CEO Today USA Awards

CEO Today USA Awards 2019 www.ceotodaymagazine.com - N E W Y O R K - 87 RYAN G SMITH Co-Founder & CEO of LeafLink ABOUT SCOTT MCDONALD I was born with the entrepreneurial spirit. In my Catholic grammar school, we weren’t allowed to bring candy to lunch, so in 3rd grade my friends and I bought candy at the corner deli and would sell it for double the retail price during recess. I got caught splitting up the $50 in cash profits with my group of five friends when a nun walked by and wanted to know what was going on. From there, I became obsessed with online marketplaces and created my first eBay account in 6th grade. The joke growing up was that if something went missing, it was probably in Ryan’s PayPal account. Fun fact, I have over 300 positive reviews on eBay since then; I’ve even sold a single shoe. That passion only grew and so while I was an undergrad at Colgate, I started two companies. One was a paper supply company that became a legacy business for other students when I sold it in senior year. The second was an investor relationship platform for real estate companies, which I later sold to an NYSE public firm that had over a quarter-million investors at the time. I met Zach, LeafLink’s co-founder, through mutual mentors and investors. I vividly recall having coffee with him in Grand Central Station, brainstorming given our mutual experience in B2B marketplaces and SaaS; at the time, Zach was at eBay. So, I said to him, “I keep hearing a lot about the cannabis industry…” and he banged his hands on the table and said “Yes!” That’s when we started mapping out the initial plans for LeafLink. After that, we booked a flight to Denver and started shadowing cannabis companies together, learning how we could help solve their pain points and define their operations with LeafLink. FIRM PROFILE Since launching in 2016, LeafLink has helped hundreds of cannabis brands and thousands of cannabis retailers save time on wholesale ordering, so they can focus on what matters most to their business. As the largest online marketplace for wholesale cannabis, LeafLink provides a suite of products including streamlined ordering, CRM, reporting tools and fulfillment and shipment queues. LeafLink’s team of experienced tech and cannabis hires is led by founders Ryan G. Smith and Zach Silverman, with headquarters in NY and LA. We process hundreds of millions of dollars a year in orders, work with the top brands and retailers in the industry and were selected by Fast Company as one of the 10 Most Innovative Companies in Enterprise of 2018. www.leaflink.com OUR OFFICES New York (HQ) 80 Broad Street New York, NY 10004 Socal (HQ) 6605 Hollywood Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90028 Norcal 2181 Greenwich St San Francisco, CA 94123 Colorado 1800 Wazee St 3rd floor Denver, CO 80202 Texas 801 Barton Spring Rd. Austin, TX 78704