
CANNABIS STARTUPS.
OFFICE HOURS
Recordings from our live show answering your questions & discussing the topics that will help take your cannabis startup to the next level.
This week, Ben welcomes industry icon Debby Goldsberry, co-founder of the Berkeley Patients Group, Executive Director of Magnolia Wellness, and author of “The Idiot’s Guide to Starting & Running a Cannabis Business.” We discuss Debby’s 30-year journey as a leader in the cannabis industry and get advice about operating a business in the era of legal, regulated cannabis.
This week, Ben and Carter are joined by Jamie Feaster, VP of Marketing at Eaze and the company’s very first employee. We’ll ask Jamie to give cannabis founders some actionable advice when it comes to online marketing, and we’ll pick his brain for insights into the future of California’s cannabis market.
This week, Ben and Carter chat with Louis Cirillo and Matt Kummer, co-founders of ARC Innovations. As a serial hardware entrepreneur, Lou will talk about how to go from concept to prototype to mass production.
This week, Ben and Carter welcome back Kieran Ringgenberg from Ringgenberg law. We’ll unpack California’s latest “emergency” cannabis regulations, so listen up if you’re struggling to navigate the ever-changing regulatory landscape.
Happy Thanksgiving! This week, Ben and Carter discuss the Abundance Mindset, and how focusing on competition can undermine your company’s success in a growing market.
Wanna build the next great cannabis company? You’ll need to attract and engage a loyal fan base that actually buys your product. This week, Ben welcomes Chikodi Chima of MoonshotPR.com and Guillermo Bravo of Foottraffik.co. They’ll demystify marketing and show how mission-driven content and digital strategy can help you find consumers and convert them into sales.
Happy Veteran’s Day friends! We’re pleased to welcome to the show today Garrett Ruhland of Biomarker.io. As cannabis becomes more respected for its medicinal applications, and with the ever increasing attention from the FDA, understanding the true efficacy of products is of the utmost importance. Join us as we discover how Biomarker is attempting to solve this problem, and see how Ben digs into the nuts and bolts of building a startup trying to solve a BIG problem.
Boom! This week, Silicon Valley icon Adeo Ressi joins Ben and Carter to talk about founder psychology, and how to make the decision to become a founder in the first place. As founder of The Funded and The Founder Institute, Adeo has worked with countless entrepreneurs at the very earliest stage of their journies and is in a unique position to share guidance with anyone considering starting a company of their own.
This week, Ben and Carter are joined by Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient Joe Vasquez, co-founder of StartX and The Human Potential, and director of the Runway Incubator and the Michelson Runway Accelerator. We’ll ask him about his experience helping early stage founders to access critical resources needed to build thier companies.
This week, Ben is joined by Purva Gupta, founder and CEO of Lily. We’ve had the oppotunity to follow Purva’s entrepreneurial journey from the very beginning and she has always impressed us with her hustle, as a first-time, non-technical, female, immigrant founder, you could say the deck was stacked against her. She’s never made any excuses and has never slowed down. Hear her story here.
This week, Ben and Carter welcome Eric Eslao, founder and CEO of Défoncé. We’ll chat with him about building a well-designed CPG brand, as well as the challenges of manufacturing products in the cannabis industry.
This week, Ben and Carter welcome Jim McAlpine, founder of 420 Games, New West Summit, CannAthlete, and SnowBomb. We’ll talk to Jim about his mission to destigmatize cannabis and garner participation from outside the industry.
This week, Carter welcomes serial entrepreneur David Hyman to the show. As former CEO of Gracenote, founder and CEO of MOG and CEO of Beats Music, David shares his secrets to success. We also discuss lessons learned from the failure of his most recent project, Blin.gy.
This week, Ben and Carter welcome Nitin Pachisia, Founding Partner at Unshackled Ventures. We’ll talk about common challenges facing early stage founders, as well as difficulties unique to those founders facing immigration issues in the US.
This week, prodigal son Marshall Hayner, founder of Metal (metalpaysme.com) shleps all the way across the Bay Bridge to come home. Ben and Carter will chat with him about the cryptocurrency bubble, regulations, and his whirlwind journey as a founder.
This week, Ben and Carter welcome back the man with two first names: Brandon David. As a friend, ally, and host of web shows “Infusion” and “Investing in Cannabis,” Brandon will talk about how to build an audience and compelling voice online.
Bad-ass Oakland attorney Kieran Ringgenberg of Ringgenberg Law returns to the show this week to help Carter and Ben make sense of California’s SB-94 and its impact on the emerging industry.
This week, Ben redeems himself by returning to the studio to help Carter grill Bill Kerr, founder of Vertical, on brand strategy. We’ll talk to him about his experience building premium mainstream brands, as well as using brand and packaging to differentiate your product in the increasingly crowded cannabis CPG environment.
