Why we created Trailblazers, a community for the cannabis and hemp industry.
By Tyler Wakstein
March 26, 2019
Coming together as an industry is paramount to our collective success.
In just a few days, over a hundred leading executives, scientists, investors and policymakers from the cannabis and hemp industry will descend upon Powder Mountain in Eden, Utah. This gathering is the result of months of hard work and hundreds of meetings and phone calls with leaders in the industry, many of whom stopped me halfway through our conversation and asked, “…but wait, why are you doing this?” For those who know me, it’s not a surprise that I would want to bring together this caliber of a group to one of my favorite sanctuaries on earth, a place I’ve spent years helping build into an internationally recognized retreat for today’s brightest leaders. But this event is different. For me, Trailblazers is an opportunity to bring my life’s work creating communities and initiating conscious capitalism and apply it to a burgeoning industry that I am deeply passionate about at a critical moment in time.
Like other investors and entrepreneurs in the sector, I believe cannabis is on the precipice of transforming the human experience. Whether it’s disrupting the $50B pain management industry, freeing millions of people who have been wrongly incarcerated or bringing hope to the millions more who suffer from anxiety, depression, seizures, and other ailments, there is not a scenario where the federal legalization of cannabis will not touch everyone’s lives. It’s not a question of IF this impact will occur but HOW, and whether the cannabis industry will put profit before purpose or blaze a new trail with conscious capitalism in mind. As we move closer toward full legalization, and billions of new dollars move into the industry, the time is now to elevate the conversation, call out the clear choices and push the cannabis industry to lead on the broader challenges that face our economy and planet.
I have had an on and off relationship working in cannabis my entire adult life, first illegally in high school (sorry mom!) and then legally starting in 2014 when Jordan Lewis invited me to help design the brand and retail experience at Silverpeak Apothecary, Aspen’s first luxury cannabis experience. When I met with Silverpeak I was in the middle of working for The Life is Good Company as Director of Partnerships, endlessly inspired by founders Bert and John Jacobs and the impact a simple message has had on thousands of people’s lives. Silverpeak gave me a fascinating preview on where the legal commercialization of the cannabis industry was headed, but it was later that year when I was with my friends Joe and Rebecca Pimentel that I discovered the roots of the cannabis industry.
I’ll never forget driving in Joe’s truck a few miles up Music Mountain Road in Stockbridge, Vermont, to a 206-acre patch of pristine, historic land called Luce Farm. As soon as I stepped out of the truck, I remember saying out loud, “I’m in,” not knowing exactly what that meant. I’d never invested in a company before, and I certainly had never been a professional farmer, but I had an intuitive sense that connecting with cannabis cultivation was going to offer me an important perspective on my purpose in life. I worked hand and hand with the Pimentels to raise seed capital and launch Luce Farm, now Vermont’s leading organic hemp farm. I intended to put everything I had into that farm and to become a skilled operator for decades, but my path was temporarily diverted to Utah where I became the Managing Curator for Summit Series — an opportunity that put me in an epicenter for elite entrepreneurs, artists, investors and thinkers.
When working at Summit, I was surrounded by some of the most inspiring people you have ever met, but it also gave me the perspective to see how structurally broken the path to success can be. It requires a full-time team of thoughtful people to create an entrepreneurial space that can inspire changes in the way companies do business — in large part — because two of the strongest drivers of innovation in our society, venture capital and big tech, have missed so many opportunities to do so. Currently in the world of venture capital, less than 3% of capital is deployed to minority-owned founders, and in the tech industry, data-capturing platforms disguised as “free services” have turned our online identities into lucrative returns while ripping at our social fabric. The promise of these industries are cautionary tales in my mind as I have continued my career launching social impact campaigns — from Standing Rock to Silicon Valley — and my head and heart keeps bringing me back to the cannabis industry. I believe the cannabis industry can be a beacon of conscious capitalism as long as we can stay reminded of these four key pillars:
