• Front Range Biosciences

  Participated · Equity · Sep 2017

  Front Range Biosciences specializes in next-generation plant breeding, plant tissue culture, and cannabis seed development to improve the reliability and quality of industrial hemp and medical cannabis genetics. The company runs a Clean Stock program that supplies disease- and pathogen-free plants and seeds backed by data-driven breeding solutions. FRB operates facilities in Colorado, California and Wisconsin and maintains a partnership with the Center for Research in Agricultural Genomics in Barcelona, Spain, giving it global reach. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Lafayette, Colorado, the company positions itself as a market-leading R&D program in hemp and cannabis genetics. FRB is currently raising a $30M Series B financing round and has attracted investment from KEY Investment Partners, which will act as a strategic partner. KEY founding partner Pete Karabas is joining Front Range Biosciences' board as a board observer. Front Range Biosciences is a Lafayette, Colorado–based agricultural biotech that provides technology for breeding and producing new plant varieties and seeds in hemp, coffee and regulated cannabis. The company raised $8.5M in funding to support continued expansion of its hemp and cannabis portfolio. FRB plans to expand hemp seed production both nationally and globally and scale its young plant program, with production capabilities expected to multiply in 2020. Led by CEO and Co‑Founder Jon Vaught, the company has operated for a little more than three years. During that time FRB built over 160,000 square feet of facilities across Colorado, California and Wisconsin, acquired a cannabis genomics team and shipped millions of plants to farmers and growers nationwide. The new funds are intended to accelerate those production and portfolio expansion efforts. Front Range Biosciences develops Clean Stock® plant material using tissue culture, a sterile propagation technique, to address disease, inefficiency, inconsistency and scale for high-value crops. Its core product is sterile, duplicated baby plants on a defined nutrient medium for crops such as hemp, cannabis and coffee. The company supplies Clean Stock to growers and has partnerships to expand production, including with Frinj Coffee for coffee cuttings and Faith and Family Farms for cannabis in California. Led by CEO and co-founder Dr. Jonathan Vaught, Front Range is expanding Clean Stock production into California and taking orders for late 2018. It plans to use new funding to accelerate its Clean Stock program across Colorado, California and Canada, pursue IP development, and resource its varietal development program for hemp and cannabis. Front Range Biosciences specializes in tissue culture propagation of high-value crops, aiming to resolve cultivators' operational problems such as disease, inefficiency, inconsistency and limited scale. The company runs a varietal improvement program that leverages sequencing technology to map cannabis genetics and develop commercially relevant traits, including disease resistance, oil and resin yield, and desirable cannabinoid profiles. Front Range is led by CEO and co-founder Dr. Jon Vaught and COO and co-founder Nick Hofmeister. The company intends to use recent funding to scale its processes and expand into California and other legal cannabis states in the U.S. Its core product and R&D focus combine propagation services with genetic improvement to deliver more reliable, higher-yielding plant varieties for cultivators. Front Range Biosciences offers industrial-scale tissue culture propagation and an advanced breeding platform aimed at improving cannabis clone consistency and commercial traits. Its flagship product is tissue culture propagation for scalable, consistent clone production. The company also develops breeding tools to identify and enhance commercially relevant traits. Front Range will use new funding to build out its team and expand its tissue culture offering to improve efficiency and consistency for clone production. The company participated in the CanopyBoulder accelerator program for cannabis startups last year. It recently closed a $1.5 million seed round to support these efforts.

• Wurk

  Participated · Seed · Nov 2016

  Wurk provides a Human Capital Management platform for cannabis companies to manage payroll, human resources, timekeeping, scheduling and tax compliance. The platform is designed to minimize compliance risks in the cannabis regulatory environment and incorporates expertise and partnerships to provide guidance on 280E tax law, accounting and banking. Wurk says its platform is designed to scale nationally while incorporating the local laws and regulations unique to individual states. The company announced it raised $11M in funding and plans to use the capital to enhance the client experience and expand its cannabis HCM platform. Planned product expansions include the launch of managed services and the implementation of an analytics engine to provide data and benchmarking for the cannabis industry. Leadership is led by founder and CEO Keegan Peterson. Wurk offers software-as-a-service that handles background checks, employee scheduling, benefits, training, payroll, and regulatory reporting specific to cannabis businesses. The company has built relationships with state banks and credit unions and a network of financial-services partners to help clients process payroll in an industry with limited banking access. Wurk’s product addresses an extra layer of compliance imposed by state marijuana divisions in addition to standard Department of Labor rules. The startup graduated from the Canopy accelerator in Boulder and is led by CEO Keegan Peterson. Wurk raised a $1 million seed round and plans to deploy the funding primarily for sales and marketing. The company also intends to engage regulators as legalization debates advance at state and federal levels.

No current team members are available.