Sana Packaging Wins Best Pitch at the 2019 Arcview Investor Forum

Three years after first attending an Arcview Investor Forum in Austin, Texas, Sana Packaging returned to the investor stage in New York City with a stronger company, a clearer story, and a winning pitch.

In October 2019, Sana Packaging received the Best Pitch Award at the Arcview Investor Forum in New York City.

Independent coverage of the event reported that the award included a $25,000 investment.

From Austin to New York City

Sana Packaging’s relationship with Arcview began nearly three years before the New York event.

By October 2019, the team had attended more than half a dozen Arcview programs around the country. New York marked Sana Packaging’s second formal pitch to the investor network.

The forum brought cannabis entrepreneurs, investors, business leaders, and industry organizations together at One Liberty Plaza in Manhattan’s Financial District.

Sana Packaging was one of ten companies brought to the stage through CanopyBoulder. The group included businesses working across packaging, technology, retail, storage, and customer engagement.

At the time, Sana Packaging was still a young company working to establish a different approach to cannabis packaging. The company was developing packaging made from plant-based hemp plastic and reclaimed ocean-bound plastic while building relationships across the cannabis, packaging, recycling, and investment communities.

The Arcview stage provided an opportunity to explain that work to an audience looking for emerging cannabis businesses and new industry ideas.

The Winning Pitch

Sana Packaging co-founder James Eichner delivered the company’s presentation in New York.

The pitch earned Sana Packaging the forum’s Best Pitch Award. Honeysuckle Magazine’s coverage of the event reported that the win included a $25,000 investment.

The rest of the Sana Packaging team was spread across the country.

While James represented the company in New York, co-founder Ron Basak-Smith was traveling between several other industry events, including the Green Chip Investor Forum in San Francisco, the Arkansas Recycling Coalition’s annual conference in Eureka Springs, and the Cannabis Sustainability Symposium in Denver.

That schedule reflected the various conversations Sana Packaging was having during its early years. The company was speaking with investors about building a business, with cannabis operators about packaging, and with recycling and sustainability professionals about materials and waste.

Winning in New York brought those conversations together. It showed that Sana Packaging’s packaging story could resonate beyond a product demonstration or trade-show booth and hold its own in front of an investment audience.

An Early Sana Packaging Milestone

The Best Pitch Award became one of several important milestones from Sana Packaging’s early years.

It did not recognize a specific package design, certify the company’s environmental performance, or validate every claim associated with its products. It recognized the pitch Sana Packaging presented at a particular investor forum in October 2019.

That distinction matters, but it does not diminish what the moment represented.

For a young company, the award provided outside recognition, additional investment, and another indication that the problems Sana Packaging was trying to address were worth bringing to a larger audience.

It also captured an important period in the company’s development: a small team moving between investor forums, cannabis conferences, recycling events, and sustainability discussions while working to build a new packaging company.

Learn more about Sana Packaging and our company story.

Last reviewed: August 31, 2026.

This article documents an event from October 2019. Event organizers, awards, prizes, personnel, programs, company details, and websites may change. Refer to current sources for information about any organization or program discussed in this historical recap.