Materia Ventures, a Canadian cannabis company breaking into the European market, announced its leadership team on Tuesday, including a vice president of legal and business strategy.

Dennis Beker, based in Toronto, said in a telephone interview on Tuesday that he was one of the first employees of the company outside of the founders. He explained that he had some exposure to the cannabis industry as a firm attorney and wanted to find a role that was more business-facing and that the job as top lawyer at Materia Ventures checked all of his boxes.

"I was attracted to the team and the idea of looking at Europe as the next frontier of the global cannabis market," Beker said.

Beker most recently was an associate at Goodmans LLP in Toronto where he was a corporate attorney. He also was an associate at Baker McKenzie. He graduated from The University of Western Ontario. Beker said that he previously had worked on securities matters and mergers and acquisitions.

Beker said he oversees one other in-house attorney and largely uses outside counsel for legal issues in Canada and in Europe. He said he plans to expand the legal department as the company grows, but for now, he and the other attorney are able to handle the workload.

There are several challenges to working for a start-up, however, his biggest challenge involves European business norms, he said.

"Being a fairly early-stage company comes with challenges in terms of how fast things are moving," Beker said. "On the European side, it's understanding of different customs and banking."

On Tuesday, the company announced Deepak Anand as its CEO and co-founder, Nick Pateras as the managing director of Europe, Dariusz Nieciecki as CFO, Michael Garbuz as president, Peter Pottier as managing director of the U.K. and Greg Gorzkowski as vice president of business development and strategy.

Materia Ventures is in the process of developing a manufacturing and distribution ecosystem to grow the legal cannabis market in Europe.