https://www.bgreat.com/
From cupcakes to beauty products, CBD is showing up everywhere you look.
Touted for myriad health and wellness benefits, the non-psychoactive component of cannabis hasn’t gone unnoticed by investors.
That’s what initially clued in B Great’s founder, Barbara Goodstein, that CBD could be a massive opportunity.
As the former CEO of Tiger 21, a network for high net worth and family office investors, Goodstein told Business Insider in an interview she saw “lots of opportunities” in the CBD space.
“I was really underwhelmed by the presentations and by the entrepreneurs behind them,” she says. “I thought that there was a huge opportunity for a really experienced team to go into this category.”
In December of last year, Goodstein decided to found B Great, a consumer startup that sells products ranging from hemp oil to lotions and balms containing CBD.
To date, B Great has raised $1.5 million in equity over three funding rounds, with the latest round closing in February. Goodstein said she’s raising an additional $1 million in convertible notes, a type of debt that converts to equity, and has closed on $450,000 as of August 1.
Once completed, that would bring B Great’s total funding to $2.5 million in debt and equity.
Goodstein says she preferred to go the convertible note route so as to keep B Great’s equity structure and avoid diluting her ownership in the company.
So far, B Great has been a lean operation — Goodstein herself is the only full-time employee along with a few key advisors. The startup is adding Patina Miller, an actress and singer, as an investor and founding partner as well.
B Great’s other investors include Howard Morgan, the cofounder of First Round Capital and an early Uber investor, along with a slew of other individual investors including Nick Kovacevich, the CEO of cannabis company KushCo, and David Mars, a partner at White Owl Capital Partners, an early-stage venture fund.
Like most other CBD brands, B Great is mostly an e-commerce business, selling products through its website and other online channels. Goodstein says she tastes and uses each of the products herself.
“There have been many things written about the taste of CBD drinks,” Goodstein says. “I’ve probably tried over 200 products — literally everything that’s available. And I think ours are the best tasting of all of them.”
