Sensi Properties Start-Up Story

Daniel Sax

Sensi Properties

Tell us about Sensi Properties. What do you do?

Sensi Properties was founded as the first cannabis real estate investment company in Canada. We focus on helping licensed producers (LPs) and other federally regulated players grow by freeing up the capital that’s trapped in their real estate. Sensi invests alongside the LPs in their real estate, providing a non-dilutive capital solution and allowing them to focus on an already complex and risky business. We allow them to take some of that risk off the table and grow without watering themselves down from an ownership perspective. The LPs become tenants and can invest that capital back into a business that will produce a much higher return than that of the real estate.

I think it’s the fairest deal in the space, since none of the value for these companies comes from the ownership of the real estate, but rather the use of it. Sensi is active in the acquisition, development and financing of cannabis

real estate across the value chain, from cultivation, manufacturing and distribution.

Tell us your start-up story: when and how did you get into the cannabis sector?

I began investing in the public space with a stockbroker who was really into it back in mid to late 2016, and later into some private companies. As an investor, I watched myself get diluted down as these companies raised equity capital to put it into real estate they didn’t need to own in the first place. This approach to capital, having spent my whole career in real estate investment and finance, made no sense to me, so out of frustration I launched Sensi Properties to try and fix what I saw as broken. In that way, it’s a typical entrepreneurial story. In the end I focused on an area that no one else was serving, and that I already had a deep expertise in. It was the marriage of two things I love, opportunistic real estate investing and cannabis.

I think it’s the fairest deal in the space, since none of the value for these companies comes from the ownership of the real estate, but rather the use of it.

What’s ahead for the cannabis industry?

The future is really bright for the cannabis industry. The more you learn about the plant and its uses, the more it feels like the possibilities of where this is going to go are infinite, especially on the medical side. I like to think of everything on a time scale. It will be fascinating to see how cannabis evolves at both a societal level and a business level. While in some ways this space is moving at breakneck speed, there’s a tinge of relativity there if you realize that alcohol prohibition ended 85 years ago and there are still dry counties in the United States.

Sensi Properties by the numbers:

We’re private and can’t really share anything at this time about our investments or the portfolio. On a personal level it looks like this:

• Two to five shots of espresso per day

• Six hours of sleep max

• Zero fluff press releases issued

• 1,500 business cards given out at meetings and conferences

• Two limited edition Sensi hoodie runs

What will you be doing on Oct. 17?

On October 17 I’ll either be hanging out with friends, having a good laugh and sharing stories about the good ol’ prohibition days, or more likely I’ll be networking at some industry party, talking about how we can shape what the future looks like for this space. Ideally, that party would be thrown by Business of Cannabis (wink wink).

Where can we find Sensi Properties?sensiproperties.com

Twitter: @dansax, @SensiProperties