4 Heartwarming Reasons I Left Tech & Corporate America to Join the Cannabis Boom

Matt King
Matt King
Jul 25, 2017 · 10 min read

“I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

- Steve Jobs

When I graduated from business school at Yale the world was my oyster. I was convinced that I was about to embark on a journey of great success in Corporate America. Two years into my tenure as an enterprise sales executive at Microsoft, I found out just how painful it is to work in something that is deeply out of alignment with your authentic identity. It felt genuinely awful. Like waking up every morning in Groundhog Day except devoid of quirkiness, fun, and most notably Bill Murray. It’s not that my job at Microsoft or the people there were that bad, in fact there were a lot of really good things about working there including learning how to cold prospect my way to the CMO of a Fortune 500 brand. Rather, it’s that I was doing work without a sense of purpose, mostly so that I could buy nice things that I hoped would somehow fill the void of meaning that I felt inside. Almost everything about the experience felt empty.

I knew that I needed a dramatic change in my life and I was struggling to identify my real passion. I felt that tech was my primary passion and that maybe working for a big company was the issue, so with some help from a friend I set up interviews with about 30 companies that had recently graduated from Y Combinator, the most vaunted startup accelerator in Silicon Valley. Talking to the founders of these companies I realized that most of them had no clue what they were doing, what problem they were solving, how to find product/market fit, how to hire good sales talent, or how to manage a company. What was worse was that I was left with a sense that very few of these highly educated, highly acclaimed entrepreneurs really felt that authentically passionate about what they were doing. It felt like talking to a lot of wind up dolls where you would ask a question in an interview and a long string of Silicon Valley buzzwords would come out. It felt devoid of the meaning I was seeking and left me with the impression that Tech is the new Wall Street — where people with no real identity of their own go in order to get rich doing soulless work building soulless companies joylessly.

After determining that working as a sales rep for a company that was trying to disrupt the corporate security guard market (thanks for taking my call, Johnny & Bannerman) probably wouldn’t be a good fit for me, I decided to take a step back and try something radically different. It was March and Prop 64, the Adult Use Marijuana Act, had passed by a healthy margin meaning that cannabis was about to become legal in California. A frequent cannabis consumer since I was as young as 14, I had been following the explosion of the legal cannabis market in Colorado and especially Washington during work trips for Microsoft. I visited recreational dispensaries in Washington and observed healthy businesses patronized by healthy people. I started asking friends for references to folks working in cannabis in California and before I knew it I was on a weekend trip up to Humboldt County to visit the long-regaled Mecca of cannabis that I had heard about since I was a teenage boy.

The time spent touring cannabis farms, getting to soak in the most amazing natural beauty of California, and getting to see the community that had built up around the plant was extremely refreshing. I asked as many questions about the business as I possibly could and by the end of the weekend I decided this was definitely the direction that I wanted to go for the next steps in my career. There are probably hundreds of reasons that I decided to ditch tech & corporate America for the cannabis industry, but if I had to boil it down to 4 reasons, I’d give the following:

  1. I Am Extremely Passionate about Cannabis and Love Using It — The first time I smoked cannabis in middle school I fell in love with it. Cannabis simply made me feel great and it immediately conjured dreams of one day becoming a cannabis farmer. Currently I don’t smoke cannabis every day, but even in the past when I have used it multiple times per day for extended periods (like during winters at Harvard), it never really had any noticeable detrimental effects on me at all (unlike alcohol and other substances). Despite using cannabis frequently I still somehow managed to graduate from Harvard and Yale, compete at two Junior World Rowing Championships, achieve reasonable success in the corporate world, and maintain a healthy and active lifestyle. When looking at career paths in cannabis, I found that the more I learned about the industry, the more questions I kept asking (and keep asking). I got more and more curious, and the more I thought I knew, the more I realized I was just scratching the surface of what this plant can do and that I have so much to learn about the industry that serves it! The cannabis economy is simply fascinating. California alone is expected to do $7,000,000,000 in sales in 2018. Cannabis, just as a plant itself, is even more fascinating! There are 113 cannabinoids and hundreds of terpenes that determine the taste and effects of a cannabis flower. Most of the work that I’ve done in cannabis hasn’t really felt like work — it feels like I am in the process of fulfilling a lifelong dream. I look back at the schooling that I received and the years I spent in corporate America and it makes me wonder what I could have achieved if legality and my parents’ opinions hadn’t prevented me from going into the industry sooner. One of the most wonderful things about the impending end of cannabis prohibition is that people who are truly passionate about the plant can finally realize their highest purpose in serving it.

