Staff
Dan Roda is co-founder and CEO of Abaca, a digital financial platform connecting cannabis businesses with bank accounts, payment processing, lending, and more. Dan has over a decade of private and in-house legal practice experience, serves on the Arkansas Cannabis Industry Association and the Emerging Markets Coalition boards, and sits on the National Cannabis Industry Association’s Hemp Committee.
Full name: Daniel Jonathan Roda, however, he goes by Dan Roda
Title: CEO
Company: Abaca
Years at current company: 4
Education profile:
Tulane University – BS, Finance
Villanova Law School – JD
University of Alabama School of Law – LL.M., Taxation
Most successful professional accomplishment before cannabis:
While it was certainly flattering to be named to a local publication’s “Best Lawyers in Little Rock” list in 2013 and 2014, perhaps my proudest professional accomplishment pre-cannabis was placing into service a $25+ million branded hotel development that occupies two beautiful historic Little Rock buildings, both of which were crumbling when we found them. While the project took a large team of talented people to accomplish, I played a key role in putting everything together, and I feel satisfaction every time I drive past it.
Company mission:
Abaca’s mission is to normalize access to modern financial services across the U.S. for cannabis and hemp industries. We enable deposits, electronic payments, and access to capital for cannabis business, all while ensuring our partner financial institutions remain compliant in an ever-changing regulatory landscape. Our goal is simple – to make accessing best-in-class financial services as easy and affordable to cannabis businesses as they are to virtually every other business.Company’s most successful achievement:
We recently hit an interesting milestone at Abaca – we’ve now processed over $1 billion in cannabis commerce on behalf of our clients. To me, this represents more than just the growth of our company. It represents $1 billion in cash that otherwise would’ve been on the streets creating safety risks and logistical headaches for our clients, and for everyone they do business with, too – even the states and counties to which they pay taxes and fees. The cannabis plant is so incredibly powerful. While we don’t cultivate, process, or dispense it directly ourselves, we take pride in our role in improving the daily lives of those who do work with the plant directly. Abaca enables them to focus on what they do best – delivering the best possible cannabis experience to their customers and patients.
Has the company raised any capital (yes or no): Yes
If so, how much?: $1.35M
Any plans on raising capital in the future? Yes. We’ve experienced pretty exciting growth over the last couple of years, even through the pandemic, and we expect to open a Series A round soon to enable us to take things to the next level.
Most important company five-year goal:
We’ll have succeeded in our mission if, five years from now, the “cannabis banking problem” is no more than a distant memory; and, meanwhile, we’re still hard at work empowering the financial lives of cannabis operators coast to coast in new and innovative ways.
