media startup, raised $7 million to create the "premium lifestyle and media brand" for cannabis consumers around the globe.
Riedle, along with his wife, Terri Riedle, had built Civilized into one of the more successful media-and-events brands in the burgeoning cannabis industry. The company attracted a slew of writers and videographers who wanted to document what many viewed as one of the greatest social and policy transformations of the 21st century.
While the layoffs have been made public, Business Insider is the first to report on the collapse of Civilized's deal with New Frontier Data, as well as its negotiations to restructure its debt. This story is based on conversations with five former employees and four freelancers, as well as email threads and internal memos obtained by Business Insider.
Chelsea Handler and Derek Riedle on their way to Calgary, Alberta, for the Civilized Conversations series.Former employees of Civilized told Business Insider that the tour with Handler symbolized the startup's troubles. The Riedles had big plans for Civilized but often lacked the resources, time, and skills to see them through.
The business model in the early days was simple: Civilized would post original and branded content and sell ads to cannabis companies. Former employees estimated the company peaked in mid-2018 with more than 30 employees, though there was constant turnover, as is typical for growing startups. By mid-2018, McClure said Civilized had taken steps to go public — including talking to investment bankers and conducting internal audits — in an effort to join a wave of cannabis companies thatThe company never filed to go public, Terri Riedle said.
McClure said the timing of the July layoffs surprised him, since the company had successfully put on its World Cannabis Congress a month earlier. "The people who were paying us to write good news didn't want their content placed next to bad news," he said. "Things got really, really tense towards the end," he added.
After McClure left the company, three former employees said things got worse. Derek Riedle, who was the CEO at the time, would often come into the office for only a few hours at a time, leave at noon, and wouldn't be seen for the rest of the day.On December 2, just after the Thanksgiving holiday, Derek Riedle told Civilized's remaining staff in the Los Angeles office — about seven people — that they would be laid off, three former employees who were in the office that day said.