1. Profits will be shallow without scientific research.
There will continue to be successful brands that satisfy a customer’s interest in getting high, but it’s critical that we invest deeply in cannabis research so we can move more broadly toward a plant-based society. Dr. Jeff Chen, Founder and Executive Director of the UCLA Cannabis Research Institute, an advisor to our team at OpenNest and speaker at Trailblazers, refers to cannabis as the ‘gateway herb’ for understanding how our body’s internal endocannabinoid system could theoretically impact nearly every disease known to humankind. As crazy as that sounds today, Dr. Chen’s team, who has to constantly overcome absurd federal constraints and funding gaps, is just scratching the surface on their ability to isolate and run clinical trials with the 113+ cannabinoids that exist in the cannabis plant and the impact they will have on our bodies and minds. What Dr. Chen and other leading researchers will discover over the next 10+ years will create deep science revenue streams, and their breakthroughs will be a global catalyst for humanity’s embrace of plant-based medicine. There is also a tremendous economic opportunity integrating industrial hemp into thousands of different product applications, including bioplastics, fuels, construction materials, textiles, and batteries. By using scientific research to validate hemp’s climate durability, resistance to pests and proficiency at creating oxygen, enterprise adoption can be driven by the promise of better bottom line returns and not some agricultural gimmick. Purveying the value of plants across society pushes other important conversations about our environment and the trillions of dollars in natural subsidies we are in jeopardy of losing. By creating transparency for consumers on cannabis’ long-term medicinal and economic value, the industry has the opportunity to create more conscious consumers in a way never before facilitated by
an emerging sector.
2. We must ‘walk the walk’ on industry sustainability.
As cannabis entrepreneurs introduce their products to millions of first-time consumers, it’s critical that we reinforce emerging trends around values-driven purchasing. Edelman recently published a study suggesting that as many as 64% of global consumers will buy on belief and will choose, switch, avoid or boycott a brand based on their perceived values. This number is up 25% in just the last year. Consumers are ready to buy cannabis products partly because they think of themselves as warriors for natural medicine, but all the initial goodwill and industry brand positioning will be lost if we aren’t implementing sustainable agricultural practices and authentically working to minimize the carbon footprint of our industry. Our pathway to creating avid, lifelong customers is to focus on a triple bottom line and ensure that the entire lifecycle of our products meets the highest standards for our planet and communities, which over the long-term, will generate the greatest returns.
3. Profits are in vain without justice reform.
As institutional investors move into the industry and entrepreneurs start making millions of dollars in profits, we have to decide as a collective community to fiercely fight for the people who have been unjustly incarcerated by partaking in the same industry under different circumstances. As recently as 2017, 1.3M people were arrested for simple marijuana possession, and according to the ACLU, African-Americans are 3.73x more likely to be arrested than whites for marijuana. This is not fair and it’s in plain sight for the world to see. I applaud Cory Booker and the work he is trying to do in New Jersey to become, “the first state in the country to couple decriminalizing marijuana with strong criminal justice reform measures to redress the decades of immense harm inflicted by an unfair system.” All of us need to band together on this issue and make our customers care about it as much as we do. I’m pleased that we will have a number of leaders like Karim Webb, John Forte and Christine De La Rosa, who focus on social justice in cannabis, joining us for the event — and the Trailblazer’s team will continually surface organizations creating meaningful impact on this issue.
4. What unites us is stronger than what divides us.
One of the most common questions we received as we began organizing Trailblazers was, “why would I want to spend the weekend with my competition?” While there is undoubtedly going to be some aggressive maneuvering as entrepreneurs seek to capture the greenfield opportunities in the cannabis industry, the pillars and values that unite us should greatly outweigh the urge to crush one another. We’ve learned from big tech and countless other industries that when we focus on growth, and domination at all costs, we lose sight of our company’s mission, our purpose, trust with customers, and ultimately profits. By coming together as an industry and open sourcing the insights that can make the world a better place, we are sending a clear message to institutional investors and consumers that the cannabis industry is going to be different. It’s my hope that Trailblazers events can be a recurring reminder of the promises we are making today and to continually hold ourselves accountable.
Last but not least, I want to take a moment to share some gratitude, starting with all the people who have blazed the trail to get us to where we are today. All of us in the cannabis industry are standing on the mighty shoulders of so many powerful activists, farmers, politicians, scientists and policy makers who fought for cannabis when it was not easy or advantageous to do so. A few people who have inspired me over the years are Jack Herer, Mary Jane Rathbun and Tom Forcade, policy advocates Ethan Nadelman and Dennis Peron, the scientist Raphael Mechoulam who first identified and was able to isolate tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and of course OG cultivators like Mel Frank and Steve DeAngelo (who I’m excited to have joining us at Trailblazers!).
I also want to give a special thank you to attendees, speakers and my partners (David Denberg, Pete Gross, Michael Kamins, Jessica Assaf and Dr. Jeff Chen) of the inaugural Trailblazers retreat and for everyone who has taken the time to read this message. It’s been a true honor putting my heart into this event and I look forward to sharing updates on how our team at OpenNest is supporting these four pillars through our portfolio of early-stage start-ups.
Blaze up!