Medical firm takes curvy road to find right partner

Finding the right business partner can be daunting — and costly if it goes south. A $100 million company’s road to bliss started out with some bumps.

By Mark Gordon
| 6:00 a.m. January 15, 2021
| 0 Free Articles Remaining!

Courtesy. AltMed CEO John Tipton will be president of Chicago-based Verano under a merger between the two companies.

Strategies

Sarasota medical cannabis company AltMed Enterprises had a rough go the first time it entered into a partnership agreement with another company.

Back then, in 2014, the then-new company invested $850,000 in a potential partnership with a company in Arizona, to grow and develop products together. Soon after AltMed cut the check, the would-be partner made off with the money. “That was probably $850,000 more than we really had,” AltMed Founder Michael Smullen recalls. “It was like the wild, Wild West when we started out. We found there are a lot of people in this industry you wouldn’t want to do business with.”