Sensory Science Unlocked, Beyond THC, Inside True Terpenes ft. Dan Cook

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Dan Cook: We believe in an orchestra of compounds here. We have an analogy that likens THC to the volume dial on your stereo — you turn it up, the music gets louder, right? But it doesn't make the song better by itself. We're talking about something way more complex than that, and oversimplifying it commoditizes cannabis products. It doesn't do service to the plant, which is extraordinary. It's complex — there's a lot more going on in the plant than that. Bryan Fields: What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of The Dime. I'm Bryan Fields. With me, as always, is Kellen Finney. And this week we have a very special guest, Daniel Cook, CEO of True Terpenes. Daniel, thanks for taking the time. How are you doing today? Dan Cook: Doing great. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me. Bryan Fields: Excited to have you here, Kellen. How are you doing? Kellen Finney: Doing great, doing great. Grateful to talk to Daniel today. Looking forward to jumping into a bunch of sensory stuff. How are you, Bryan? Bryan Fields: Yeah, I'm stoked. I'm really excited to pick Daniel's brain on sensory science, understand how we can educate consumers so that when people say, "Hey, I bought this because of the THC percentage," maybe they shouldn't be buying that way. I'm sure Daniel's got an opinion on that — how we can help transform people's opinions and approaches so they better connect with the products they're buying, understand the effects and the nuances involved. Before we get into all the fun stuff, Daniel, for our listeners, can you give a quick background on yourself and how you found your way to the cannabis space? Dan Cook: Yeah, you bet. I grew up on the East Coast, was a literature major in college — no interest and no knowledge of business whatsoever. Upon graduation, through a bit of a Hail Mary, I applied for a Fulbright scholarship and got one to study wine in Chile, South America. I spent the next few years stomping grapes, backpacking around South America, ended up working for a fly-fishing lodge in Patagonia, and then moved to Waikiki, Hawaii, and worked with the government to help create a venture capital fund out there. I first became interested in building companies working for a nonprofit back in South America called Endeavor. Endeavor was built on the thesis that entrepreneurs exist everywhere — every nook and cranny of life, not just Silicon Valley or tech — in Brazil, Argentina, Turkey, Thailand, wherever you go. I spent about three years working with these amazing entrepreneurs to help build out their companies and realize their visions, and that was the spark for me around growth and entrepreneurship. It was amazing to see these people will companies into existence against all odds — a lot of parallels to the cannabis industry today. After that, I was really enamored with wine, and my assumption was, get into something you have passion for. I moved to Argentina and ended up running commercial operations for Moët Hennessy — they had a couple of wineries down there — and built out those practices over about five years, living between the capital and up in the mountains near the vineyards. I enjoyed it until it got a little too corporate. We grew the business during a wine boom in Argentina — a lot of fun until the politics and bureaucracy kicked in. What I realized then is that the stage of a company and the context are every bit as important as the product you might have a passion for. So, full circle — after Moët Hennessy I worked at a variety of startups, as a board member and as an entrepreneur myself, and experienced everything from the dirt roads of entrepreneurship to the paved roads of corporate life. I settled at a point where I wanted something right in the middle — I didn't want to do zero-to-one entrepreneurship anymore, that's tough work and I'm only getting older, but I didn't want corporate bureaucracy either. I wanted to keep building and creating in unstructured spaces, so I found my way to "gravel roads." I moved to Portland, Oregon, about eight years ago now, and met True Terpenes about five years ago. What drew me to the company, more than product-market fit, was founder-problem fit. The founder, Chris, started the company based on a personal experience — he had an autoimmune condition that transformed him from perfectly healthy to paralyzed within a matter of weeks. He was on a cocktail of pharmaceuticals that robbed him of quality of life, and he discovered the work of Dr. Ethan Russo on cannabis and terpenes, which put him on his path over a decade ago. When I joined the company and committed to Chris that we'd build this together, I realized this guy would run through walls to make this happen — this mattered to him on a deep personal level. That origin story has informed a lot of who True Terpenes is today and a lot of the decisions we've made along the way. Bryan Fields: I'd imagine going in, you had a perception of what the role and the industry would be like. How different were those early days, and was there one thing when you got started