How decriminalization led to an explosion in cannabis startups (Feat. Ford Smith, Andrew Duffy, and Socrates Rosenfeld) | E2241

The way to look at this is it's going to force the best companies to emerge. We're going to have to think creatively and resourcively like this industry has for decades. People will find a way to this plant. People will find a way to sell this plant, whether it's legal or not, whether the financial markets are backing it or not, because this plant helps millions and millions of people. I I think this is the next great American industry, period.

Cannabis is a scheduled drug, but hemp is not a scheduled drug. It is a federally legal product. So when you jump into the federal hemp market and you can start shipping D to C and you can hack your way around, you know, Meta and Snapchat to start running, you know, normal CPG type focused ads. It's a much more efficient business. It's true consumer packaged goods at that point.

And so we decided to not go into that space because we thought it was a little too risky. We had a conservative investor base. It's a it felt a little gray airy at the time. In hindsight, I wish we had done it because there's been a lot of brands that have done really well and quickly grabbed a lot of market share nationally. There's an insane amount of these brands on the shelves now.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (56 minutes, 10,606 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 5 episodes for $3.49, and monthly plans are cheaper still.