Common Bond: Connecting Ideas with Investors
Part incubator and part back-end business services provider, Common Bond Collaborative is a company based out of Tampa, Florida, aimed at helping entrepreneurs with great ideas build their businesses and connect with the right investors.
The idea for Common Bond Collaborative came about when founders Tom Quigley and Peter Sessa recognized a need in the industry. In early 2014 Quigley founded the Florida Cannabis Coalition, an organization dedicated to educating people about cannabis and the business of cannabis. To best serve their clients, the duo traveled the country learning as much as they could about the cannabis industry.
“We went all over the country; California, Colorado, Washington, New York,” Sessa said. “What we learned is that there a lot of companies with great ideas and there were a lot of investors with a lot money, but they weren’t meeting in the middle because those companies aren’t ready to get funding.”
They quickly realized that the industry had a much bigger need than simple education and consultation; and so Quigley and Sessa started the Common Bond Collaborative. The way Common Bond works is simple: a company can come in, apply to be in the program, and the Common Bond team will analyze the company and use its own team to fill in the gaps. You do not have to live in Florida to use Common Bond’s services; most consultations can be done virtually.
Common Bond has a wide swath of experts and can help with business plans, pitch decks, graphic arts, video production, marketing, sales, branding and much more. Once businesses are polished and ready for the big show, Common Bond puts them in contact with investors so they can pitch their companies.
If you are wondering how Common Bond can operate in the state of Florida, that is because the company mostly deals with ancillary businesses in the cannabis industry. For the few companies that do deal directly with marijuana, those are located in states where marijuana is legal.
Also, since Common Bond only deals with the back-end of the business, no one from Common Bond directly works with marijuana.
Oddly enough, the biggest problem that Common Bond faces is not legality but something entirely different. “One of the more difficult challenges facing our business is not finding the right ideas or investors, but rather finding the right people,” Sessa said.
The way that Common Bond finds the right people is by judging prospective clients on 10 criteria: integrity, passion, experience, knowledge, skill, leadership, commitment, vision, realism and coachability.
What makes Common Bond unique among other business incubators, besides the clientele, is its different types compensation structures. “A company can come in and they could pay for our services the traditional way,” Sessa said. “Then there are equity agreements where we would take an ownership stake in the company depending on what they need, usually 25-35 percent.”
Once clients get the funding they need, they would buy back most of the shares held by Common Bond, typically leaving about a 10 percent stake for the company.
Common Bond is also a collaborative center for entrepreneurs. For a small fee, interested companies can also become a “drop-in” member and gain access to a workspace and physical mailing address on an impermanent basis; and for a slightly larger fee, they can become permanent members with 24 hours access. Common Bond is already the Florida home of Central Florida NORML, Marijuana LLC, Tuyo Payments, Florida Funders, Ecofy and CrowdFund Connect.
Another way in which Common Bond is unique is that the company does not just take on cannabis companies. Guided by the mantra that “cannabis is the catalyst to compassionate capitalism,” Common Bond also accepts companies that feature green technologies and environmentally-friendly practices.
In an industry where cannabis cultivation takes up a lot of energy and resources, environmentally conscious practices are not just a plus, they are slowly becoming a necessity. “The nature of the [cannabis] business itself will lend itself into a compassionate model,” Sessa said. “We can marry that into a capitalist structure.”
By placing a focus on environmentally conscious practices, Common Bond can not only get ahead of the curve, but also lay the groundwork for a more sustainable cannabis industry. Such a move has the potential for great rewards, both ethically and financially.
What will be interesting to see is the businesses that Common Bond takes on when medical or recreational marijuana becomes legal in Florida. With a pending ballot measure and several bills in the legislature, Sessa said that he feels optimistic about marijuana reform passing in 2015.
“They are expanding on a low THC bill, which is pretty good,” Sessa said. “There’s also three other bills in the legislature, two of them are for medical, one of them is for recreational … . We feel there is a really strong chance that something’s going to pass in 2015.”
Having an idea for a business is easy, but putting it into action is difficult. You need a good team, industry know-how, and most importantly, capital to put that idea into action. Common Bond Collaborative can help deliver all three; in an industry where the learning curve can be steep for the uninitiated, these are vital resources to have.
This article was published by CFN Enterprises Inc. (OTCQB: CNFN), owner and operator of CFN Media, the industry’s leading agency and digital financial media network dedicated to the burgeoning CBD and legal cannabis industries. Call +1 (833) 420-CNFN for more information.
About MJINews
MJINews.com is owned by Panther Media, which was founded in March of 2014 by veteran publishing and investment executives David Friedman and Kristin Fox. MJINews was designed to fill the need for a reliable and credible source of information for investment opportunities in the nascent legal marijuana industry. MJINews is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs and investors make informed business and investment decisions. You can follow MJINews on Twitter @mmjinvestor.
