Silicon Valley Power Investor Backs Cannabis

Founders Fund, a venture capital firm started by Peter Thiel (if that name sounds familiar, it’s because Thiel is the billionaire who gave Mark Zuckerberg his initial $500k in funding for Facebook), committed millions of dollars to assist marijuana start-ups.

Privateer Holdings, which has a stake in Leafly.com and Marley Natural, was the recipient of the cash infusion. Other recipients of money from the Founder’s Fund include SpaceX and Airbnb.

Supporters are calling this a tipping point and a “Berlin Wall moment.” They figure that if such established and successful venture capitalists are willing to back the burgeoning cannabis market, then it can’t be too long before others embrace the market as well.

Brendan Kennedy, CEO of Privateer Holdings, said, “Six to 12 months from now there will be investment banks who will have analysts following cannabis like they follow healthcare or agricultural commodities. This announcement will give a log of people in finance permission to look at this industry.”

There is some trepidation. Some fear that if big money comes into the marijuana space, the culture as we know will evaporate. Perhaps this is true, but, for my own piece, I’m willing to lose some of the quaint, counter-culture feel if it means a more wholly-embraced cannabis zeitgeist, nationwide. It’s not too hard to find reason to feel that money drives results in the government, and this is no exception. If investment bankers are backing cannabis, it will be that much harder for politicians to fuck up the cause for their own election campaigns.

Anyway you slice it, this marks an important milestone in the quest for truly legal cannabis. It pushes cannabis further into the mainstream and will, perhaps, begin to cause banks to put their own pressure on the federal government, or even other local state governments, who have been anti-cannabis. Money talks, people.