Meet Bespoke Financial, a lender for cannabis companies backed by Snoop Dogg’s Casa Verde Capital

Bespoke Financial wants to provide cannabis businesses with the same kind of financial services that other businesses get, but that dispensaries and growers can’t yet access.

The regulations around cannabis operations are so stringent at the local level — and so nebulous at the federal level — that national banks won’t give businesses in the cannabis industry the same basic services (like short-term loans).

That’s why one former Goldman Sachs banker has partnered with two entrepreneurs from the traditional agriculture industry to create Bespoke Financial. And it’s why the company has raised $7 million in financing led by Casa Verde Capital — the investment firm launched by legendary cannabis aficionado, Calvin Broadus (AKA Snoop Dogg).

In some ways, George Mancheril is the new face of the cannabis business. The former banker hails from Goldman Sachs and Guggenheim Partners and worked on the desks that dealt with alternative lending.

A transplant to Los Angeles roughly six years ago, Mancheril says he saw the migration of legally sanctioned cannabis begin for recreational use and knew there would be opportunities for new lending businesses.

“Cannabis will become a broad, mature industry just like any other, and if that is going to happen, there needs to be a debt structure that can support that,” Mancheril says.

The biggest impediment to the industry’s growth is the one that Bespoke Financial wants to tackle first — and that’s access to debt.

To build the company’s first product, Mancheril looked to his co-founder’s Pablo Borquez-Schwarzbeck and Benjamin Dusastre. Borquez-Schwarzbeck and Dusastre previously launched ProducePay, a fintech platform focused on produce farmers that has financed roughly $2 billion in perishable commodities throughout 13 countries. It’s backed by around $200 million in venture capital and debt financing.