Conference Touts Cannabis’ Investment Potential

Tech smarty, Justin Kan, who recently sold his company, Twitch.TV, to Amazon for a cool $970 million, hosted a two day conference touting the ripe nature of the cannabis industry. At $2,500 per ticket, this event clearly catered to the already-wealthy.

In Kan’s estimation, cannabis is a $40 billion dollar market with a limited amount of players. Calling cannabis an “investors dream,” Kan claims that there is tremendous opportunity to be a prime-mover in this quasi nascent industry.

Seeing similarity to AirBnB and Uber (in that the businesses were actually illegal but when regulators got wind of it, they were so popular that the user base cried foul and the businesses became legit), Kan believes that federal legality is coming sooner than later and wants to be poised to reap the benefits. “People are breaking the law to go and buy your product, we call that ‘product-market fit.'”

I have mixed emotions about this type of thing. On one hand, I think it’s crucial for the cause that legitimate business interests are seeking entry into the cannabis market, but I do fear that if the big players swoop in and grab all the marbles, so to speak, the counter-culture aspect and “mom and pop” feel to cannabis will be destroyed. I’m sure there will be a flex period where big business floods the market and eventually the smaller stakeholders will find their niche.

Regardless of how it plays out, I just want to be able to easily and affordably have access to my cannabis. As it is, people are more than willing to step outside the law to get their weed. Anything that helps push weed into the fully legal sphere has to be considered.

I’ll be watching and hoping for a chance to buy-in (even a little bit) into cannabusiness. It is here to stay and will grow exponentially for a long time to come.