Kevin Murphy left Wall Street for cannabis in 2011, grew his company, Acreage Holdings, and sold it this spring for billions. And he says there’s plenty more room for growth.
The average cannabis consumer may not have heard of Kevin Murphy, but they’ve surely seen the headlines he’s made as the CEO of Acreage Holdings, the largest vertically integrated, multistate cannabis company in America. Last year, he got former House Speaker John Boehner to join his board of directors—despite Boehner’s having claimed to be “unalterably opposed to the legalization of marijuana.” Then Murphy’s company produced a cannabis Super Bowl ad; when CBS rejected it (to nobody’s surprise), Acreage spun the moment into PR gold. And in April, Murphy made headlines again when he sold Acreage to Canopy Growth for $3.4 billion. It’s been a great run for this former Wall Street investor, who first got involved in cannabis in Maine eight years ago. Acreage’s portfolio includes cultivation, processing, and dispensaries—but despite now being one of the industry’s major players, he believes there’s still plenty of room for small businesses with big ideas.
You made a good deal of money on Wall Street. Why get into the cannabis business?
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How Small Shops Take Big Risks - It's not easy for mom-and-pops to try something new, because they rarely have a safety net to fail.But there are ways to innovate cautiously-as one small business on our list, All My Heart tattoo studio, has found.
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Small businesses have a hiring problem. According to the July monthly jobs report from the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), 19% of small businesses rank the inability to find quality labor as the single most important issue facing their company, while 38% reported job openings they could not fill. Overall, 49% reported few or no qualified applicants for the positions they were trying to fill.
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If you have a tween girl, you've probably heard of Rowan. It's the cool brand for piercings, where licensed nurses insert hypoallergenic studs into thousands of ears every day. With more than 500 employees, it's on track to have 65 stores and an annual run rate of $100 million in revenue this year.But in 2017, Rowan was just a fledgling startup with a great idea and a bad business model. It survived because founder Louisa Schneider was willing to pivot, and pivot, and pivot again, until its mission, profit, and market all clicked into place.
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