Two of us worked inside New York’s cannabis rollout before we ever signed a lease. We started PCA because the only real ways to finance a store were a predatory loan, giving up equity, or giving up control. We wanted there to be a fourth option.
Ben Sheridan is co-founder and CEO of Platform Cannabis Advisors. He previously served as Deputy Director of Strategy and Policy Implementation at the New York State Office of Cannabis Management, where he was one of the agency’s first employees. Before OCM, he was Deputy Director of Executive Operations in the New York State Governor’s Office, with a portfolio spanning state operations, COVID response, and policy across cannabis, nonprofits, and state contracting. Before government, Ben spent nearly a decade leading and advising advocacy and political campaigns, nonprofits, and social enterprises. At PCA he runs real estate and capital strategy and signs the head leases the platform carries.
Matthew Greenberg, CFA, is a co-founder, President, and CFO of Platform Cannabis Advisors. Matthew most recently spearheaded economic policy at the OCM. Matthew spent six years in the investment world prior to state government, including as the co-CIO of East Hill Capital, a cannabis investment firm specializing in public equities, as the Head of Finance for a large real estate services start-up, where he advised the company through a $35M raise and product launch, and as an analyst for a major public pharmaceuticals company.
Michelle Mendoza is the VP of Launch at Platform Cannabis Advisors. With over a decade of experience in cannabis retail, including as VP of Product at Sweet Flower, Michelle is a data-driven strategist skilled in inventory control, product curation, and innovative buying strategies. She excels in building community connections, designing operational frameworks, and driving revenue growth while fostering long-term industry impact. Michelle has also served as a mentor with Our Academy, the 501(c)(3) supporting justice-impacted cannabis entrepreneurs.
Devan McLaren is the Partner of Accounting and Advisory at Platform Cannabis Advisors, and has spent over 8 years serving cannabis clients across North America. He is a co-founder of Our Academy, a 501(c)(3) supporting justice-impacted cannabis entrepreneurs, supporting the launch of NY’s retail market by directly building pro formas for over 200 retail licensees across New York State under a technical assistance contract with OCM. Devan also founded Triple Beam Advisors, an advisory firm that has underwritten more than $5 billion in transactions and advisory work over the past three years, with a heavy focus on cannabis operators.
Over 30 years experience focused on working with small to middle-market sized companies, alternative investment funds, and entrepreneurs, handling hundreds of matters involving mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, corporate and partnership formation, capitalization and financing, recapitalization and restructuring transactions, commercial real estate transactions, and fundamental corporate and partnership governance.
John is a founder and trained lawyer with over 15 years of cannabis & capital markets experience in the Canadian market. John has raised and deployed over $175m in capital for cannabis projects, selling his prior company for $280m. John is currently the CEO of MBody AI, a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ.
Ben Sheridan and Matthew Greenberg also serve on the board.
Anyone serious about opening a store, but who needed capital and expertise to do it, kept running into the same three doors. A predatory, high-interest loan. Giving up real equity. Or handing over control of the business to whoever wrote the check. Every one of them asked the operator to pay for capital with something they should never have had to sell.
Our goal is to help operators open without putting a dollar of their own capital down.
That is the first half. The second half is everything that comes after, and all of it sits inside the same 10% of gross revenue, with no separate line items:
And then there is scale. A single store negotiates insurance, banking, POS, security, and vendor contracts alone, at solo rates, with no volume to point to. On the platform, an individual operator gets the pricing a whole network can command, and those rates improve for everyone already on it each time another store joins.
Independent, but never negotiating from a position of one.
New York is where we proved it works. It is not where the idea ends.
The Platform is in development. It will be the single sign-in for the PCA team, for clients and their staff, and for shareholders.
If you need access to something in the meantime, write to hi@platformcanna.com and we will point you to the right place.
