- 6/30/2025
Ryan Smith previously founded LeafLink, a wholesale marketplace (valued at $800 million) serving the cannabis industry. He sat down with Forbes reporter Zoya Hasan to share why he left the company to launch Mura, a new startup using AI to empower frontline workers, like the technicians who repair your AC.
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0:00 Introduction
1:17 What is Mura? A Practical Example
4:26 The Mura Business Model: Value-Based Pricing
9:55 Standing Out in the Age of AI
14:15 Founder Lessons: Pricing, Regulation, and Team
19:25 Long-Term Vision and the Startup Edge
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0:00 Introduction
1:17 What is Mura? A Practical Example
4:26 The Mura Business Model: Value-Based Pricing
9:55 Standing Out in the Age of AI
14:15 Founder Lessons: Pricing, Regulation, and Team
19:25 Long-Term Vision and the Startup Edge
Fuel your success with Forbes. Gain unlimited access to premium journalism, including breaking news, groundbreaking in-depth reported stories, daily digests and more. Plus, members get a front-row seat at members-only events with leading thinkers and doers, access to premium video that can help you get ahead, an ad-light experience, early access to select products including NFT drops and more:
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hi, everyone. I'm Zoya Hassan, and I'm here with Ryan Smith, a Forbes 30 Under 30 Lister.
00:08Ryan, thank you so much for joining us.
00:10Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
00:12Yeah, you made our list for LeafLink, which was a company in the cannabis industry,
00:17and now you've started something brand new in a very different industry.
00:23So tell me a little bit about what you were building over at LeafLink and what you're doing now.
00:27Yeah, so back in 2016, we started LeafLink, which is still around, doing really well.
00:33We built a B2B wholesale marketplace for legal cannabis companies.
00:37We basically streamlined the way dispensaries purchased their wholesale inventory,
00:40and we grew it over the last 9, 10 years to have 80% market share.
00:46So, you know, four out of five things sold in the U.S. go through LeafLink.
00:49We raised a few hundred million dollars for that business.
00:51But it was all about enterprise commerce and back office transactions,
00:55like the things that are often overlooked but help businesses run and are the key to their success.
01:01And so after being there for almost a decade, decided to transition out to a board role.
01:07We brought in a new CEO, which was doing a great job, and started focusing on something new at Miura.
01:13And what exactly is this something new? Tell me more.
01:15Yeah, so when we started LeafLink, it was in a very new industry, an industry that I enjoyed.
01:22It made most people feel uncomfortable.
01:25Cannabis had just gone legal in Colorado, and somehow today it's still federally illegal.
01:29And so it was a really underserved industry.
01:32But at the end of the day, entrepreneurs who needed tools, they needed software, they needed solutions,
01:37so we built that for them.
01:38When we were looking to build something new, really excited to be partnered with our first hire at LeafLink,
01:44now my co-founder, Claire DeRoberts.
01:47We wanted to find something that was also overlooked.
01:50But this time it was really important to find a more mature industry with profitable businesses,
01:56really sophisticated business people running them.
01:59But we wanted something that was less, not necessarily the sexiest thing,
02:03but an absolutely essential thing and often overlooked.
02:06And that's where we wanted to build and serve.
02:07And so with Miura, we're automating components of the order-to-cash process for field service companies.
02:14So imagine the business that helps the AC continue to work in this building,
02:18or the coffee machines not go offline at your favorite coffee shop.
02:23Those are our customers.
02:24Okay, give me like a practical example of how that's being used in the back end.
02:29Like what are your customers doing with your software?
02:34Right.
02:34So one of our customers serves one of the largest coffee chains in the U.S., and they are the service provider.
02:41So if something goes offline, they need to dispatch a technician to actually go physically to that location and fix it.
02:48In order for that to happen, there's a number of systems where the item breaks, the general manager needs to file a work order.
02:56That work order can go through 80 different systems to our customers.
03:00Our customers use a bunch of different systems to process the order, to build the order, to track the order.
03:06And a lot of these are pretty older legacy systems.
03:09So what we look to do is focus less on building a whole new software stack.
03:15We are looking to automate the labor, the work that the people do on top of that existing technology.
03:20So when we come to our customers, we say, hey, you're moving tens of thousands of orders a month.
03:25You have a whole team of dispatch agents and billing agents to do that work.
03:29We'll step in and automate a lot of that for you and meet you where you are.
03:34But in this industry, as you said, it's a mature industry and you're automating, you're introducing AI.
03:41Is that a challenge with convincing those customers who've done this for decades with the same old systems who just, you know, are used to what they do?
03:52Is it a challenge to convince them to go and automate?
