Adam Stettner, CEO of FundCanna- Interview Series

Due to the ongoing federal prohibition and various legal constraints, securing proper funding and capital remains one of the greatest challenges for aspiring cannabis entrepreneurs. Even fully legalized and licensed businesses face significant difficulty finding reputable firms that offer reliable financial solutions. However, one company is providing essential answers to these persistent financial obstacles.

To gain a deeper understanding of these issues and the strategies cannabis companies can use to navigate the funding landscape, mycannabis.com had the pleasure of speaking with Adam Stettner, CEO of FundCanna.

What subjects did you study at the University of Maryland, and what were the most useful courses for a career in financial services?

I earned a B.A. in Communication at the University of Maryland, and I did that intentionally. Most people default to business, but I wanted to learn business by actually doing business. What I wanted from school was the ability to communicate clearly and earn trust, because in life you are constantly explaining perspective and listening to learn. The better you can be at understanding others and explaining yourself the more successful you can be at delivering a great experience for clients. This is true in all industries but especially in financial services. Few things are more sensitive or emotionally connected than financially related aspects of business.

I focused on areas of study that included listening, formal writing, negotiation and argumentation and debate. Later, I took graduate-level finance courses at Columbia Business School, specifically financial concepts for non-finance executives. That helped me translate complex financial ideas into plain language, enabling me to effectively communicate with bankers, CFOs and analysts yet still make the same concepts clear to operators who don’t live in spreadsheets or find themselves living in their financials.

Because there’ve been so many iconic movies about it, how would you describe the experience of working in financial services in New York City?

New York is intense and competitive. The movies get the adrenaline right, but they usually miss what it actually feels like day to day. It is discipline, repetition and the drive to continually evolve and grow. You must stay sharp even when the work is mundane or repetitive. Unlike the moves, you cannot rely on excitement or adrenaline to lift you. The baseline that I found is pretty simple. Be useful, work to continually improve, and always produce at high levels. If you do not constantly look to improve, produce for your clients and deliver above expectations, there is someone waiting to take your seat that will.

What influenced the decision to move out to San Diego after so many years in New York City? What were the most glaring differences between West Coast vs East Coast finance?

The biggest catalyst was the birth of my first child. I believed that if we didn’t move when my daughter was an infant, we would put more roots down and never leave NYC. New York can be a grind, even in your personal life because it shapes the way you think about everything. I am very competitive and I work hard, but I didn’t want to allow that mentality to shape who I was in my personal life. I felt I had enough NYC in me after decades of living there to retain the drive and commitment where I wanted it but I had room be a better all-around person by living a higher quality of life. What I am saying certainly isn’t applicable to everyone, for many NYC is great even for the personal life they want to live. For me, I welcome the intensity and focus with work but wanted more balance and less stress when it was time to be with family or pursue hobbies and interests. I believed I could have both and, in this case, thankfully I was correct.

I approached the move the way I approach many decisions: I tested it. I looked at five cities, Miami, Denver, Scottsdale/Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego. I wanted a major metro with a strong business environment, a good hiring pool, diverse culture, good food, the ability to travel easily for work and leisure and an outdoor lifestyle. San Diego was the clear winner for the overall balance I was seeking.

The biggest difference between West Coast versus East Coast is pace and atmosphere. I didn’t lose my intensity when I moved. I wanted to bring that same work ethic into a less intense environment so I could focus, stand out and enjoy life at the same time. The first year was tough because I moved with no built-in network, but it ended up being one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

With Reliant Funding, what were the most common types of small businesses financed? What were some success stories?

Adam: We financed classic Main Street small businesses like restaurants, retail, auto repair, healthcare, construction and trade services. These were mostly location-based businesses with real demand that needed working capital to smooth out cash flow, buy inventory, hire staff, open locations or bridge seasonal swings.

My favorite metric of success was twofold, credit performance and repeat business from clients. If a business uses you once and never comes back, it could mean the product did not work for them. If they come back, it usually means the service and capital you provided helped them. At Reliant, we saw clients return at rates exceeding 100%. We underwrote roughly one million businesses and funded well over 100,000. For me, especially at that scale, repeat behavior is the clearest signal that the product was useful in the real world. Interestingly, we are already seeing over 220% repeat business at FundCanna, an even clearer sign of the product meeting the industry where it needs us to be.

What in particular inspired you to create FundCanna? Did you have concerns about working so directly with cannabis companies?

There is a pattern in my career. I gravitate toward markets where the demand is real, but the financial system underserves that market. During the pandemic, cannabis was deemed essential, and at the same time it was severely underbanked and underserved. When I did the research, I saw that access was tighter than traditional small business, including basic banking services like deposit accounts. Access to capital for general operations, things like inputs, inventory and typical day-to-day expenses was non-existent.

I didn’t go in with a romantic view of the industry. I approached it the same way I approached other moves I made earlier in my career.

Learn. Learn the supply chain, understand operator pain points, operating cycles, correlation and relationship/disparity between verticals and geographies. Then apply disciplined product design and underwriting to what is actually happening on the ground. The goal was to build financial products that meet the industry where it is and where it is likely to evolve. It is important to do this without hoping things are stable or easy because it isn’t and never will be. Despite this, it can work quite well for our clients and for FundCanna. The relationships we are forging have been very rewarding from the standpoint of supporting and engaging the industry. I am grateful for that and have zero concerns about working directly with Cannabis.

