Last week, one of the leading marijuana business conventions — MJBizCon — took place in Las Vegas. And First Stage Investor’s own Vin Narayanan was there to see firsthand what’s going on in the cannabis industry.
Many people have been disappointed by the cannabis industry’s uneven growth. But lack of consumer demand hasn’t been the problem. Instead, complicated licensing and regulations — each state has its own laws and requirements — have made cross-state expansion nearly impossible for most cannabis companies.
That’s why the companies that Vin was most excited to learn about at MJBizCon weren’t cannabis producers. His favorite companies are pick-and-shovel companies that support other companies. It’s like investing in a business that makes factory machines instead of investing in the company that will use the machines to make its products.
In today’s Startup Insider, Vin talks to Andy Gordon about some of the promising pick-and-shovel companies he learned about at MJBizCon. Vin and Andy also discuss the difficulties cannabis-focused companies face and how it makes investing decisions even harder than usual.
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