There’s a story that gets told around the Canopy offices from time to time about one of our alumni’s mothers and her first trip to a dispensary. The story goes that the mom arrived in Denver, had some time to kill and so stopped into a dispensary. Mom was not an experienced cannabis user and so, of course, asked the budtender what she should get. The budtender recommended edibles. Lots of edibles. Too many edibles.
Topics: Entrepreneurship, cannabis companies, cannabis business, marijuana, canopy alumni, accelerator, startup, frontier markets
One of the things we hear around here from time to time is the appeal of the cannabis industry because it is not yet set in decades of tradition. This reality opens up opportunities to build something with the state of our world in mind. Ron Basak-Smith and James Eichner of Sana Packaging are two of the visionaries bringing a more sustainable future to this nascent industry.
Topics: Entrepreneurship, cannabis companies, cannabis business, canopy alumni, startup, sustainability
Fall is just around the corner in Colorado and, with that, the graduation of our summer accelerator class. As the teams start wrapping up their CanopyBoulder curriculum, we’ve been reflecting on what the accelerator truly adds to these businesses. How is it that teams can come into the accelerator in May with an idea and leave in August with a fully formed business model, business plan and, in many cases, follow-on investment.
Topics: Entrepreneurship, cannabis companies, canopy alumni, accelerator, startup
Cannabis is quickly becoming one of the most high-value crops in the United States. However, as more states come online, the price per pound of cannabis continues to drop. This trend is normal - just a symptom of supply and demand - but is obviously concerning for cultivators. While there’s not much a cultivator can do to change supply and demand, they can ensure a high quality product (and thus, more profits) that is both disease free and pesticide free.
Topics: Entrepreneurship, cannabis companies, cannabis business, marijuana, canopy alumni, cannabis science, front range biosciences, tissue culture
It’s been a decade since the great recession rocked the global economy. And while things can sometimes seem a little rocky still, research is showing that the US economy is doing quite well. The World Economic Forum (WEF) recently ranked the United States second on the global competitiveness index. The main reason? Innovation and business sophistication.
Topics: Entrepreneurship, cannabis companies, cannabis business, marijuana
Canopy Alumni, Mason Levy and Rodolfo Ramirez, sold their company, WeGrow, to VividGro. Levy began working on the WeGrow in July 2015, with the goal of creating an educational platform for home growers. After realizing the popularity and effectiveness of cannabis as medicine, Levy began wondering why more patients weren’t growing their own medicine - afterall, cannabis grows naturally on every continent but Antarctica. What he found was a knowledge barrier. At the time, the only real educational resources on growing were large, expensive and technical books and internet resources which were unreliable and living in the dark ages. Always interested in how to engage people through consumer technology, Levy incorporated in December 2015 and began recruiting like-minded individuals to take part in building the WeGrow platform with the goal of eliminating the knowledge barrier and empowering consumers.
Topics: Entrepreneurship, News, cannabis companies, agtech