Search CannabisFN
Press Coverage
Psychedelics Index
Top Videos
Tom Zuber is Zuber Lawler & Del Duca’s Managing Partner. He has a degree with highest honors in biomedical engineering and has advised some of the most iconic companies in the world on their patent and trademark portfolios. He is at the cutting edge of cannabis patent and trademark law. He holds degrees from Harvard University and Columbia Law […]
Alan Brochstein’s 420 Investor is the go-to community for investors to learn, explore, and profit from the marijuana companies. The main goal of 420 Investor is to provide real-time, objective information about the top marijuana companies in the market in order to help investors capitalize on cannabis.
Mindleap is developing an advanced digital health platform that will provide support for people that are looking to achieve personal transformations and overcome mental health challenges.
Creso was created to bring pharmaceutical expertise and methodological rigour to the world of cannabis and deliver quality products to people and animals everywhere.
Network Partners
About CFN Media Group
CFN Enterprises Inc. (OTCQB: CNFN) owns and operates CFN Media Group, the premier agency and financial media network reaching executives, entrepreneurs and consumers worldwide. Through its proprietary content creation, video library, and distribution via www.CannabisFN.com, CFN has built an extensive database of cannabis interest, assisting many of the world’s largest cannabis firms and CBD brands to build awareness and thrive. For more information, please visit www.cfnenterprisesinc.com.
Disclaimer: Matters discussed on this website contain forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. CFN Media Group, which owns CannabisFN, is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority and does not provide nor claims to provide investment advice or recommendations to readers of this release. CFN Media Group, which owns CannabisFN, may from time-to-time have a position in the securities mentioned herein and will increase or decrease such positions without notice. The Information contains forward-looking statements, i.e. statements or discussions that constitute predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, estimates, or projections as indicated by such words as "expects", "will", "anticipates", and "estimates"; therefore, you should proceed with extreme caution in relying upon such statements and conduct a full investigation of the Information and the Profiled Issuer as well as any such forward-looking statements. Any forward looking statements we make in the Information are limited to the time period in which they are made, and we do not undertake to update forward looking statements that may change at any time; The Information is presented only as a brief "snapshot" of the Profiled Issuer and should only be used, at most, and if at all, as a starting point for you to conduct a thorough investigation of the Profiled Issuer and its securities and to consult your financial, legal or other adviser(s) and avail yourself of the filings and information that may be accessed at www.sec.gov, www.pinksheets.com, www.otcmarkets.com or other electronic sources, including: (a) reviewing SEC periodic reports (Forms 10-Q and 10-K), reports of material events (Form 8-K), insider reports (Forms 3, 4, 5 and Schedule 13D); (b) reviewing Information and Disclosure Statements and unaudited financial reports filed with the Pink Sheets or www.otcmarkets.com; (c) obtaining and reviewing publicly available information contained in commonlyknown search engines such as Google; and (d) consulting investment guides at www.sec.gov and www.finra.com. You should always be cognizant that the Profiled Issuers may not be current in their reporting obligations with the SEC and OTCMarkets and/or have negative signs at www.otcmarkets.com (See section below titled "Risks Related to the Profiled Issuers, which provides additional information pertaining thereto). For making specific investment decisions, readers should seek their own advice and that of their own professional advisers. CFN Media Group, which owns CannabisFN, may be compensated for its Services in the form of cash-based and/or equity-based compensation in the companies it writes about, or a combination of the two. For full disclosure, please visit: https://www.cannabisfn.com/legal-disclaimer/. A short time after we acquire the securities of the foregoing company, we may publish the (favorable) information about the issuer referenced above advising others, including you, to purchase; and while doing so, we may sell the securities we acquired. In addition, a third-party shareholder compensating us may sell his or her shares of the issuer while we are publishing favorable information about the issuer. Except for the historical information presented herein, matters discussed in this article contain forward-looking statements that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such statements. CFN Media Group, which owns CannabisFN, is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority, and does not provide nor claims to provide investment advice or recommendations to readers of this release. CFN Media Group, which owns CannabisFN, may from time to time have a position in the securities mentioned herein and will increase or decrease such positions without notice. For making specific investment decisions, readers should seek their own advice and that of their own professional advisers. CFN Media Group, which owns CannabisFN, may be compensated for its Services in the form of cash-based and/or equity- based compensation in the companies it writes about, or a combination of the two. For full disclosure please visit: https://www.cannabisfn.com/legal-disclaimer/.
Copyright © Accelerize Inc. · All Rights Reserved · Privacy Policy · Legal Disclaimer
