.

“We were excited to lead this funding round, and continue supporting the innovative technology platform being built at Fyllo,” said Jason Klarreich, Managing Director of JW Asset Management. “This is one of the first companies to build an enterprise solution for cannabis that will ultimately be brought to bear on other highly regulated industries.”

Debra BorchardtJanuary 17, 2020

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Cannabis marketing tech firm Fyllo has acquired cannabis regulatory tech firm CannaRegs for an undisclosed amount. CannaRegs distinguished itself for the company’s ability to drill down into local cannabis regulations, which can differ between the municipality, county and state levels of oversite.

As part of the acquisition, Amanda Ostrowitz, CannaRegs’ founder and CEO, will join Fyllo as its Chief Strategy Officer to develop a global strategy focused on supporting existing and new customer relationships. She will be reporting to CEO Chad Bronstein. Fyllo said it will augment CannaRegs’ user interface and integrate CannaRegs data into its platform to enhance its compliance solutions for brands and publishers.

“The cannabis space is exploding and expected to grow to more than $50 billion annually over the next five years. Digital advertising is the industry’s clear pathway to growth, and brands need to have confidence that their ad creatives are not only reaching the right audiences but also meeting state-by-state and market-by-market compliance requirements,” said Chad Bronstein, founder, and CEO of Fyllo. “CannaRegs has become the go-to-market leader for supplying the cannabis industry with reliable compliance data. Combined with our technology, we are able to provide actionable information at scale. This acquisition helps us gain a significant competitive advantage to grow Fyllo, and by joining forces with the most seasoned and knowledgeable cannabis compliance experts, it will help generate more revenue opportunities for our clients.”

While the value of the deal wasn’t disclosed, it comes on the heels of Fyllo raising $18 million to accelerate the company’s growth and expand access to advertising-compliant solutions for the cannabis industry. Fyllo recently named Clive Sirkin, the former chief growth officer of Kellogg and former CMO of Kimberly-Clark, and Katie Ford, head of global brands at Twitter, to its board.

Fyllo said it has developed a full suite of cannabis advertising solutions for brands and online publishers powered by CannaBrain, an AI engine that ingests and interrogates billions of data points, allowing brands to safely build and execute advertising campaigns while also enabling publishers to create and monetize compliant ad inventory.

“The complex nature of cannabis regulations can be challenging for brands looking to confidently enter the fast-moving space. To stay ahead of the curve, companies need to have the wherewithal to know how to operate within state and local regulatory structures,” said Amanda Ostrowitz, founder and CEO of CannaRegs. “In a short period of time, Fyllo has emerged as an essential platform for publishers and cannabis companies to build creative campaigns in a safe and compliant way. By teaming up with Fyllo, we have the chance to build a truly remarkable brand that can disrupt the entire industry.”

Ostrowitz has made a name for herself over the past five years as she has built a team that has accomplished something many were unable to do and that track the myriad of cannabis regulatory changes. Drilling down to some of the smallest towns and tracking local meetings. Her company’s data is used by law firms, real estate professionals and cannabis companies as they try to stay compliant in a constantly changing landscape.

Fyllo said it will onboard over 150 CannaRegs customers, which will get the same benefits of state and local legal understanding in near real-time, along with an enhanced CannaRegs user interface. CannaRegs’ 30 employees will continue to operate out of its Denver offices.