Venture Capital Firm High on Its Legal Marijuana Investment

Pot
(Image: dea.gov)

One of America's few growth industries is the legit pot business. As more states legalize marijuana sales and use, most would assume there's money to be made. While you don't need to be a financial wizard to understand the opportunity, the smarter money realizes that a strategic business approach requires deep pockets.

One such example of "smart money" is PayPal founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel. According to a story in today's Los Angeles Times, Founders Fund, an enterprise partly run by Thiel, is "making a multimillion-dollar investment in a cannabis-focused private equity firm called Privateer Holdings."

How does the "smart money" appraise Privateer Holding's business prospects? "(W)e believe it will be a massive industry within the next decade," observed Founders Fund partner Geoff Lewis. Clearly, they're not envisioning that their investment will go up in smoke.

Interview with Pot Sales Software Developer

My wife and I went to an art studio open house yesterday in which someone or someone and friends smoked some pot. (For the record, neither my wife nor I indulged.) We thought the situation was hilarious (no contact high jokes, please). Of course, marijuana possession for recreational purposes is illegal in New Jersey, where we live and where the studio event took place. No one pulled an Eliot Ness and burst into the room demanding hands up and evidence down.

Ben Curren
(image: mercurynews.com)

I didn't think too much about the episode until today, when I read a siliconvalley.com interview with Ben Curren. The California entrepreneur has developed a pot-sales software program called Green Bits. The product's value proposition centers on the notion that minimally trained customer service representatives are unwise to the legal side of pot sales. Ah, what a difference an algorithm makes! What might have been a legal minefield becomes a sexy, profitable business.

Curren comes across in the rather brief siliconvalley.com Q&A as a sympathetic figure. His childhood years, with frequent change of venue and schools, left him skilled at improvisation and fearless regarding chaos. His fix-it, can-do character, along with a passion for computer programming, made him a natural fit for Silicon Valley enterprises. No Harvard, no MIT, no Stanford. Just good old-fashioned brains, determination, and ambition. Just don't ask me if he gets high.