Suffering acutely from Ben’s repeated abandonment, Carter flies solo today, welcoming Claudio Miranda from Guild Enterprises. We’ll explore how partnerships and brand licensing can be used to help navigate the uncertain and barrier-ridden legal landscape for cannabis businesses.
This week, Ben and Carter welcome Max Savage Levenson, producer and manager of cannabis activism podcast “The Hash.” We’ll explore the how the changing legal and cultural landscape has impacted—and will continue to impact—the existing cannabis ecosystem.
This week, Ben and Carter welcome Eric Bahn, founder of Hustle Con and Hustle Fund. We’ll chat with them about his experience as a successful founder and angel investor, and how his new venture fund makes investment decisions.
This week, Ben and Carter welcome back Madeline Duva from Drop, Fluxx, Tracker, Carbine, and more. Hardware may be hard, but Madeline will make it easier by offering advice to hardware founders and angels looking to fund them.
This week, Ben and Carter welcome Ellen Holland, Senior Editor of CannabisNow, and industry legend and “guru of ganja” Ed Rosenthal. We’ll discuss how the cannbis industry has evolved and what founders and operators need to know to navigate the changing waters.
This week, Ben and Carter welcome Emily and Morgan Paxhia, Managing Directors of award-winning Poseidon Asset Management, one of the most active investment firms in the cannabis industry. We’ll chat with them about how they make investment decisions, overall strategy, and the future of cannabis.
This week, Ben and Carter host a truly “Open” Office Hours. They’ll field questions from—and give advice to—founders live from the Gateway studio.
VapeXhale founder, Seibo Shen, joins Gateway Office Hours this week to teach Ben how to elevate his performance at work, in life, and as a dad! Founder, stuntman, cannathlete, cannaDAD, Seibo manages many roles and offers insights on how you can too.
Ben returns! This week, Carter interviews new father and old founder coach Ben Larson. We’ll talk about laying the groundwork for being a founder: what you need to do before you can start.
This week, while Ben struggles with his uncertain but fulfilling future, Carter interviews JP Martin and Darwin Hunt, co-founders of GrowX. We’ll talk about challenges they faced and lessons learned over the course of their journey from ideation to funding.
This week, while Ben struggles with his uncertain but fulfilling future, Carter interviews JP Martin and Darwin Hunt, co-founders of GrowX. We’ll talk about challenges they faced and lessons learned over the course of their journey from ideation to funding.
BLOG
Nothing is more important than your team. If you were to poll early-stage Silicon Valley investors and successful entrepreneurs, and then you did a weighted average on the importance of "team," you'd likely find that 90% of the value (and likelihood of investment) lies in the team. The team includes your co-founder(s), your first hires, and your advisors or investors.
Although my Facebook feed is a rather dramatic and unreliable source for information about your administration, in the past few weeks it has been clear about at least this much: you’ve had a very busy first month. So, I’ll cut to right to the chase: I think you should consider cannabis. More accurately, I think you should consider the legal cannabis industry as a potential catalyst for the “unbridled economic growth” you’re hoping to deliver to those working-class Americans who supported you, and even those who didn’t.
There’s nothing wrong with service providers, per se. In fact, good service providers that understand startups and respect the struggle can be valuable allies. But many service providers don’t understand startups at all. They come from a world of bloated corporate bureaucracy, where deadlocked committees with unpoliced budgets and vague success metrics are easily impressed by someone who actually gets things done and sends them a glossy report to prove it.
As a founder, finding an angel investor to write that first check is almost always a huge challenge. I've been in and around startups as an early employee, founder, advisor and angel for well over a decade now, and raising capital is never easy, and it is always critical.
If you're the founder of a cannabis startup--whether you're looking for mainstream capital or funds from within the legacy industry--that problem is compounded.

Gateway is a full immersion business accelerator and seed investment program born out of Silicon Valley and located in the capital of cannabis advocacy and innovation.
CALIFORNIA
Our management team has deep startup knowledge and an extensive entrepreneur and capital network in the San Francisco Bay Area. We are leveraging the lessons learned in Silicon Valley to grow the potential of the cannabis industry by creating a new breed of cannabis companies.
FEATURED IN
PARTNERS
GATEWAY SEEKS TO CONTINUALLY BUILD A ROBUST NETWORK OF PARTNERS THAT CAN PROVIDE MASSIVE VALUE TO STARTUPS.
We partner with software companies, service providers, and others who see value in investing in startups early-on and look to grow together. This enables our founders to build the best companies possible while saving a bit of money in the initial stages.
In this shortened holiday episode, Ben and Carter talk about preparing your business for the California’s adult legal market in 2018.