Cornbread Hemp's Website

In the last MetroStart podcast, we talked to Cornbread Hemp's Jim Higdon about their ongoing equity crowdfunding round.

This week, we talk to Jim again about how they knocked it out of the park - nailing an oversubscribed $107,000 round in just 17 days!

Listen to the podcast to learn how they were so successful, even in the middle of the Coronavirus shutdown.

 

Podcast Transcript (This is machine transcribed, so please forgive the typos.)

Alan (00:03):
Welcome everyone to the MetroStart podcast. This is Alan Grosheider and I'm here today again with Jim Higdon. Jim is the co founder of Cornbread Hemp ,and it's a first for Metrostart because I'm interviewing Jim for the second time in a row. So it's the first time I've ever interviewed the same person twice right in a row. And there's a good reason for that. In the last podcast we talked about a capital raise that a cornbread hemp was going through and what was the first, because they received $20,000 from Render Capital and they were the first to be accepted into we funders special program with render capital for a discounted rate with we funder and they were doing a capital raise and I won't spoil the surprise but uh, about what happened cause we'll talk about it but Hey Jim. Okay, great to have you back again. And I guess we'll go ahead and say what it is and congratulations because Jim and Cornbread Hemp, they just finished a fund raise on Wefunder and raised the full amount in, what was it, two weeks?

Jim (01:20):
It was 17 days.

Alan (01:24):
Wow and in the middle of the coronavirus thing,

Jim (01:29):
Right in April of 2020.

Alan (01:33):
Crazy. But it's a, it's a great sign of what's going on with crowdfunding. Crowdfunding. Equity crowd funding is a really good way to raise capital for your company. Even in tough times. Probably an easier way during tough times if it's a product that people like and people can identify with. Um, so quickly, just, just so in case somebody is listening to this podcast and didn't listen to the other one, tell a little bit about what corn bread hemp is.

Jim (02:03):
Sure. So cornbread hip is a CBD brand based here, Louisville, Kentucky, where the first Kentucky based CBD brand to offer USPA certified organic CBD oils, which is how we kind of got out of the, uh, out of the norm brands and really elevated ourselves to a national level. Um, we've been, uh, we've been offering certified organic CBD products since, uh, the end of last year. Uh, and, um, we had been plotting several different fundraising strategies last year and nothing really clicked. A Louisville is a particular sort of, uh, you know, ecosystem, uh, for capital and fundraising. Um, and so at the beginning of the year we decided to shift gears and pursue a crowd funding strategy. Equity crowd funding was new to me, a learn. Most of my beginning, uh, understanding of crowd was through talking to you and some of these other folks in the Louisville startup community. Um, I was familiar with a Kickstarter and go fund me and Patrion, but none of those are pro, uh, platforms that, that sell equity, uh, in a, in a crowdfunding capacity.

Jim (03:16):
So understanding the mechanics of what equity crowd funding would look like is something that I had to learn on the fly and we put these pieces together and we were ready to go. Um, in March, uh, we were going to go on another platform and someone in the Louisville startup community, actually, Larry Horn at leap said, told us, Hey, did you know about this matching fund between render and we funder. Um, and we didn't. So we switch gears and replatform I'm really in the Nick of time. Um, and um, it just really set us up for success. Uh, we got that Mmm relationship between render and we fun...