that surprised you more than anything? Dan Cook: I lived about ten years in South America and got used to a certain level of volatility and risk — needing to stay agile and roll with the punches. So I had some good training for the cannabis world. Down in South America you're prone to regulatory changes at the drop of a dime, inflation that can go up 500% from one month to the next — a loaf of bread costs a dollar, then it costs five hundred. It's a hard environment to plan for. At Moët Hennessy, there was a time when the government told us we couldn't raise prices because that would only lead to more inflation, since we were a very visible company. So there was a lot of that lack of control and volatility that prepared me — but cannabis is just another level. It's very hard to plan for, very hard to prepare for. You can't have single points of failure; you have to diversify because you can't predict outcomes across every risk point. Going into any company that's been around five years is a challenge because there's a lot of history already. One thing we did early on that was very helpful was almost an archaeological dig into the culture of True Terpenes — what decisions made the company who it was, and aspirationally who we wanted to be going forward. We codified that and made it central to our culture, and it's helped us navigate the volatility with a certain sense of solidity. To give you a sense of timing — I joined True Terpenes and COVID hit a month later. We'd had explosive growth in our first few years, which leveled off a bit before I got there, and my commitment was to help Chris reset and prepare for the next stage of growth. I didn't know how much of a reset it would be doing that throughout COVID. Bryan Fields: I can only imagine — a massive challenge. But going back to what you said about understanding the true central message and running strategy through that — that's probably really helpful, because there's so much chaos in this industry and people make quick, short-term decisions. If your North Star stays the same, all the strategy just runs underneath it: does this align with our North Star? If yes, we continue; if not, we don't consider it right now. Dan Cook: A hundred percent. Same as in South America — there's often a mentality to plan for the short term because the longer term isn't guaranteed. But it's equally important to have a vision, a project for the industry, a common project that builds a sustainable foundation. This is too valuable to go away and to lose the chance we have, despite how challenging it is and how much work has been put in over the years. I've been in startups and growth companies for almost thirty years now, and I tend to think that when you rush things too much you make poor decisions and build on an unstable foundation. When you slow down and build for the longer term, it pays off. We're not here to flip something, time the market, and sell out when it's high — that's not our game. We're trying to build something enduring. In some ways that simplifies things, because you don't have to get cute with market timing or regulatory timing — you accept the risk you have today, make the best decisions you can, and move forward. Kellen Finney: Can you give us a sense of the size of True Terpenes, and some of the depth of your different client sizes? When we were talking earlier, the numbers were really impressive. Dan Cook: True Terpenes — the way I'd define what we do — we're essentially a flavor innovation house. We shape the experience in some of the most exciting cannabis products in the world. Our innovations and formulas go into about eight billion dollars' worth of consumer-level products each year, and growing. We have about 5,000 clients in about 70 countries — the lion's share obviously in the United States, some in Canada, and international is becoming very interesting to us for the future, high growth for sure. Our clients range from the smallest local cannabis brands and producers to mid-regional to the largest — every brand you can imagine. The way we engage with clients isn't really about specialty ingredients — cannabis is a jungle, and we're here to help our clients survive the jungle. We help them plan out their product portfolios, identify opportunities, de-risk the market where we can. It goes beyond product innovation and formulation — we're built on a foundation of sensory science at the intersection of market relevance, but we also support applications: not just the formula in a bottle, but how it applies to a pre-roll, a vape, a gummy, a beverage, and the best way to get that into the hands of the market to give the consumer the best experience possible. We also do toxicology. We've had a toxicology program for the past five years defining the playing field of ingredients we'll use based on peer-reviewed research on what's considered safe for inhalation. ASTM International — a nonprofit that develops and promotes standards globally across industries — has had a cannabis committee for the past few years, and they just adopted our toxicology standards to promote globally. That model lets you evaluate compounds and ingredients in formulation and define safety