Former Canopy Growth CEO shares ‘expensive take-aways’ from his largest investment loss
Week in Weed: Canadian serial entrepreneur Bruce Linton is unapologetically blunt, China’s ancient taste for cannabis, and is this the first U.S. senate race ad featuring pot?
The Special Access Program by Health Canada was launched last week, giving Canadians access to restricted drugs and psychedelics treatments. But before anyone celebrates, there’s a catch.
What, then, does this “a little too late” announcement mean for patients and physicians looking for an alternate treatment plan? The GrowthOp’s Sam Riches explains.
‘Be careful about starting a business with neighbours or friends’
Ruckify announced that it’s shutting down operations as the bid to merge with a U.K. competitor collapsed. The Ottawa-based rental company was co-founded by Bruce Linton, who’s also the company CEO.
The deal fell through after it failed to meet key conditions, following which the shareholders “voted in late December to officially dissolve the five-year-old company,” wrote David Sali for Ottawa Business Journal. Sali also reported in October last year that the company had “burnt through nearly $20 million in the past four years in an effort to save the business.”
Linton, meanwhile, explained his side of the story in a LinkedIn post. “I could not save Ruckify,” he wrote in mid-January. “I took over as CEO in January 2021. It had six months of cash remaining. I went so far as self-funding Ruckify until the end of 2021 while restructuring operations and attempting to merge with a viable entity. Still failed.”
Calling it his “largest investment loss,” Linton also shared the following lessons:
- Do not allow more than one member of the immediate family to be employed full-time in a business;
- All founders must write a cheque to get the business going and to be financially aligned with the investors; and
- Be careful about starting a business with neighbours or friends.
Buzz of the week
In his first campaign ad, Louisiana Senate candidate Gary Chambers made a blunt statement.
The 36-year-old candidate for the U.S. Senate made an appearance in the 37 seconds-long video smoking cannabis. “I hope this ad works to not only destigmatize the use of marijuana, but also forces a new conversation that creates the pathway to legalize this beneficial drug, and forgive those who were arrested due to outdated ideology,” Chambers tweeted.
Campaign operatives, for both Republican and Democratic Senates, believe “this is the first Senate race ad featuring a candidate openly smoking marijuana,” NBC News reports.
Recreational cannabis, on other hand, is not legal in Louisana. Whether Chambers made a bold statement or simply broke the law, TGO’s Angela Stelmakowich on the aftermath. The video, as of January 20, has over 6.2 million views and counting.
Cannabis history
Cannabis was not only cultivated in China more than 12,000 years ago, but recent research points out that it was also a food staple of the ancient Chinese Tang dynasty (618-907).
A 1,320-year-old tomb discovered by construction workers in the Shanxi province of China revealed numerous jars holding staple foods.
“Cannabis was stored in a pot on the coffin bed amid other staple grains such as millet,” Jin Guiyun, a professor at Shandong University, wrote in the Agricultural Archaeology paper.
“The cannabis was buried as food for the tomb owner’s feast and health in the afterlife,” researchers wrote.
Despite the historical significance, the cultivation of cannabis has been banned in China since the 1950s, Stephen Chen for South China Morning Post reports. Although in recent years, farmers have been allowed to cultivate some “safe cannabis species with low THC, but high cannabidiol, a compound that has a soothing effect, but is not addictive.”
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