Amanda Goetz was hooked on Miami after a 10-day trip to the city in early 2021.
Like other entrepreneurs, Goetz said she was drawn to the area after watching Mayor Francis Suarez's "How can I help?" campaign go viral on Twitter. She saw as more of her connections responded, with many posting about their own relocations to the city and positive interactions with the local startup community.
The buzz piqued her interest, so she bought a plane ticket.
"After those 10 days [in Miami], I felt like I already had a strong network of connections. You could feel how excited the community was to welcome new founders," said Goetz, who had already traded New York for North Carolina during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. "I drank the Kool-Aid and decided to move."
Goetz, the former VP of marketing for wedding planning website The Knot, hasn't looked back since.
This week, she launched the women-focused CBD brand House of Wise from Miami after completing a $2 million seed round led by SugarCapital, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm that counts brands like the women's lifestyle website PopSugar among its portfolio companies.
Goetz founded the startup after she began to use CBD – a non-psychoactive compound found in cannabis – for stress relief as she navigated a divorce and homeschooled her three children during the pandemic.
"I found myself drinking a glass of wine or two every night, but it was just making my anxiety worse," Goetz said. "I turned to cannabis out of desperation, despite the stigmas I had about it."
She realized there weren't any brands on the market that spoke to her as a busy, single mother with a demanding profession and schedule. That eventually led to House of Wise.
Goetz said she started House of Wise to help women take control of what she believes are three foundational areas of health: sleep, stress and sex. The company manufactures three lines of full-spectrum CBD gummies and tinctures formulated to improve sleep, stress and sex to enhance their overall wellbeing.
Cannabis proponents argue that CBD can be used to treat conditions such as chronic pain, anxiety and insomnia. The possession and sale of CBD products was legalized in the 2018 Farm Bill, but so far there are no FDA-approved drugs on the market that contain the substance.
In Florida, CBD and marijuana sales rose sharply in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic and has persisted since, according to data from state Department of Health. There are already more than 1,000 CBD brands on the market jostling for market dominance, according to the cannabis research firm Brightfield Group.
House of Wise, a remote-first company, currently has four full-time employees and seven contractors. Goetz said she is building a company and culture designed to complement the brand and what it stands for: putting women first.
Goetz plans to do that by revolutionizing workplace culture itself.
She's rejecting the traditional 9-to-5 schedule – Goetz described it as a relic of a workforce designed by men who didn't need to care for children – to create a flexible workday that gives women and working parents room to succeed in every area of their life.
At House of Wise, meetings are only scheduled between10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., allowing parents to pick up and care for their children and other family members in the afternoon. Fridays are a catch up day with no meetings or appointments, a time when employees can accomplish deep-focus tasks, run errands or go to doctor's appointments.
House of Wise is also offering employees a house cleaning stipend and full health insurance coverage for therapy, Goetz added.
While Goetz recognizes some would balk at offering that level of flexibility to workers, she argues that businesses can't afford not to if they want to obtain – and retain – high-level talent.
"If you say you're building a company that champions women and diversity but you don't even have an internal culture in place to help them succeed, you're going to lose great people," she said. "Right now, the system isn't set up to allow women to manage all of the different roles in their life."
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