thresholds. To our knowledge, we were the first of our kind in the industry to do this, and we license that data to clients so they have access to our safety data. When we formulate, we formulate by that playbook — we won't use ingredients above a certain threshold or ones we consider unsafe, even though there are shortcuts out there. We focus on what we believe is safe and serves our clients and the community. Kellen Finney: That probably lets your clients sleep easy at night, knowing the formulation is fully vetted. How much has that helped speed up the R&D and back-and-forth with clients? Dan Cook: It builds longer-term trust, Kellen, and that's essential for us. We want to be the first call clients make, whether it's toxicology, applications development, sensory and flavor, or leveraging our data — we have eight billion dollars' worth of data each year, not at the strain or brand level but at the sensory level, which I think is critical. Building that trust over time is key. Honestly, in formulation we have to be a bit more imaginative to reach the end states we want because of the limitation of not using the full universe of compounds, but we're able to do that in a pretty agile way. Bryan Fields: From a high level, if someone's listening with a creative idea that mixes things together and reaches out to True Terpenes — does it start with an idea, or somewhere different? How does that first conversation kick off, and how do you work through what's possible? Dan Cook: It varies — there are two ways it can happen. One is inspiration from the client — something they see in the marketplace. Given the range of clients we serve, their thesis and target audience varies greatly. It can come from the founder, CEO, product team, or innovation team saying, "We have this idea, have you guys worked on something like this, can you formulate something like this?" We'll put a brief together and work collaboratively — we have fourteen trained sensory experts on our team who'll work with the client to realize that idea through rounds of testing, then take it to the application level. The other way is proactive from our side — tying our market data with sensory descriptors to identify emerging opportunities. We can look at a client's product portfolio, grid it out, and say, "You're hitting all these categories, but we saw market movement in this strain profile or flavor or application, and you have a gap in your portfolio — that's automatic growth right there." We're the tip of the spear for innovation in that sense, pointing clients to the opportunity, backing it with data, and building the project out for them. Bryan Fields: That's exactly what I was picturing — a brand on the West Coast wants to expand east, and you can say, "We know you want to go left, but here's a gap in the market exploding with these demographics." Having data to back that up in a partnership is really valuable. Dan Cook: A hundred percent. Even the largest MSO or corporate company out there — the data we see is a multiple of that, three or four times the biggest one in terms of revenue. So for any company, regardless of size, we try to have a conversation, collaborate, and show them what we're seeing in the marketplace. Five thousand clients, eight billion dollars — it's valuable data, and it's characterized by true sensory information rather than markers that can be a bit deceptive if you just look at market research, because you don't know the actual building blocks of the product. Our data shows you the true building blocks. Kellen Finney: You mentioned maybe a client is missing a specific category — can you talk us through the sensory categories you guys use as your base categories? Are they similar to wine, like earthy or fruity? How do you break those up for the initial matrix analysis? Dan Cook: For sure — let me first give you a sense of the canvas of ingredients we paint with. We go the full spectrum: for the past four years we've contract-grown and contract-extracted type-three hemp — popular strains and cultivars without the THC burden, indistinguishable from cannabis. We have a genetics program going ten years, stabilizing genetics around popular sensory targets. So we go from fresh-frozen, high-oleic extract type-three hemp to botanical terpenes from different plants — it's all moving toward natural, since there's no demand for synthetic in the market. A lot of the work with Dr. Ethan Russo has rotated around how we leverage that. There's convergence in the middle too — people are loosening up on how they tap into different ingredients. We're not opinionated about what not to use; it's "yes, and" — can we create something that resonates and differentiates in the market. On the hemp side, berry has had a huge resurgence — berry with gas, in particular — and some of our own genetics target that. On the other side, using top notes from botanical terpenes with a cannabis backbone adds depth and complexity. We try to be agnostic and create innovative products for all market types and segments — we want to grow the industry, not limit it. On sensory targets specifically — that's one of the things really missing from the cannabis world. If you look at what