We recently caught up with Chris Beals (NY, ’07), Chief Executive Officer at Koronet, a software/marketplace platform for the global floral supply chain. Chris began his legal career at Davis Polk as an associate in our Mergers & Acquisitions practice before transitioning into private equity and later, business leadership roles at SaaS providers focused on vertical markets.
In this spotlight, we discuss Chris’ work at Koronet, how AI is changing the floral industry and his advice for lawyers interested in business roles.
You joined Koronet, a software/marketplace platform for the global floral supply chain, as CEO in 2023 – what drew you to the company?
Over the course of my career, I’ve built a specialization in SaaS/marketplace hybrid software companies that service vertical industries, so I tend to find narrow and complex market sectors that transact large volumes to be really interesting. Flower software fits that bill closely: it’s a massive global perishables supply chain with three to four layers before the product reaches a consumer, and it’s roughly a $50 billion industry in the Americas. It’s even larger across Europe and Africa. This messiness is what attracted me to Koronet – that we could match software to deep complexity, whether in the physical movement of goods or in the regulatory landscape, and help these businesses expand their reach and run more efficiently. Koronet sits underneath the industry as its largest software provider with ERP, e-commerce, marketplace and payments products serving customers in more than 20 countries. I’ll admit that I’m also just a sucker for the stories; I love getting to know the people in these verticals – the owner of a massive rose farm in Cayambe, Ecuador; the fourth-generation owner of a multi-state wholesaler in the mid-Atlantic; the Dutch importer supplying grocery stores across Europe. Getting to know them is half the job and most of the fun.
What trends do you believe will have the greatest impact on the floral industry over the next five years?
Three stand out. First, the supply chain keeps getting shorter and more connected. Growers now reach more channels, and buyers and sellers transact more directly and digitally. Second, commerce is moving online in earnest: an industry that ran on phone calls and printed availability lists for decades is shifting to e-commerce and marketplace buying, with payments modernizing alongside it. Third, AI will increasingly assist with the transactional work: quoting, ordering, tracking, claims. When you layer on the volatility that this industry absorbs, from weather events at the farm level to freight disruptions, and the premium on being digital, data-rich and adaptive, I expect that the effect of these trends will compound rapidly. The same developments are likely playing out across many consumer goods industries.
You were previously CEO of Weedmaps, where you helped scale the business from a rapidly growing startup into a public company. Looking back, which of the decisions you made during that journey ended up being the most significant?
The most important decisions were the structural, unglamorous ones. During my time leading Weedmaps, the first important decision was evolving the business model. Weedmaps began as a directory listings business for cannabis dispensaries, and we deliberately rebuilt it into a two-sided marketplace and SaaS platform, investing in software ahead of the market’s demand and accepting short-term friction for a more durable position long-term. The second key decision was choosing to treat regulatory complexity as a product problem, not just a legal one. In an industry governed by rules that vary by state and change constantly, we built compliance into the platform itself through features ranging from user age limits to integration with state supply-chain tracking systems. A lot of the complexity was in extracting legal regulations into specifications an engineering team could build from. The third was building the financial discipline, governance and reporting muscle that Weedmaps would need as a public company well before we IPOed. Growing revenue from roughly $35 million to over $200 million was the output; the foundation under that was a constant evolution to meet the requirements as the complexity of the business grew.
When did you realize you wanted to transition your career into operating roles?
It was an organic evolution rather than a single moment. What I enjoyed most about working as an M&A lawyer was understanding the business logic behind deals: getting underneath the contract asks and understanding the business logic driving them. I was always fascinated when I got to listen to my clients discuss their challenges, goals and operational thinking in a very unfiltered way. One experience that stuck with me was working with Michael Davis on a private equity acquisition as a first-year. It was an early education in how investors think about buying and selling companies and about transitioning founders, which, as it happens, is much of what I do at Koronet today.
The transition itself came through working with companies that needed cleanup: first on the legal side, and then with a private equity firm. Generally, what started as legal cleanup kept turning into operational cleanup, and I discovered that I loved solving human problems as much as language and legal problems. The biggest shift from law to operating is how often you face matters of first impression when you can’t rely on precedent or broad consultation and just have to go with your best judgment. There’s a balance of reading the prior art and understanding past situations and then gut feel. In the AI era, more and more of what lands on a software CEO’s desk is genuinely unprecedented.
Which skills from your time at Davis Polk have been most valuable in your current role?
The ability to process and assimilate large amounts of information quickly has been immensely valuable. It sounds simple, but working through precedents, loan documents and mountains of client facts builds a muscle for taking in complex material and organizing it logically. I use this skill every single day. Secondly, I can’t overstate how valuable working legal knowledge is in an operating role, and I’ve deliberately kept my legal skills brushed up for that reason. Over the course of my career, I’ve probably overseen nine to ten acquisitions and am often part of the discussions when we go to form strategic partnerships or long-term client deals. Legal or contractual questions often arise, and rather than needing to say “let me put a pin in that, check with my lawyers, and get back to you,” I benefit from having a gut feeling for how the law works, or how something would be structured. Legal experience is invaluable in those moments. Beyond the technical skills, Davis Polk also made me a keen observer of people. The EQ that you develop while rotating through client engagements and working with so many people across the firm is tremendous training in reading people, their motivations and the subtext.
What advice would you give current Davis Polk lawyers who are interested in business leadership roles?
Chase the business question behind each document – why this price, why this structure, why now? The lawyers who go on to become operators are the ones who develop an understanding of the commercial logic rather than treating that as someone else’s job. Get close to your clients’ businesses, and even if you are working on the diligence, take the time to know the client representatives you are working with. Also, don’t let your brain turn off when the numbers start flying. Operating roles are intrinsically numbers-oriented. The ability to notice when figures don’t line up or don’t make business sense is valuable in legal practice and indispensable on the operating side. For anyone feeling like a transition to operating a business might be too much of a stretch, I would say not to discount where you’re coming from – as a lawyer trained at Davis Polk, you already have the important foundation of standards, stamina and precision, which are rarer in the business world than you might expect.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received?
Early in my executive career, a mentor who had served on and chaired several Fortune 500 boards was coaching me on board meetings and told me, “never let anything at a board meeting be a surprise.” A successful board meeting is made as much by the meetings you have before as by anything that happens in the room. At surface level, it’s advice about board management, but beneath that, it’s also advice about alignment that applies to almost everything.