03:57Yeah, so there were two things that got us really excited about the opportunity.
04:00The first was that it was overlooked.
04:02I think the second is that there's a huge change happening in these businesses.
04:06They are truly like Main Street U.S. companies and they exist everywhere.
04:11And a lot of them are family businesses.
04:13So right now you have a generational shift of ownership from parents to people in our generation running those businesses.
04:19Or they're selling a lot of them to private equity firms and there's a lot of consolidation happening.
04:25So generally you have more forward thinking like tech first owners, runners of these businesses, operators.
04:32And that what we're building really appeals to them because they understand the efficiency it can bring.
04:36The second part is we love this idea of bringing the most cutting edge technology.
04:40We have really close partnerships with all the infrastructural AI like language model layer businesses to places where some of the systems they use are over 30 years old.
04:50And so the way those things interface, we think, is where the opportunity is.
04:54But for us, when we talk to people who aren't in that group and are older, they'll say, oh, I love I love ChatGPT for writing emails.
05:02I have no idea how this could work for my business.
05:04We're like, awesome.
05:06We'll show you how and let us come kind of explain the value that we can bring in a very practical, clear ROI way.
05:12So there's some education, but when we convert them, they like see the light and really love it.
05:18How do you price the product?
05:21How do you kind of convince them to drop these old ways and adopt a whole new manner and then also pay for it?
05:29Yeah.
05:29One of the things that we've thought a lot about when we started theorizing what Mura would be was we think people are sassed out.
05:39They have too many software as a service solutions.
05:42The last thing they want to buy is another per but per seat per month software tool from someone who looks like us.
05:49And so instead, what we say is we want it to be completely based on the value that we bring your business.
05:54And so we charge a transaction fee, transaction-based model on the number of transactions and orders that they have processed through their systems that we help them do more efficiently.
06:04So if they can do things three, three and a half times faster than what you used to do before, we have a very clear calculation on like it's literally an investment versus a amorphous kind of few hundred thousand dollars a month on a software tool alongside the half dozen others they already have.
06:20You just came out of stealth, so has it been, you know, easy to find customers?
06:27Has it been a challenge?
06:29We are being really deliberate in the customers that we bring on.
06:32We're targeting some of the largest and we're already working with a few of the largest private equity-owned consolidated shops.
06:38But we, although we're out of stealth, I always find that word kind of funny, like, you know, we're building and we're happy to work with the best customers.
06:47We want to, we know how to move fast and scale quickly, but we really want to be super deliberate and go very deep with the quality of the software that we're building.
06:55And so we are on site with our customers right now and we are working as best we can to perfect the product.
07:02Last week I was in North Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, and Colorado just with customers, staying at some terrible hotels.
07:10But, like, that's how close we want to be and we're still very much at that stage of the business, which we truly love.
07:15Okay, amazing.
07:16Tell me a little bit more about this private equity trend you're talking about.
07:20Yeah, there's, there's a lot of interest right now in, you know, when, when I first graduated college a little over 10 years ago, it was, venture was really hot.
07:29People were not thinking about profitable businesses.
07:32It was just like grow, scale, you'll figure out how to make money later.
07:35I think that the perception of that has really turned to, there are some amazing businesses that may not grow as quickly, but make money every single year and they're essential.
07:45And so I think private equity particularly or search funds generally are some of the hottest new jobs for people coming out of school, particularly from MBA.
07:55And so all of this capital now is being put towards businesses that acquire other businesses.
08:00And then they try to get, you know, margins at scale and efficiency at scale as a result.
08:05But what's cool about a lot of that is you have people that got, you know, went to a great school, did their thing, and now they're running a field service business in Columbus, Ohio.
08:16And they're there with the crew that's been there for 25 years and figuring it out.
08:21And so there's a lot of interesting kind of fun things that they have to navigate.
08:25And we love jumping in there to help them do that.
08:27How much money has Mirai raised so far?
08:30We closed a $6 million seed round in December that was led by Level One Fund and Lair Hippo.
08:39So some incredible people we've known for a long time.
08:41Are those some of the investors that you built a relationship with when you were at LeafLink?
08:45Yep.
08:46So Lair Hippo was the first institutional investor at LeafLink, which was a big deal.
08:51No one wanted to touch cannabis at all.
08:54And I built a really close relationship with Andrea Hippo and Ben Lair there.
08:58And so when I decided to transition out of LeafLink, they basically said, come work at our office, take meetings here, you know, use this space as your own space.
09:07And they were also really helpful for us in the good times and the hard times at LeafLink.
09:12And so that relationship is super deep.
09:14And then similar with Level One, just like we wanted to be super hyperselective on the people we got to work with this time.