happened in the wine world in the early '80s, a sensory chemist from UC Davis named Ann Noble created the first sensory aroma wheel for wine. It became adopted worldwide as the standard, tying general aromatic and flavor targets — like tropical fruit — down to something more specific, like mango — and connecting that to varietals in a standardized way that sommeliers, retailers, critics, and consumers could all use to talk the same language. That's exactly what's missing in cannabis today, and it's needed to help consumers navigate this world, because sensory really does drive enjoyment and pleasure — the hedonics of it is really where it's at. Bryan Fields: How do we get there? People walk into dispensaries and gravitate toward indica/sativa or THC percentage. To get to real standardization requires a massive shift in consumer education, buyer education, and alignment of information. What's the first step on that road map? Dan Cook: I think we're taking the first step, which is recognizing that in the current environment there's a lot of noise that makes it hard to discern product attributes and what experience people will actually have. THC is important, of course, but it's a single compound, and we believe in an orchestra of compounds — that's the volume-dial analogy again. Oversimplifying commoditizes cannabis products and doesn't do service to a plant that's extraordinarily complex. Compare it to wine: a Bordeaux can have 800 compounds, and you'd never say a 15%-ABV Bordeaux is better than a 13%-ABV one while ignoring those 800 compounds. Cannabis has up to a thousand compounds that influence the experience. The THC arms race is a fallacy — it doesn't diminish THC's importance, it's like the drummer, the engine, but the aromatic compounds — terpenes, esters, aldehydes, terpenoids — are the steering wheel. I worked as an entrepreneur-in-residence for Califia Farms, the almond milk and juice company out of the Central Valley in California, and we looked at something similar happening with protein — a marketing shortcut where "more protein equals better," ignoring amino acid balance and whether it's synthetic isolate versus whole-food protein your body actually absorbs well. These are shortcuts that oversimplify and do a disservice to the consumer. Some of the work to fix this is already happening. The Cultivation Classic, run here in Oregon a few years back by one of our core team members and colleagues, took 300 consumers in a double-blinded study, cycling through flower products from dozens of the top craft growers in Oregon, testing for hedonics and enjoyment. The products with more THC did not perform better than those with expected aromatic and terpene profiles — sensory shaped the experience and enjoyment, not THC. There's another recent EEG study by PAX and a group called Mellō comparing two strains, one with double the THC and the other with a more robust aromatic terpene profile — the more aromatic one produced over two times the brain activity and psychoactive engagement. So the first step is putting these data sets together to show THC is important but there's much more going on — recognizing that, backing it with science and data, and then making a concerted, collaborative effort to align on the language that defines the sensory markers driving enjoyment. That's the move wine made over 30 years ago, though wine's had a head start being above ground much longer. For our part, we've contributed flower from one of our grows to a study done by Oregon State University, which trained 45 panelists to test cannabis and hemp across a broad range of sensory profiles and started segmenting them into aroma archetypes — the first study of what will be many. OSU is a leader in this field, not just for cannabis but for wine and beer too. It's a multi-year commitment, but important work. Internally, we're excited about matching our commercial data with this sensory/hedonic language to see what people actually resonate with — not just strain names, THC levels, or brand names, but the actual sensory building blocks. Kellen Finney: I have a question on strain variability. In wine, a cab is a cab — there might be slight differences, but you can tell it apart from a Merlot. Is there standardization within a cultivar in cannabis, or do you get pushback from clients saying, "Hey, this is our OG and it smells different than expected"? How do you handle those subtle differences? Dan Cook: Great point. Cannabis is unique in that, due to amazing work by breeders over decades — at great risk — it's become probably the most outbred plant in history, creating amazing diversity of aromas, profiles, and chemotypes, which is a huge asset. The story is also more nuanced with cultivars: these are plants grown in a moment in time and in a certain place. In agriculture, especially value-added agriculture like wine or cannabis, we have to realize that complexity introduces nuance and variability — but that's a feature, not a bug. It makes it more interesting; this isn't Coca-Cola. It gets back to storytelling — a differentiated industry is driven by magical stories about place, moment in time, genetics, and breeding heritage. A race to the bottom