cannabis
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Ben Kovler and the value of an unfinished puzzle
A riddle book, a bourbon family history and a cannabis company: the Green Thumb founder has spent years working out when to make a move - and when to leave a piece on the table.
Sebastian Solano and the party that kept changing businesses
Before Jeeter, Sebastian Solano sold tickets to paint-soaked dance parties. His second act carried the same friends into cannabis, along with a lesson about knowing when to cross the next border.
Kit Gallant’s Five-Year Trip to the Checkout Counter
He left a New York law firm to build Fernway in Massachusetts. Buying his own product back in New York would take more than five years, three partners and a rather different education in patience.
Berner put a neighborhood on a hoodie. Then he took it abroad.
Gilbert Anthony Milam Jr. built Cookies by keeping music, clothing and cannabis in the same conversation. The next question is how much of himself he can leave in a business built to outlast him.
Lukasz Tracz and the party that kept going
He learned marketing by putting the audience inside the show. From Life in Color’s paint parties to Jeeter’s jars and comedy shorts, Lukasz Tracz has kept his oldest collaborators close.
Julio Casado
Julio Casado is the CEO of ANJA Life, the first adult-use cannabis dispensary in Highland Park, New Jersey, and the founder and managing partner of Full Funnel Growth, a NYC-based growth marketing agency. A Cornell-educated, Bronx-raised operator with a decade-plus background spanning Deloitte, AXA, Success Academy and Bridge Philanthropic Consulting, he now sits at the unlikely intersection of management consulting, e-commerce growth funnels, and a Sanskrit-rooted cannabis brand named for the act of manifesting.
Chad Powell
Chad Powell is the CEO of FLOWER CO. (Flower Company Cannabis), a members-only cannabis delivery service operating in California. He co-founded BloomThat, a Y Combinator-backed same-day flower delivery startup that was acquired by FTD Companies in 2018. After honing his product and growth chops at startups like Nebia and Boosted, Powell joined FLOWER CO. as Head of Growth, rose to VP of Product Development, and eventually became CEO. Under his leadership, FLOWER CO. has scaled to $53.4M in annual revenue with a lean team, offering 40-50% discounts vs. traditional dispensaries through a Costco-style membership model sourcing directly from California cannabis farms.
Nico Enea
Nico S. Enea is a co-founder, board member, and distribution lead at NUG, Inc., a state-licensed, vertically-integrated California cannabis company he helped build from the ground up starting in 2014. Operating out of Alameda and Oakland, NUG has grown into one of California's most recognized cannabis brands, represented in over 80% of the state's dispensaries, with $28M+ in annual revenue, 150 employees, and a $15M Series A round under its belt. Enea also serves as Founder and CFO of Bloom Innovations Holdings LLC, a cannabis holding company managing diverse assets including property, IP, patents, and securities.
John Yang
John Yang is the co-founder and CEO of Treez Inc., the enterprise cannabis retail commerce platform he built from a single dispensary's pain point into a company processing over $4 billion in annual transactions across 600+ retail locations. A Shanghai-born, Reno-raised technologist who grew up troubleshooting computers in his father's shop, Yang applied a decade of Fortune 500 consulting experience to one of America's most underserved retail sectors, raising $76.7M in funding and turning Treez into the backbone of cannabis retail operations in over a dozen states.
Chris Emerson
Chris Emerson, PhD, is the Founder, Chief Scientist, and CEO of LEVEL, California's #1 cannabis tablet brand. A US Navy veteran and Chinese interpreter turned small-molecule chemist, he abandoned a Stanford postdoc in 2012 to spend four months living in a tent on a Mendocino cannabis farm - and emerged with a founding thesis that would reshape how the industry thinks about getting high. Instead of chasing THC percentages, he built LEVEL around effects-driven cannabinoid formulations using precise ratios of acidic, neutral, and degradative compounds the plant alone can't deliver. Two US patents, multiple peer-reviewed publications, and an IRB-approved clinical trial later, LEVEL is the top-selling cannabis tablet brand in California, now operating in seven states.
Carol Bartz
Carol Bartz is a trailblazing Silicon Valley executive who became the first woman to run a major technology company when she took the helm of Autodesk in 1992, growing revenue from $285M to $1.5B over 14 years. She later served as CEO of Yahoo from 2009 to 2011, famously emailing all 14,000 employees the night she was fired by phone, telling them she'd been let go. Known for her blunt candor, 'Fail Fast Forward' philosophy, and resilience - she delayed breast cancer surgery by a month to keep a professional commitment - Bartz transformed from a dairy farm girl in Wisconsin to one of the most powerful women in American business.
Matt Gray
Matt Gray is a Canadian-born serial entrepreneur and founder of Founder OS, a company teaching founders to build personal brands and scalable businesses through organic content and repeatable systems. He previously co-founded Bitmaker (Canada's first major coding bootcamp, acquired in an 8-figure deal) and Herb (world's largest cannabis community, 14M users, $14M revenue). Today he runs a $13M+/year portfolio working ~4 hours a day, has 2.5M+ followers across platforms, and is known as 'The Systems Guy' in the creator economy.
Amanda Goetz
Amanda Goetz is a 2x founder, 4x CMO, USA TODAY bestselling author, and podcast host who built and sold a luxury CBD brand (House of Wise) from her garage during a pandemic-era divorce, then pivoted to a $500K+ solo portfolio career on her own terms. She reaches 150,000+ readers weekly with her anti-hustle newsletter Life's a Game, hosts the Girlboss Ambition 2.0 podcast, and authored 'Toxic Grit' — a takedown of hustle culture that became an instant bestseller in October 2025. A single mom of three based in Miami, she turned her hardest seasons into her most compelling IP.