“No more half-hour conversations with the budtender,” Wendschuh said of their labeling system. “It’s simple, and it’s going to change the world.”
Investors at the meeting included Joby Pritzker, whose family started Hyatt Hotels Corp. and who declined to be interviewed.
Apps Comparison
Tom Bollich, a founding employee of Zynga Inc., the San Francisco-based maker of “Farmville,” said investing in the marijuana business feels similar to the mobile applications industry.
“It’s like the Wild, Wild West,” said Bollich, chief executive officer of Hydro Innovations, a Boulder, Colorado- based company that makes climate-control systems for marijuana growers.
“Right now, it’s a gold rush and we’re trying to sell shovels,” Bollich said outside the conference room, between brief interviews that resembled speed dating. Investors and entrepreneurs lined up across from each other with a few minutes to talk before moving to the next person.
Medical Marijuana
Twenty states, including California and Massachusetts, allow the medical use of marijuana. While federal law still classifies the drug as an illegal substance, the U.S. Justice Department said in August that it wouldn’t challenge the legalization laws in Washington and Colorado, provided the states prevent out-of-state distribution, access to minors and drugged driving, among other things.
President Barack Obama said he didn’t think marijuana is “more dangerous than alcohol,” in an interview with the New Yorker published Jan. 19. Noting that he smoked the drug during his youth, he also said he views it now as a “bad habit and a vice,” and “not something I encourage.”
Leaster Gibson, 38, an investor from Springfield, Missouri, said he’s interested in backing a couple of companies that made pitches, while declining to name them.