on THC percentage is a commodity — we'll all lose that game. Tell me a compelling story about THC percentage — you can't, it's just not compelling. Genetic diversity is a huge asset and legacy we owe tribute to, but let's tell the whole story. Bryan Fields: Playing devil's advocate, that makes it even harder from an education standpoint — a cab from California doesn't taste like a cab from New York, and consumers new to dispensaries reach for indica/sativa, then THC percentage as the next marker. Do you think the next marker becomes more effect-based — calm versus energetic — or more terpene-based with specific nomenclature consumers need to learn? Dan Cook: We worked with Dr. Ethan Russo on a line of terpene profiles around calm, energy, focus, based on his 30 years of research on terpenes and cannabis, and they do well. I think there'll be a segment of the market for that, but I think the opportunity around sensory-driven enjoyment and pleasure is a vast universe — it's a bit reductionist to just land on five effects and run everything through them. Effects-based products will have their niche, but especially as this opens up globally, there's so much more opportunity in the diversity and discovery process. Wine is incredibly complex too — in Europe, wine was marketed by region (Gigondas, Bordeaux, Burgundy) with certain grapes allowed in certain regions, layers of complexity. In the U.S. in the '70s and '80s we reduced that down to varietals like Merlot and Cabernet for simplicity. It's not either/or, it's "yes, and" — how do we grow the pie and make this more applicable to more people, with different levels of consumer engagement, from casual to expert. Kellen Finney: Do you think cannabis will move in that direction — region-based, like "I like OGs from Southern Oregon because they have a more earthy note"? Dan Cook: I can absolutely see that as part of the landscape, though I'd be careful saying it'll follow wine's exact path since cannabis is different in many ways, including its therapeutic dimension. I think genetics, moment in time, and place will influence cannabis profiles similarly, so there'll be opportunities for that — though not everyone will do it that way, just as not every wine does either. Kellen Finney: What's the landscape around claims — like linking specific terpenes to a study showing a calming effect? Where's the line between therapeutics and nutraceuticals, and is that something True Terpenes is actively exploring? Dan Cook: We're working on projects with groups that run clinical trials and more hardcore medical research. Dr. Ethan Russo is on our science board, and I've had a long-standing relationship with him over the past five years — it came full circle for Chris, our founder, since it was Russo's work that inspired him over a decade ago. That kind of research takes time if done properly. We've collaboratively worked with UCLA and Johns Hopkins on terpene studies, in addition to our sensory studies, and we've done functional health-benefit terpene studies. There's a lot more work to do. Right now, on hardcore functional health claims, we're cautious — we can point to what Dr. Russo has formulated based on his research, and there are compounds with more evidence behind them: linalool for relaxation, pinene for focus and clarity, myrcene for sedation. Each market is complex — we're looking closely at Europe as regulation advances, but it's the EU plus each individual country. On the medical side there's more open, transparent, predictable regulation in some ways — cannabis goes through pharmacists, gets prescribed, and is even reimbursed in many markets — but the bar is very high. In Germany, the first vape pen just got approved recently, so things are moving. You have to be careful with medical claims, because we don't want to lose credibility for the industry by getting ahead of what we can substantiate — it's hard to get credibility back once you lose it. Bryan Fields: Nearly impossible — you build scientific trust behind a brand, and the moment that's lost, all credibility goes with it. Is standardizing this more complicated across country lines versus state lines in the U.S.? Dan Cook: There are nuances. On the more complicated side, if it's a medical company, the product has to be GMP — we're not producing the final product, so it's not that True Terpenes needs European GMP certification, but the medical company has to audit True Terpenes, and we have to pass that audit for them to use our input. We were the first terpene company, about eighteen months ago, to start passing these audits because our house was in order, which let us get some of these brands to market quickly. Getting our toxicology and organizational decisions right early has paid off in Europe because we were built for that from the start, and whatever regulatory changes happen in the U.S., we'll be ready for those too. That said, the audit process does take longer. On the other side, the U.S. market is so much more mature in terms of preferred experiences, strains, cultivars, and applications — light years ahead just from experience and maturation — so there are lessons we can apply to Europe while accounting for the