The Conference Where Guys in Suits Pitch Marijuana Start-Ups to Other Guys in Suits
Mother Jones
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Sitting atop San Francisco’s Nob Hill last week, in a banquet room of the opulent Fairmont Hotel, I began thinking maybe I ought to invest in marijuana. “You really should,” said a woman at my table, who reminded me, in her wholesome, middle-aged earnestness, of my mom. About a year ago she poured money into Poseidon Asset Management, a marijuana hedge fund that requires a minimum investment of $100,000. The fund earned a 67 percent return in 2014, besting the S&P 500 by a factor of six. Now she’s trying to figure out what to do with all of her extra cash.
As we talk, dozens of professional investors are listening to a handful of suit-wearing pot entrepreneurs compete onstage for start-up funding. There’s SweetLeaf, an organic edibles company that will target the Whole Foods demographic; Intelligent Light Source, a maker of hydroponics lamps that has ties to MIT; and VapeXHale, a high-end vaporizer controlled by an iPhone app. I’m feeling pretty good about all of them, not least because they’ve already been vetted and incubated by the ArcView Group, the gathering’s organizer and a sort of Y-Combinator for pot startups.
Excerpt from:
The Conference Where Guys in Suits Pitch Marijuana Start-Ups to Other Guys in Suits
