PRIVATEER PIONEERS

TAKING THE LEAP

Founded in Seattle in 2010, Privateer Holdings seeks to break down the stigmas associated with cannabis. Its three partners, Brendan Kennedy, Christian Groh and Michael Blue, share a vision of the future and lead with science and research. In the last nine years, they’ve changed the industry and turned their disruptive business model into a global operation with capital and investments all over the world.

Blue elaborates on taking the leap of faith into the cannabis business: “Before we quit our jobs, we had long conversations with each other, our spouses, our families. The hardest conversations were with our in-laws. We had a lot of concern about reputational risk.”

Blue continues, “Brendan and Christian were working at Silicon Valley Bank, and I was working at a private-equity firm. Between the three of us, we had subscriptions to all of the leading business-intelligence databases. We looked up medical cannabis and synonyms for cannabis, and there was nothing. It was a black hole. There was no formalized data or institutional