Well-known cannabis investor Alain Bankier recently participated in the ‘Thought Leaders In Cannabis’ Series, co-hosted by PotBotics & Greenhouse Ventures. Bankier, who has been involved with New York Angels for a decade and who is an active member of The Arcview Group, was formerly the CEO of The Manischewitz Company. He is a Managing Partner at VS Tech Ventures, which also includes Brian Vicente, Christian Sederberg, Josh Kappel, Steve Fox and Marion Mariathasan. The firm provides legal services, software, funding and advisory services to cannabis startups.

Bankier shared four attributes he likes to see in the founders of the companies in which he invests. First, he looks for people with business experience that have a good understanding of the problem they are trying to solve with a record of success in overcoming problems. Second, though he doesn’t require the founder to have prior cannabis industry experience, he likes to see someone on the team that does.  Finally, he prefers teams rather than solopreneurs, so Bankier advises younger or less experienced entrepreneurs with good ideas to partner early on.

Published by Alan Brochstein, CFA

Based in Houston, Alan leverages his experience as founder of online community 420 Investor, the first and still largest due diligence platform focused on the publicly-traded stocks in the cannabis industry. With his extensive network in the cannabis community, Alan continues to find new ways to connect the industry and facilitate its sustainable growth. At New Cannabis Ventures, he is responsible for content development and strategic alliances. Before shifting his focus to the cannabis industry in early 2013, Alan, who began his career on Wall Street in 1986, worked as an independent research analyst following over two decades in research and portfolio management. A prolific writer, with over 650 articles published since 2007 at Seeking Alpha, where he has 70,000 followers, Alan is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and a frequent source to the media, including the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, and Bloomberg TV. Contact Alan: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Email