Baran is an entrepreneur, creator and an accomplished executive. He served as CEO and COO at public and private companies, launched over a dozen well-known brands worldwide and has developed many award-winning products for prominent institutions like Target, Ritz-Carlton, and Starbucks. Baran recently helped facilitate one of the largest Series A capital raises in cannabis, $35M for Mile High Labs, and co-founded AccessX, a boutique venture capital firm. He is also the Co-Founder of FutureScape, a technology focused product design and branding firm. His previous venture, Firefly Vapor, where he served as the COO and CMO, was recently sold to a larger company and the ensuing company went public in early 2019. Baran is a frequent speaker in conferences like Tech Open Air Berlin, European Communications Summit, and CannaTech. Originally from Istanbul, Turkey, he completed his undergraduate studies at U.C. Berkeley, where earned academic and athletic scholarships and studied Economics. One of his passions over the last 15 years has been building large scale art installations at Burning Man.