09:19When you went to them with this new idea, what was sort of their reaction?
09:23Yeah, they are some of the most active seed investors probably on the East Coast.
09:31I think they also know that a lot of the time when you're starting something early and it's two people, it's really a character bet.
09:37Like you could say a lot of things that you're excited about and opportunities you think you see, but inevitably it will evolve and change.
09:43Can the people figure that out?
09:45And so they saw us do that and scale LeafLink up to, you know, several hundred people and market share, the 80% market share we had.
09:52So I think it was more around, can Ryan and Claire and now with our third co-founder, James, do something huge again?
09:59And let's go down that path with them.
10:01LeafLink ended up raising or has raised so far some $300 million, if I remember correctly.
10:07Are you going to do that again with Mira?
10:09Is that the goal to make it this, you know, big company with a lot of funding and high valuation?
10:16I've come to learn that I don't think those are all married together, those three concepts.
10:21I think you could build something much larger today with much less capital.
10:25And we're still figuring out exactly like how true and how big that can be.
10:29We're always really excited about like we defined the cannabis industry with what we built at LeafLink.
10:35This time around, we want to do something even larger, but I think we don't need anywhere near the amount of capital to do that.
10:42And so part of when I think of us moving a little bit more deliberately and even slower on the product,
10:48we want to make sure that we're taking advantage of all the newest tech, all the cutting edge stuff that we can,
10:53so that we can actually deliver on a huge vision without needing to raise several hundred million dollars,
10:59which I think in many ways was a time and a place.
11:01But when you went into cannabis, you know, as you said, you were tapping an industry which at the time was kind of untouched
11:09and, you know, there's so many regulations, so much even stigma around it.
11:14And you came in and you kind of dominated the industry in many ways back then.
11:20With AI, you're coming in at a point where every company is suddenly an AI company and it's just talk of the town.
11:27It's a hot, hot industry, right?
11:29Yeah.
11:30So how has that been in terms of standing out?
11:34I understand, like, what makes you different because you're trying to find something that's kind of niche,
11:41something that's an opportunity.
11:43But how do you sort of make yourself stand out to both customers and investors
11:50and also just to the general public?
11:52Right.
11:53I think AI is similar to if I told you I was starting a business and, like, we have a website.
11:58It's like, cool, that's how you have a business.
12:01I think AI has to be, like, at the core of what you're providing.
12:05Where I think the opportunity lies right now is most of the software that infrastructurally is what companies use
12:10from accounting systems to ERPs to CRMs.
12:14Like, there are winners there.
12:16The opportunity, though, is that they are mostly focused on engagement and growing user bases
12:23in ways that I think deploy AI like a feature.
12:27The reason why we've been able to form really close partnerships with the companies whose names you know
12:31on the infrastructural AI side is that Mura doesn't exist without AI.
12:35And so we have it really at this native core of what we do.
12:38For us, we think that's the cool opportunity where it's less about let's come in and disrupt
12:43this big 800-pound gorilla tech player.
12:47I don't think that's the opportunity.
12:48I think the opportunity is actually in the labor that the person is doing that's using that system.
12:53And that's where Mura wants to play, automating these workflows for the back office
12:58of these commercial field service companies.
13:00That's our strategy.
13:01For our customers, we really don't talk all that much about AI, frankly.
13:05It's in our website somewhere, but for them, it's really simple.
13:10Like, they are sophisticated business people.
13:12And for them, it's like, if you give us X, we will make it 3, 4 X for you.
13:17It's a good investment with clear ROI.
13:19That's where we get them.
13:21The fact that we can deploy that level of efficiency is because of AI.
13:25But it's the same thing as, like, and we also have a website.
13:27And I'm like, okay, great.
13:28What can you do for me?
13:30Exactly.
13:30That's what I think about it.
13:32I think it also means everything and nothing to most people.
13:36I'm sure, you know, you know all about it because you're a journalist.
13:39And we know all about it because we use it and we're building with it.
13:41But most people are focused on other things.
13:44And so it's good to get specific and speak their language on the ROI.
13:47And using it in, you know, in your building, what's kind of your take on where the industry is headed, the AI industry?
13:56Is there still a lot of work to be done or are things getting figured out?
14:00What's your take?
14:01I think the technology will get to the places that we are all, everyone excited about it eventually being before people trust it at that level.
14:11So we're doing, like, we're using different models in different parts of these workflows that we're automating.
14:18Like, we'll use OpenAI for one thing.
14:20We'll use Gemini for another.
14:21And I love that competition.
14:23There's something new coming out every week.
