From Seed to Sale #2: Click and Mortar

There are two distinct stages in Socrates Rosenfeld’s life: the first is characterized by intensity, rigidity, and war; the second, by kindness, compassion, and peace. The watershed moment that separates the two is the moment Soc first used cannabis.

After graduating from West Point, Soc served as an Apache helicopter pilot in Iraq. The kind of intensity required of a human being to navigate such a path is reserved for our country’s strongest. After Soc returned from his last tour, civilian life presented unexpected challenges. Soc struggled to recalibrate his demeanor to match civilian life. After making life and death decisions during active duty, it felt only natural to continue approaching life with an inflexible, binary perspective. He found himself, as he describes it, “disconnected.”

Cannabis changed that.

After his service, and shortly after earning his MBA from MIT, Soc co-founded Jane Technologies, an eCommerce company serving the cannabis industry. He founded the company in order to replicate his watershed moment for any adults in legal markets that might benefit from cannabis as he did. I sat down with him recently, and talked about the cannabis industry, Jane’s mission, and his own experience.

BG: What brought you here, to this moment?

A personal need, the needs of my military brethren – and eventually, the needs of everyone else.

I couldn’t find a way to find my balance again internally after I left the military. I could not not be intense with everything that I did, which served me well when making life and death decisions in the cockpit of an Apache, but maybe not when I was trying to be a husband, or a friend, or a student.

Honestly, I was apprehensive and kind of afraid of trying cannabis because of all the misconceptions around it. I thought it might make me unhealthy, or dumb, or lazy. I wasn’t interested in trying cannabis until people I loved and trusted and respected came to me and said “hey, you might want to try this before you remove it as an option.”

I tried it, and it provided me the balance I was looking for that I really couldn’t find anywhere else. For the first time in a very long time, I was present again, to not only connect with my loved ones, but to connect to myself without any of the noise that I had accumulated during my service. All of that noise slowly, slowly – on my terms – started to melt away, and I was able to uncover my true self again.

I started sharing this with other military veterans, and quickly realized that they too were trying cannabis, and experiencing significant positive effects. They were integrating this into their daily lives, and their biggest issue was the fact that they couldn’t access it, number one. And number two, they still felt a level of shame, or embarrassment, to say “hey, I’m using cannabis and it’s helping me.”

That experience made me re-evaluate a lot. I looked at other things I had accepted as truth on blind faith. It changed my life.

At that point, I shifted out to Silicon Valley and started talking to more people in California, a medical market at the time, and realized that they were experiencing the same thing as my military friends – there wasn’t an opportunity for safe, accountable, transparent access, or the ability to research what I put in my body, and why these things are working or not working. So, we decided to go fix that problem.

BG: How do you view the transition from the black market to the medical market to a fully adult-use market? Is there room for the OG’s that built this industry, brick by brick, but may not be as well-funded as the “big guys?”  

I’ll borrow from Steve DeAngelo, who said the OG’s need to welcome the corporates, because this is the way in America that we mainstream and provide access to those who need it on a mainstream level. But he was also saying that we don’t have to follow the same rules as other industries. We don’t have to kill the small guy. We don’t have to create this zero-sum game. We don’t have to exploit customers on price and gouge small farmers and exploit them on margin. We don’t have to deceive and manipulate people’s perspectives.      

We have the opportunity as stewards of this industry to welcome and invite the Wall Streets of the world, but it’s on us as early stakeholders to prove that there can be another way. We’ve been so fortunate as an industry to be afforded this wonderful, once in a lifetime opportunity. There aren’t too many industries left that have been left untouched by big business.

It’s a big responsibility to us – to welcome new entrants and teach them what right looks like, and at the same time never forget to carry the legacy of compassion, of medicine, or equal access, and never to lose that.

We’re the bridge between the future and the past, and we have an opportunity and an obligation to do this the right way and make sure everyone is taken care of. That’s the goal.

BG: With consolidation happening and big money pouring in, do you think we can retain the mission of goodness, compassion, and wellness moving forward for this industry?

[Soc pauses here. It’s a heavy question with big implications]

Here’s my answer – the answer is hell yes. Think about any great business that people love –  one that makes a true connection with their customers. When people have a connection with a company, it goes much deeper than dollars and cents. If companies pump out whatever product at the cheapest price, at some point the jig is up. If you don’t really care about your customers and their wellbeing, you cannot hide that for long.

But, this all depends on each individual company today – not in ten years, but today – and what we’re willing to sacrifice in the short-term in order to bring real value to our customers.

BG: Retail consolidation – good thing or bad thing?

Well, good in the sense that it provides efficiencies that provide more and more access, keep costs lower, drive distribution, and provide more products more efficiently.

Bad in the sense that it obstructs opportunity for small businesses to surface.

And I think there can be both.

BG: What are your thoughts about  the impact of federal legalization, if/when it happens?

I think it’ll be good for the industry. When my veteran friends can access and get the VA to prescribe cannabis as medicine to them, that’ll be a good day. When we can start conducting studies as to why tinctures are helping kids with grand mal seizures, that’ll be a very good day. When I don’t have to carry around hundreds of dollars in cash and small businesses don’t have to store hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash because we have access to banking, that’ll be a very good day.

But again, the companies that are here today – the current stakeholders that exist before federal legalization – it’ll be on us to show the world and the industry what “right” looks like.

BG: Will that present challenges to Jane Technologies in particular?

I think it’ll present opportunity. Things will be more complex, for sure. What does it do to online payments? Can we ship products now? What does this mean for international expansion? What does this do for those that want our information and our data? Those are just complexities, and we view complexities as opportunities.

If we had taken shortcuts, we’d be scared of the traditional players in ecommerce and retail. We don’t hold ourselves to the cannabis standard – we hold ourselves to the global standard, which means we strive to be truly best in class across the board.

BG: Colleges are taking notice of cannabis, with some offering classes on the industry. You’re in a room full of 22-year-old graduates that want to enter cannabis – what do you tell them?

Ask yourself why you’re coming to the industry. If it’s for dollars and cents, there are easier ways to make good money. If it’s a market opportunity, go into crypto currency.

There needs to be something behind coming in to this industry, because you are going to be a steward of this industry whether you like it or not right now. It’s hard, complex, ambiguous, with lots of opportunities to take the short-term dollar, but I would challenge those that want to enter the industry to ask themselves if their heart is in the right place.