nuances of that market, and we can leapfrog some aspects. Kellen Finney: What about exploring outside the cannabis industry — is that something True Terpenes is doing or considering? Dan Cook: We had a project in R&D for a few years where we found a novel way to take a waste stream from hop extracts used in beer and convert it into a fragrant hop oil, punched up with botanical terpenes for top-note flavor. At a time when the beer industry is compressed and really suffering, we gave brewers an innovation tool that also saves them money — more innovation and better economics. We launched that about a year ago, and it's picked up steam with craft brewers around the country, including pFriem here in Oregon and Varietal up in Washington, as well as some larger craft brewers. That was basically applying a competency we already had to a new space without allocating much extra in resources — an experiment, a flyer. On the flavor and ingredient side more broadly, there's a lot of interest in compounds found in cannabis and hemp at parts-per-billion or parts-per-trillion levels that are incredibly valuable as aromatic and flavor ingredients outside cannabis, though very hard to extract and stabilize — we've had conversations about how to harness those. Bryan Fields: Can you give us any other ideas or experiments — things internally you thought were great that never materialized, or things you keep pushing the team on? Dan Cook: Infusions are an important project for us today — it's a category we see continuing to grow, with one application being pre-rolls, where you often get intense aroma but lose flavor when you actually smoke it. We're developing proprietary technology around that I can't share much more about right now, but we think it'll be huge and it's coming to market soon. On beverages — I did beverage for years before this, and I was always excited about cannabis beverages; when it hit with hemp, it felt like the right distribution point and consumer experience. We've done a lot of benchmarking research on emulsions and emulsion stability, especially in cans — there's great work being done there today, and a lot more sensory work to do for beverages specifically. We take a patient approach: today we just sell flavors into beverage, nothing on the emulsion side yet, but in the future I'd envision some pretty exciting beverage projects linking our genetics, farm, and extraction work to create something unique — beyond seltzer water, maybe paralleling craft cocktails. That's a multi-year, pretty complex project, but one we hope to realize. Bryan Fields: Hard pivot — what is the most expensive lesson you've ever learned? Dan Cook: How much time do you have? At True Terpenes, we went through a period where we grew so fast — expanded the team, hired about 50 people in six months, and built out our current headquarters just outside Portland, Oregon, with full-scale labs and production facilities — going from 50 to over 100 people very rapidly. The truth is we didn't have the process architecture to absorb those people the right way or create the operating cadence and expectations we needed. It was so much complexity all at once, and we weren't ready — it was traumatic. We navigated through it starting in fall 2022 and had stabilized by Q2 2023, but there were real growing pains. Looking back, I'd have approached and organized that differently. One of the top lessons: overcommunicate — communicate things until you're sick of hearing yourself say them — because you need alignment on principles, an operating cadence, and process architecture so people march in the same direction, with KPIs cascading from company to department to individual level. When you make a leap in growth, you go from a generalist organization to specialists and departments, and silos build up — communication across silos gets harder, requiring a lot of lateral vision and overcommunication, plus the right process architecture. Bryan Fields: Great advice. Most impactful book you've ever read? Dan Cook: Gosh, there's so many — I was a literature major. It's hard to beat Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" — old Santiago really gets my heart. I'm a big fan of Hemingway, Carver, Didion — writers who tell stories with concision, which relates to how I think about sensory in cannabis. They give the reader the tip of the iceberg without beating them over the head with the story, so efficient and compact, yet with a rhythm, a drumbeat, that keeps it moving. I love those kinds of stories and characters. Bryan Fields: Last question — what question do you wish more people asked you? Dan Cook: I wish more people asked about our toxicology program — why we did it, what drove it, and how it impacts their products. We built this thing to last, and we'd love for our clients to be around for a long time too. Bryan Fields: I think that's the perfect way to end it. Daniel, if our listeners want to get in touch or learn more, where can they find you? Dan Cook: True Terpenes dot com — Instagram and LinkedIn are the best ways. Thanks, guys, I appreciate the time today. Bryan Fields: Thanks for taking the time — this was a lot of fun. Dan Cook: All right, guys. Cheers.