14:25Like, we built our software so we can plug and play all these models based on what's best and when.
14:29I think for the prediction, like, you will have this, you will have software with the capability of fully automating some of the things that occur in offices today.
14:40But you need to have leaders and users of that software that are comfortable saying, here's 100%.
14:47I'm just going to step away and hit one button once.
14:50That's tough.
14:51And people, I think, really put a lot of value on having a human in the loop right now.
14:56And so that's how we play.
14:58One final thought on this is I think eventually, like, we are building our software right now with an interface that a person will use to be multiple times as effective.
15:08Our goal is to become invisible.
15:11Like, when we do Miro right, that interface won't be there anymore.
15:14And it will really disappear and automate the full workflow of these back office operations.
15:19But until then, we have to build that trust.
15:22And so that's what we are really focused on doing at Miro.
15:24Yeah, I think last time we chatted, you used a term for that.
15:28Was it dark software?
15:29Yeah.
15:30So Matt Brown over at Matrix has this term called dark software.
15:35And the basic idea is that you could build something that's probably 10% better than Salesforce or QuickBooks.
15:44But it's not going to be 10 times better.
15:47And it's not going to be better enough.
15:50It's not going to be greater enough for a user to do the transition.
15:54I think the opportunity now is, all right, there are all of these tools.
15:58How do we interact with them?
16:00And can we make that part, the person at the keyboard, more efficient using those existing systems?
16:06That's what dark software is.
16:07It's almost like a cloud kitchen model where you order from a brand, a food brand.
16:12And for you, whether it comes from the retail store or kitchen in a warehouse somewhere, you still get the hamburger.
16:19It doesn't really matter.
16:19It's using the things, the brands, and the existing structure that exists with a new take on the AI level.
16:26Yeah, very interesting.
16:28I want to, you know, talk a little bit about you as a founder and some of the lessons learned.
16:32So you built this company that went on to raise a lot of money, went on to nominate an industry.
16:38Now you've started something brand new.
16:40What are some of the lessons you learned at LeafLink that you will not be applying to MIRA?
16:47Yeah.
16:48I think the first one is my prior company, which we sold, and then LeafLink, were playing in heavily regulated spaces.
16:58I think it's incredibly, it's exciting.
17:01There's a higher barrier to entry for those reasons.
17:03But it's incredibly challenging to predict what the government's going to do.
17:07And so the fact that it's 2025 and we're talking about, and cannabis is still federally legal, just baffles me.
17:14But I can't control the government.
17:15And so I wanted to be really careful about picking an industry where there was just more sensible minds at the largest kind of positions of power.
17:24That's one.
17:25I think the second thing, just like founder to founder, figuring out pricing early and getting it right.
17:31It sounds so simple, but a lot of the last 10 years of venture were grow, grow, grow, scale, scale, scale.
17:38We'll figure that stuff out later.
17:41All my friends that are founders, particularly second-time founders, aside from the idea and the customer and the team, those are hugely important things.
17:48It's like, are we pricing what we're selling right?
17:52Can we actually make money with this tool priced in this way?
17:55And the reason why I think that's important is because if you underprice yourself early, it is profoundly difficult to change the perception of the customer on what they think you made is now worth.
18:06And so you really get like a couple of whacks very early at getting that right or being in the neighborhood of what's right.
18:12Doesn't that Claire and I really spent a lot of time thinking about ahead of launching ERA?
18:16Yeah, that's a really great point, actually.
18:19In terms of team, it's you and Claire, co-founder and another co-founder right now.
18:24Are you going to keep it lean this time or are you going to grow, grow, grow?
18:28We're growing really quickly and we have this team of seven people, which we're going to keep it tight for the next few quarters.
18:33But as we close more customers, we'll grow the team to follow and make sure we can execute.
18:38For us, we want to be as fiscally responsible as we can, good stewards of capital, but also super aggressive.
18:43And we'll take those aggressive moves when it makes sense and we can make the most of them.
18:47How would you describe yourself as a leader?
18:51I'd say I think action-oriented and execution is like the most important thing.
18:57I think in some ways I'm a little old school where I love like being with customers, shaking their hands, sitting in their office.
19:04I love moving quickly.
19:05I think, you know, pursuing perfection is just like just a bunch of waiting.
19:10And I love just figuring out and making mistakes.
19:13And so we encourage that.
19:14We don't make the same ones twice.
19:16But for me, I know where we're going.
19:20I don't always know how we're going to get there.
19:22But that's why my team with Claire, she's hyper-complimentary to me in that way.
19:27Like every single day.
19:28We have a funny saying at the office where it's like Ryan can get us into any room.
19:33So I'll kind of blast the doors open.
