POSEIDON - Key Persons
Andres Navia is a Portfolio Manager and adds great depth to our team with his background. He joined Poseidon in 2019, bringing his 12 years of professional experience in venture capital, entrepreneurship and management consulting with Accenture and Ernst & Young.
Andres started his career as a management consultant focused on consumer goods, pharma, and software. After his first job in consulting, he co-founded an eCommerce company. He then went back to consulting and specialized in asset management advisory, concentrating on digital product and digital distribution strategies for the asset management industry. He transitioned to investing with a focus on early stage financial technology.
Prior to Poseidon, Andres was a Director of a private investment firm that focused on consumer, health, business services and TMT in the US, West Europe and South America.
Andres graduated with a Master of Business Administration from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and a Bachelor of Science in Finance and a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from the Carroll School of Management at Boston College.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder
- Managing Partner
Emily Paxhia is a co-founder and Managing Partner of Poseidon.
Emily has reviewed thousands of companies in the cannabis industry and has worked with countless founders in many capacities. She had helped to shape founders' pitch preparations, their go-to-market strategies/ product launches, and advised on day-to-day business operations. Emily has held board seats for multiple portfolio companies and participates as an adviser to multiple teams.
Extremely active in the investment decision making and ongoing investment oversight processes, she works closely with her partners to create meaningful deal structures, ensuring that proper governance is carried out at the company level. Further, Emily has dedicated time and energy to supporting policy groups and has served on the Board of Directors of the Marijuana Policy Project. She also currently serves on the Board of Athletes for CARE and The Initiative.
Emily has over 10 years of experience working as a consultant and researcher, and as such, has become an expert at extracting actionable insights from research and applying them to make corporations function more efficiently and successfully. She also leverages this experience to engage in detailed market analysis for determination around product-market fit and potential scalability.
Emily graduated from New York University with an M.A. in Psychology in 2008. She graduated from Skidmore College with a B.A. in Psychology in 2002.
Mike Boniello joined Poseidon in 2018 after spending the previous 3 years at Merrill Lynch Private Bank and Investment Group co-managing over $1.5 billion in assets for high-net-worth individuals, families, and foundations. Mr. Boniello brings his 16 years of diversified financial experience to the General Partner's management team, during which he has focused not only on investment management but on building the structure and systems that allows investment teams to succeed. He initially entered into the cannabis industry in 2013 doing pro-bono business and regulatory work for early stage companies trying to navigate the highly fragmented and regulated industry.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder
- Managing Partner
- Member of the Poseidon Team
Morgan Paxhia is a co-founder and Managing Partner of Poseidon, one of the longest running funds in the cannabis industry.
With over ten years experience in investing and finance, Morgan has developed a deep understanding of individual company analysis, portfolio construction, and risk mitigation. Since 2012, he has dedicated his investment focus primarily to the cannabis industry. Given the limited amount of information in this emerging vertical, the lack of institutional research, and relative industry immaturity, Morgan embraces an active approach of working closely with companies. He utilizes a "boots on the ground" methodology to better understand individual companies and the industry. Through his extensive travel across the US and Canada, reviewing hundreds of business plans and overseeing several existing cannabis investments, Morgan has developed Poseidon's investment methodology tailored specific to the business of cannabis. Poseidon's proprietary process is driven by the time spent in the industry and the considerable data collected over the last several years. He has created frameworks for analysis depending on sub-sector, company stage, and participation across the capital spectrum through our database of contacts, valuations, metrics, and other relevant factors.
Morgan started his investment career at UBS Financial Services working in a Wealth Management/ Investment Banking hybrid training program. The training brought a wide range of first hand experience working through several facets of the organization, including advisory teams managing assets for high net worth individuals and municipal bonds trading. Following UBS, Morgan transitioned to a Providence-based Registered Investment Advisor as an Investment Consultant. During that time, he worked under the partners of the firm doing fundamental portfolio management.
Morgan graduated from the University of Rhode Island with a B.S. in Applied Mathematics in 2005.
Prior to Poseidon, Patrick founded CanopyBoulder and was CEO for over 6 years. Leading the cannabis industry's top business accelerator, Patrick raised and managed five funds and led investments in 115 companies. Before joining the cannabis industry in 2013, Patrick spent 15 years in the natural products industry. His first role was as the first hire at a boutique investment bank and venture capital firm. Moving onto a portfolio company, Patrick led the eventual sale to a B2B media company, where he eventually became a Market Leader where he managed 14 P&Ls and a staff of 40.
Patrick was a Division I soccer player at Brown University and graduated with a double major in Geology and Organizational Behavior and Management.
Job Titles:
- Managing Director
- Portfolio Manager
Tyler possesses nearly 21 years of experience as an investor in both the public and private markets. He began his career in 2000, having worked at Goldman Sachs as an investment banker in the Mergers and Acquisitions group in New York City.
Following his tenure at Goldman Sachs, he joined PSAM, a hedge fund also based in New York City. Throughout his eight-year tenure at PSAM, Tyler researched and invested in numerous companies and was promoted to Vice President. Tyler took an active role in many of the investments, having served in the capacity of Co-Chairman of the Official Creditors Committee in the Dana Corporation restructuring process and on numerous ad hoc creditor committees.
In 2010, Tyler founded and served as Chief Executive Officer of Proven Fields Oil & Gas, an energy-focused private equity fund, which acquired, developed and managed oil and gas assets in multiple U.S. states. After leading the successful sale of most of the assets of Proven Fields, Tyler launched a new investment and advisory firm named HomeBase, which both invests in and provides outsourced CFO advisory, accounting and bookkeeping services to venture-stage companies. He joined forces with Poseidon in 2019 in an outsourced CFO capacity via HomeBase and the team has been working closely together ever since. The relationship culminated in Tyler, Morgan and Emily collaborating to build and launch the AdvisorShares Poseidon Dynamic Cannabis ETF (NYSE Arca: PSDN) for which Tyler, Morgan and Emily serve as joint Portfolio Managers.
Tyler is an investor in and serves on the Board of Vicunita Minerals UK Limited, a company focused on gold mining in Peru, and as Chief Investment Officer of EdgeHill Venture Partners.
Tyler received a B.B.A. from Emory University in 2000. Additional information about each portfolio manager's compensation, other accounts managed by the portfolio manager, and the portfolio manager's ownership of securities in the Fund is available in the SAI.