2. The Healing Power of Cannabis — I had always heard stories and seen media coverage about the healing powers of cannabis. However, I’d never really seen anyone benefit from the plant medically, at least directly, until I got into the industry. My family was closed minded about cannabis use (quite hypocritically I might add) when I was growing up so my grandparents who suffered from chronic pain and eventually died of cancer had to rely on dangerous over the counter drugs like Tylenol (980 deaths from acetaminophen overdoses annually, 0 from cannabis) as well as chemotherapy, not to mention the many dozens of other pharmaceutical drugs they had to take in order to treat the side effects of the other drugs. Once I got into the industry, however, I started hearing story after story after story of incredible healing. Tangible, direct, very real healing in people’s lives that was due to cannabis consumption. Everything from stories of shrinking brain tumors in cancer patients, to so many stories of cannabis being used to treat everything from epilepsy and autism, to simple things like chronic aches and pains. I started learning about CBD and CBG and the at least 111 other cannabinoids, plus hundreds of terpenes which each have different psychoactive and physiological effects. I learned that many cannabinoids including CBD aren’t psychoactive — this means they don’t get you high! Cannabis is a direct substitute for alcohol (at least 88,000 direct deaths per year), opioids (at least 50,000 direct deaths per year), tobacco (480,000 deaths per year), over the counter pain pills (at least 1,000 deaths per year), and more. Cannabis, when not contaminated with pesticides or mold (which is a real risk that legalization is helping to address), is literally safer than Tylenol. From a personal perspective, I’ve struggled with anxiety my entire life and cannabis has reliably proven to be the most effective, least harmful way for me to manage stress apart from yoga and meditation. Infinitely healthier for me than alcohol. Cannabis is healing people every day in so many ways it continues to astound me.

3. I Want to Help Permanently Destigmatize Cannabis Use — There was nothing more telling for me in terms of how much stigma there is around consuming and working in cannabis than the long series of conversations that I had to have with my parents when I decided to go into the industry. Mind you, this is a substance that my parents had used to good effect in the ’60s (most of our parents were hippies after all), and yet when their son wanted to apply his degrees from Harvard and Yale to sell a plant that heals people (and gets a lot of people really high, sure) and work in a booming industry where lots of money is being made, you should have seen their reaction! I am continually perplexed by the negative perception of consuming cannabis and I revel in the looks of shock and disgust that I have received at Harvard and Yale networking events when I pull out a joint covered in hashish like the one in the cover photo of this article. People with alcoholic drinks in their hands (remember, alcohol kills >88,000 people directly per year) will look at me like I’m a criminal or an idiot or both. It’s disgusting and it needs to stop. Are there a bunch of burned out stoner hippies that smoke cannabis? Of course. But I actually know a lot more affluent white men working in the technology and venture capital industries that smoke than I do stoner hippies. Moms, grandmas, combat veterans, the mailman, corporate executives, actors, models, and myriad celebrities are all getting high on a daily basis with no adverse effects on their lives. In fact, cannabis is significantly less addictive and less harmful than most other things consumed by rich white people including Facebook, alcohol, cocaine, opioids, high fructose corn syrup, junk food broadly, television, fast cars, and pornography. If you are currently guilty of stigmatizing cannabis use please use your brain for half a second and stop.

4. I Want to Give Back to Communities That Have Suffered Under Prohibition — Cannabis is used to oppress people of color in the United States. Full stop. Police forces around the United States use possession of cannabis as an excuse to arrest and prosecute black and latino men and women. There are roughly 643,000 arrests annually for cannabis possession and most of those arrested are black and latino. Of the 20,000 arrests for cannabis possession in 2016 in New York City alone, 85% of those arrested were black and latino. Blacks and latinos are roughly 4x more likely to get arrested for cannabis use than whites. When you get arrested, you get a rap sheet. When you get a rap sheet, you can’t find work, housing, insurance, and so many other things that most of us take for granted. It messes up your entire life. The prison industrial complex (126,000 human beings were living in private prisons in the US in 2015, up 83% from 1999) and the racist US government are obsessed with locking people up for nothing more than possessing a flower that heals people. That is the true crime. Through my consulting work, I am representing and coaching cannabis businesses owned by people of color and women for free because I view it as my responsibility as a privileged, Ivy League educated, white hill kid from Piedmont to give back to these communities. I have escaped numerous encounters with the police because of the color of my skin and my university ID card. That’s wrong. I am committed to devoting a minimum of 10% of my time to women and people of color in the cannabis industry because they are at a distinct disadvantage in every way as white men succeed due to their privileges including land ownership, good legal representation, access to capital, access to talent, and so much more. The stories that I’ve heard of police abuse toward these communities are utterly shocking and completely despicable. Our police forces in the United States are little more than corporate thugs serving the interests of the same affluent white people who give me disgusted looks at Harvard and Yale networking events. This injustice must end.

If you have a conscience and are looking for good reasons that cannabis prohibition needs to end, I hope I’ve given you a few things to consider. When I hear Jeff Sessions tell me that the plant that I love so dearly and which takes such good care of me and so many others day in and day out is as bad as heroin, it just motivates me to work harder to change as many people’s minds as possible. I hope you’ll join me in being on the right side of history and on the right side of enjoying the simple things in life.

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