19:34It's like we're here.
19:36And then everyone's like, okay, who are you?
19:38And then Claire will come and say, excellent, good to see everyone.
19:40Here are the next steps on how we're going to pursue a go live.
19:43And so I think that's part of the leader that I am.
19:46And my partnership with Claire and James on the technical side, super complimentary.
19:50Amazing.
19:50What are you excited about with Mira for this next year?
19:54Where do you imagine it will be by the end of 2025?
19:57Yep.
19:58So the goal for this year was really to hone in on what the wedge product was going to be.
20:02The one that we could scale really quickly to the ideal customer set.
20:07I think we found that actually over the last several weeks, which is why we're announcing that we're coming out.
20:11And so for the rest of this year and into early next year, it's going to be really about getting a handful of customers that just absolutely love that product live and using it across their teams of several thousand each.
20:23And then from there, we'll begin to think about probably towards the end of this year, early next year, scaling up the go-to-market team that would already follow the scaling we did on the engineering side.
20:33And as a serial entrepreneur, what is the long-term vision for you with Mira?
20:38Is this something you would want to eventually sell?
20:41Is this something you want to see through to the end, whatever that end may be?
20:46What do you imagine it will be?
20:48I think there's two paths for us, and we're open to both.
20:53I think one is a single advantage we have, before I say the two things, is that we can execute faster than even the largest companies that I know.
21:00And so that are in our industry.
21:03And so for us, the opportunity is either we continue to build something that connects to these different systems and allows us to take advantage of the infrastructure that exists and is just super complimentary.
21:14There's another path where maybe we decide one day we want to go up against whoever the 800-pound gorilla is.
21:21Right now, the only thing we really care about is let's form really close partnerships with the best companies on the customer side, on the technology side, and bring them the best experience.
21:30And then we'll make decisions as we execute from there.
21:33And why do you say that we can execute faster than anyone else in the industry?
21:38We were at, I know what happens to companies, except very few, and they get to be several hundred people.
21:44And it's just harder to move faster.
21:47There's more to protect than often an opportunity to build.
21:51And when we're this early, there's not much to protect.
21:53It's like, just build.
21:55And so that allows us to move much faster.
21:58We're also willing to do things and get places and put in extra work that I think, frankly, a first-hand employee will do more intense things to win customers over than the first thousand somewhere else.
22:12And so that's, I think, our edge.
22:14When you were leaving LeafLink, was that a hard decision for you?
22:18Yeah, it's hard.
22:20It's definitely hard to leave something that was a primary focus for you, and you put everything into growing it.
22:27But I couldn't be more proud of what we built in my 20s, basically.
22:30And now we're in my 30s chapter here with all the lessons learned.
22:35But it's hard.
22:35Yeah, I mean, it's not – companies can feel like a living thing at times.
22:40And people say, you know, you leave your child type thing.
22:43I don't have any kids, but I imagine it's something – a similar experience.
22:46But you want to get it to a place, and I think LeafLink is, where it can have its own life and chapters that follow without me being the one making all the decisions.
22:55And you have to move on, just, like, always move forward.
22:58As a young founder, what are some of the key lessons you've learned growing a company?
23:05So something that I've learned over the 10 years that I was at my last business was when you're early and there's only a few people, everyone does everything.
23:13And you'll try a bunch of things that you're not good at, and then if you're lucky enough to find someone better at that thing, pull them in to do the better job.
23:22I think the one thing, as a founder, is important is to pull yourself out when you know you've found that better person and focus on the things that you uniquely can do.
23:30I think, personally, I was trying to do so many things early days at the last business, and now I know, like, where I excel so much clearer in the things that I don't excel at.
23:41And that's why I have a partner in Claire and in James that have these really complementary skill sets.
23:46And that's, I think, like, know when to tap out on a thing that you're working on to find someone better because you can't do everything the way you did when it was less than 10 people.
23:54Leave me with one last piece of advice to all the young founders out there who want to start a new company.
24:05I think part of being a founder that I find most exciting is the ability to create your own brand and do your own thing.
24:13It bums me out sometimes when I see the number of founders that slap logos on themselves for doing this program or this investor or this, and it's like, who cares?
24:24If you build something of value with amazing people, customers will love you, and then you get to build your own brand.
24:30Don't be so, like, have more faith in yourself to build that awesome brand on your own versus needing these things and stickers that you typically just stick on.
24:39It doesn't really matter.
24:41Something's in it for them, but less for you, and so just push and build, and that's how you make your name.
24:46Great advice.
24:47Well, thank you so much for joining us, Ryan.
24:49Yeah, thanks, Zahra.
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