VICE has published a comprehensive interview with CanopyBoulder CEO Patrick Rea:

CanopyBoulder is the nation‘s first cannabis-related startup accelerator. Each spring and fall, it accepts ten cannabis-related companies and prepares them for the next level. With its well-developed network, it can serve as an “in” for entrepreneurs looking to get plugged into the industry. It also provides $20,000 in exchange for 9.5% equity. The ten fledgling companies accepted into Canopy’s 13-week program will have their needs sated and ideally grow into valuable enterprises, while Canopy also invests a stake in the companies’ future success.

I was interested in how the Canopy operation goes down, so I called its founder and CEO, Patrick Rea. Early in his career, Rea was a consultant at a boutique venture capital firm that was focused on the natural products industry—”the stuff you’d find at Whole Foods or GNC,” he told me. He made his way to Boulder for work, doing consulting on the side, making small investments, enjoying working with smaller companies “because of the big impact one could have on an organization when it was still small.” He then partnered with seasoned entrepreneur Micah Tapman and gained backing from the ArcView Group to start CanopyBoulder late last year.

The author includes a very supportive statement from portfolio company Tradiv.  During the interview, Rea calls out Compliant Cannabis and Ganja Boxes as two of his favorite companies so far, and he pointed to the efforts of Common Home Media, which is tackling information in the hemp industry, including publishing the Hemp Business Journal.  Rea points to some of the unique circumstances of the cannabis industry entrepreneurs, who tend to be very connected to the social movement.

Read Zach Schwartz’s “Talking Weed Business with America’s First Cannabis-Focused Startup Accelerator”: http://www.vice.com/read/talking-weed-business-with-canopy-boulder-americas-first-cannabis-focused-startup-accelerator

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