Founders
Pre-license and pre-revenue teams that need structure before they need scale — entity design, capital narrative, and a defensible application.
Cannabis Advisory · Licensing · Capital · Operations
Institutional clarityfor a frontier industry.
Stratus Consulting Group advises founders, license holders, and growth-stage cannabis companies on the decisions that determine whether an operation survives its first cycle — or compounds through it.
- 5
- Practice areas
- Multi-state
- Advisory footprint
- Seed → Scale
- Engagement stage
Who We Serve
Four kinds of operators, one standard of rigor.
Engagements are scoped to the stage of the business — but the underlying discipline does not change.
License Holders
Awarded operators converting paper into production: buildout sequencing, compliance architecture, and readiness for first inspection.
Emerging Operators
Live businesses tightening unit economics, SOPs, and inventory discipline while margin pressure and audit exposure rise together.
Growth-Stage Companies
Multi-site and multi-state operators preparing for institutional capital, acquisition, or a governance standard their board can defend.
Practice Areas
The five disciplines that decide whether a cannabis business holds.
01
Licensing & Market Entry
Winning the right to operate — and building an application that survives scoring, diligence, and the years that follow.
- Jurisdiction and market screening
- Application strategy, drafting, and narrative
- Ownership, entity, and cap-table structuring
- Social equity and local-approval positioning
- Post-award activation planning
02
Regulatory & Compliance
Compliance treated as operating infrastructure, not paperwork produced the week before an inspection.
- Compliance program design and gap assessment
- SOP architecture and version control
- Seed-to-sale and track-and-trace hygiene
- Inspection readiness and mock audits
- Remediation, response, and corrective plans
03
Operations & Facility Strategy
Throughput, cost per unit, and quality — designed into the facility rather than negotiated after it opens.
- Cultivation, manufacturing, and retail workflow design
- Buildout sequencing and vendor evaluation
- Inventory, waste, and yield controls
- Labor models, training, and accountability structures
- Technology stack selection and integration
04
Capital & Investor Readiness
The materials, controls, and story that let a serious investor say yes without discounting for chaos.
- Financial model construction and stress testing
- Investor materials and data-room assembly
- Capital structure and instrument guidance
- Diligence preparation and buyer-side response
- Valuation framing and use-of-proceeds discipline
05
Growth, M&A & Strategic Advisory
Expansion decisions made against evidence — where to go next, what to buy, and what to decline.
- Market expansion and site selection analysis
- Acquisition screening and integration planning
- Brand, wholesale, and channel strategy
- Board reporting and governance frameworks
- Executive advisory and interim leadership support
Stratus Consulting Group provides business, regulatory, and operational advisory services. We are not a law firm, accounting firm, or broker-dealer, and nothing here constitutes legal, tax, accounting, or investment advice.
Capital & Investor Readiness
Capital follows evidence, not enthusiasm.
We prepare the business so that diligence confirms the story rather than dismantling it.
- 01
Business Case
Model, market, and unit economics
- 02
Structure
Entity, ownership, and instruments
- 03
Diligence
Controls, records, and disclosures
- 04
Deployment
Milestones and use of proceeds
Data room architecture
A structured index assembled before outreach begins — so questions are answered by documents rather than by meetings.
- Formation documents and cap table
- Ownership disclosures
- Material contracts and leases
- Licenses, permits, and conditions
- Inspection and violation history
- Compliance SOP index
- Historical statements and trial balance
- Operating model and assumptions
- 280E posture and tax filings
- Facility plans and capacity data
- Yield, throughput, and waste records
- Org chart and key-person coverage
Operating Model
One integrated system, not five disconnected vendors.
Licensing decisions constrain operations. Operations determine financials. Financials determine access to capital. We advise across all of it because the failures happen at the seams.
STEP 01
Understand
A structured diagnostic across license posture, financials, facility, and team. We establish what is actually true before recommending anything.
STEP 02
Organize
Documentation, controls, and reporting are rebuilt into a single operating spine that regulators, lenders, and investors can all read.
STEP 03
Execute
We work inside the business — sequencing buildout, filings, hiring, and capital events against a dated plan with named owners.
STEP 04
Advance
Once stable, attention shifts to expansion, acquisition, and governance maturity appropriate to the next stage of capital.
Relevant Experience
Work spanning the full license lifecycle.
- Merit-based and competitive license applications
- Local municipal approval and community engagement
- Cultivation and manufacturing facility activation
- Retail operations and point-of-sale governance
- Multi-state compliance harmonization
- Private capital raises and investor diligence
- Acquisition screening and post-close integration
- Turnaround and remediation engagements
Representative Engagement
From awarded license to operating business in a single cycle
A newly awarded operator arrived with a license, a lease, and no operating infrastructure. Stratus built the compliance program, sequenced the buildout against inspection milestones, rebuilt the financial model for lender review, and stood up the reporting cadence the board now runs on.
- Inspection
- Passed on first submission
- Capital
- Diligence-ready in 90 days
- Governance
- Board reporting instituted
Perspective
What we keep seeing across the industry.
Compliance is an operating system, not a binder
The operators who pass inspections cleanly are the ones whose daily workflow already produces the evidence.
Most cannabis raises fail on records, not on story
Investors rarely reject the market thesis. They reject the inability to verify it in the data room.
Cost per unit is decided at buildout
Facility layout, environmental design, and labor model fix the majority of your margin before the first harvest.
About
Advisory built by operators, for operators
Stratus Consulting Group was founded on a simple observation: the cannabis industry is full of talented founders who lose on execution infrastructure rather than on vision. Licensing, compliance, capital, and operations are treated as separate problems until they collide.
We work as an embedded advisory partner — small engagements, senior attention, and a bias toward building systems the client can run without us. The objective is durability: a business that holds up under regulatory scrutiny, investor diligence, and its own growth.
RS
Ruddy Severino
Founder & Managing Director
Direct principal involvement on every engagement. Clients work with the person accountable for the outcome, not a rotating delivery team.
Contact
Let's assess where the business actually stands.
Initial conversations are direct and confidential. Share the stage you're at and the decision in front of you.