Why are cannabis companies usually excluded from traditional banking services? Is it just Schedule I, or are there other factors too?

Federal illegality is the starting point. Cannabis is still treated as a Schedule I controlled substance, so a lot of traditional banks look at the category and ask why they would take on the risk when they already have massive mainstream businesses in credit cards, mortgages, auto and general consumer and commercial banking. Absent the government SBA program, “traditional” small business lending is grossly underserved as well, large banks typically only approve 13-15% of traditional business applicants, inclusive of all banks that average is closer to only a 25% approval rate for mainstream businesses by the banks that service them with deposit accounts.

With that in mind, even if a bank chooses to participate in banking cannabis, the compliance burden is heavy. They have an alphabet (GOOG ) soup of acronyms to contend with. Anti-money laundering (AML) requirements, Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) obligations, know-your-customer standards (KYC/KYB), and FinCEN guidance. That means ongoing monitoring and extensive reporting, including suspicious activity reports. Those controls take people, time, and money.

Then you add structural complexity. Cannabis is regulated state by state, and banks often operate across multiple states. Licensing rules, enforcement posture, and payment practices vary. Understanding collateral can be more complicated because licenses and inventory do not behave like traditional assets. Ownership structures can also be layered across multiple entities for compliance reasons, which makes diligence harder.

So Schedule I status matters, but so do operational costs, compliance complexity, reputational risk, and a regulatory landscape that shifts constantly by geography. The result is that even basic banking like deposit accounts can be hard to secure and obtaining access to credit is significantly harder. While a change in schedule certainly helps, many of these factors will not change much with reclassification.

Since FundCanna works with operators in many state markets, how do you alter strategies depending on the state?

We start with the state’s regulatory framework. That includes the licensing structure, enforcement posture, taxation, caps, renewal timelines, and the practical rules that can affect operator behavior. Those details matter because they shape risk, liquidity, and how resilient a business can be when the market gets tight.

We also look at market structure. Maturity, price compression, oversupply versus undersupply, wholesale dynamics, and even how quickly operators get paid can vary by state. We do think about it, and we are constantly updating our credit guidelines by geography. It is not a static, one-size-fits-all playbook, because the portfolio teaches you quickly that some states perform differently from each other.

Do certain cannabis sectors seek financing more than others, or is the need pretty equal?
I’d start by saying that demand for financing is universal. Every part of the cannabis supply chain runs into the same reality that cash goes out before cash comes back in. What changes by sector is the use case and the timing, meaning how long capital is tied up and how often it turns.

Cultivation might use capital for nutrients, staffing, HVAC, or expansion that precedes revenue. Manufacturing might use it to buy biomass or packaging. Ancillary suppliers can have long cash cycles too, like lighting vendors ordering components overseas months before they see revenue. The need is consistent, but the way capital is used and recycled looks different across verticals. We service the entirety of the Cannabis industry across all verticals.

What are notable ways clients have turned FundCanna services into operational and business successes?
A lot of it comes down to timing and predictability. Cannabis businesses often have real demand, but cash flow can be uneven because money goes out long before money comes back in. When you can turn orders and receivables into working capital quickly, you stop waiting 30 days or even six months for cash to show up before making the next move.

That is where tools like FundCanna financing and ReadyPaid come in. They help operators convert receivables into immediate cash flow so they can continue operating with momentum. Instead of riding a constant peak-and-valley cycle of cash in, cash out, they can smooth that pattern and make inflows more predictable.

The practical outcomes are straightforward. Operators can buy inventory or inputs on time, keep production moving, hire and retain staff, and respond intelligently to demand. They are not forced into defensive decisions like delaying payments or passing on opportunities simply because cash is trapped in the cycle. In many cases, once the cash flow becomes stable, the business finds its own growth pattern. We are not teaching operators how to run their businesses. We are removing the constraints that prevent strong operators from executing.

If you want a single metric, we often see the average client grow by more than 50% after we fund them. This is an outstanding metric for me in measuring our efficacy and value proposition. If we can assist in fueling that kind of growth we are on the right path, however, we will always work to improve and stay close to the needs of this industry. The theme is consistent, predictable and stable cash flow gives operators options and freedom to run their business more effectively with less stress.

How does FundCanna plan to continue serving clients with potential hemp-derived THC restrictions and other sweeping regulatory changes?

Regulatory volatility is the constant in cannabis. There has been non-stop evolution in regulation for over a decade in and around Cannabis. Debate around hemp-derived THC restrictions will continue, the details matter because the outcomes can be very different depending on what holds. This industry does not operate under one straightforward and universal rulebook. You are navigating dozens of state frameworks plus federal constraints, that is unlike most other categories in finance but it is a requirement if you are to service this space.

Our approach is sustainability and durability. We diversify across geographies, operator and credit profiles and verticals so we are not overexposed to any one outcome. We review the portfolio constantly and adjust underwriting regularly, including monthly and quarterly lookbacks, because the market changes fast. Finally, we keep the product set flexible so we can tighten, loosen, and evolve based on what operators actually need in the moment, rather than forcing the industry to fit a static credit box.

Thank you for joining us, Adam! For more information on FundCanna, please visit its website.