ACG NY VVIP Luncheon | Cannabis Investment Opportunities – Invite Only

Mr. Baruchowitz has nine years of experience in the legal cannabis industry and is considered a national expert in the diverse licensing regimes governing each state. His cannabis career began in assisting Colorado-based legal cultivators to structure state compliant capital transactions and analyzing the legal cannabis market in order to develop an optimal business strategy for their operations. After several years of work with Colorado companies, he co-founded Theraplant, LLC  where he architected the highest scoring application in Connecticut’s highly selective licensing process. In 2014, he cofounded LeafLine Labs, LLC, which was one of only two Minnesota companies to win a license to cultivate and dispense cannabis in extracted form. Mr. Baruchowitz has also founded Laurel Harvest Labs, a Pennsylvania state-approved clinical registrant holding both a medical marijuana grower/processor and dispensary permit in conjucntion with its contracted research partner, along with its contracted academic clinical research partner, Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University.

Overall, Mr. Baruchowitz has approximately 20 years of experience in the legal and finance fields. He is the former Associate General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer of publicly traded MarketAxess. He was also the General Counsel of investment banking boutique Pali Capital, which had revenues of nearly $200 million and 200 employees when he was appointed in late 2009 by the Board to lead the restructuring and wind-down of the company. Since 2010, he has led numerous public and private offerings, assisted in the formation and funding of several credit funds and a $60 million REIT while the Head of Investment Banking of ACGM, Inc. and at Cavu Securities.  

Mr. Baruchowitz is a graduate of Brandeis University and Boston University School of Law. He is a member of the New York and Massachusetts Bars and formerly held FINRA 7, 24, 63 and 79 licenses. He currently sits on the Boards of New Frontier Data and Manna Molecular Sciences.

Named one of the “25 Angel Investors in New York You Need to Know” by AlleyWatch in 2014, Jeff has been a venture investor for ten years, an angel investor for eight years. Jeff is CEO of Arcview Ventures, the manager of The Arcview Collective Fund, the first member-managed fund in cannabis. He also serves as Chairman of the Evaluation Committee and Treasurer of the ARC Angel Fund. Jeff has been actively advising startups at Reitler Advisory Group and publishes insights to his blog www.finkabout.it.

He is a frequent panelist, speaker, and judge on venture investing and pitch competitions in NY. Jeff has also guest lectured and held office hours for many incubators / accelerators including Start-up Leadership Program, 37 Angels, NYU Polytech Incubator (New York City and Brooklyn), DreamIT Ventures, and FashInvest. Prior to his work with angel and seed groups, Jeff was a partner of Odeon Capital Partners, an early-stage venture capital fund. Prior to Odeon, Jeff was an operating executive at CA, Inc., and Cheyenne Software, Inc., where he served as GM of the Unix Division, VP of Corporate Development, VP of Corporate Marketing, and Director of Product Management. Jeff also serves as Chairman of the Board of WellLife Network, a not-for-profit offering residential, clinical, and day programs to 25,000 individuals with developmental, psychological, and behavioral disabilities in NYC’s five boroughs and Long Island.

With a background in private equity, oil and gas investment banking, and federal regulation, Colte Koen turned his full attention to the cannabis and hemp industries in 2015 to begin identifying gap opportunities.

Colte began in the cannabis industry with a focus on project capitalization and management consulting but soon discovered a rising opportunity in the more scalable hemp sector. Since then, he and the executive team have launched a 400-acre hemp farm, a nationally recognized hemp seedling business, and most recently, a national distributor focused on solving the hemp industry's most notorious issue - distribution of wholesale consumer packaged goods and hemp-derived raw ingredients to domestic and international markets.

Colte and the team, above all, develop businesses that are born from the solving of systematic issues within the overall hemp industry. With a history of execution, customer satisfaction and loyalty, and revenue development, the executive team works diligently to satisfy both investors and company customers synergistically.

Michael D. Schwamm represents public and private entities in the cannabis industry in all aspects of their business affairs. His practice includes mergers and acquisitions, angel and venture capital financing and other capital formation transactions, as well as providing general corporate counseling. Within the cannabis sector, Mr. Schwamm advises companies of all sizes, including startups, venture-backed companies, privately held businesses and public companies, in all aspects of their business affairs.  In particular, he has worked on two of the larger cross-border public company mergers and well as industry roll-ups.  He also provides services to venture capital and private equity funds and angel investors as well as high net worth individuals and family offices, in connection with fund formation and investment. Mr. Schwamm has moderated or participated on a number of panels focusing on investing in cannabis.

Michael D. Schwamm represents public and private entities in all aspects of their business affairs. He practices in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, securities and technology law and provides general corporate counseling. Mr. Schwamm formerly was general counsel and chief operating officer of FiberCity Networks, Inc., a telecommunications service provider and uses his experience to provide his clients with proofed, business-centered advice.

Mr. Schwamm represents companies of all sizes, including startups and venture-backed companies, privately held family businesses and both large and small public companies in all aspects of their business affairs. He also provides services to venture capital and private equity funds, angel and other institutional investors. An increasing focus of his practice is assisting single family offices in structuring their direct business acquisitions; Mr. Schwamm co-leads the firm’s initiative in this area. 

Mr. Schwamm has worked on a wide variety of transactions, including mergers, acquisitions, public offerings, private placements, joint ventures and licensing arrangements involving a number of industries, such as big data, business services, consumer/retail, technology including FinTech, entertainment, healthcare services, manufacturing, sports and telecommunication. He calls upon his partners across the country and around the world in other practice areas to ensure his clients receive seamless, efficient and effective service for all their legal needs.

Mr. Schwamm is a magna cum laude graduate of Georgetown University Law Center, where he was editor of the Journal of Law and Policy in International Business and a cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.

Corey Massella has more than twenty-five years of experience as an entrepreneur, tax, and business advisor, and as a specialist in SEC accounting and audit services. Additionally, Corey has experience serving as a Private Equity and Technology Industry Group Practice Leader for a Top Twenty accounting firm. 

Corey has successfully guided his clients through all facets of the mergers and acquisitions transaction cycle to help them make critical decisions, while ensuring transactions are strategic and seamless. He has deep experience advising private equity funds, hedge funds, banks, broker-dealers, investor relations firms, and various other financial services companies. As a business consultant, Corey has worked with CEOs and CFOs, as well as the boards of both public and private clients. He has performed due diligence and negotiations on both the buy and sell sides. Corey also has experience preparing business plans and initial public offerings (IPO), and with cash flow and productivity analysis to help scale businesses for growth, as well as extensive knowledge and experience in complex tax structuring and planning.