Jay Rosenthal – CoFounder at Business of Cannabis (Ep.34)

We sat down with the cofounder of Canada's leading publication focused on the emerging North American Cannabis industry. Jay from Business of Cannabis gives us a 101 on how the industry is structured whilst recounting fun anecdotes and an update about being acquired recently by Prohibition Partners from the UK. Links: StartWell Podcasts on the Web: https://magazine.startwell.co/magazine/podcasts/ On iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/startwell/id1391959054 On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3mZuqf6L5g1fUJRTSttVQs Business of Cannabis: https://businessofcannabis.com/ [expand title="Podcast Transcript"] Qasim Virjee 0:28 Welcome back to the StartWell podcast once again, I am Qasim and today I'm joined in studio by J. Rosenthal, Jay came to start well as a member used to record in this very studio that didn't sound or look as good for the business of cannabis. And that is the domain name on your T shirt. Jay Rosenthal 0:51 Always be branding. Qasim Virjee 0:52 I guess so. I wore the wrong thing today, Jay Rosenthal 0:56 well get your shirt. Qasim Virjee 0:59 No, I didn't mean that I didn't wear you, oh, man, I don't know wearing my shirt. You know, I could wear your shirt if you want. Jay Rosenthal 1:04 I only have three shirts, they all say the same thing. And I just keep wearing Qasim Virjee 1:07 J. I want to talk a little bit about how you came into the world of cannabis and your personal experiences with you know what you write about now? Business cannabis the intersect. And then I want to kind of explore what your lenses on the industry because so much has happened since you came to start well as a member a couple years ago, and things opened up legally. And I personally am totally in the dark about it. I'm sure a lot of my audiences. So I'd love to illuminate them. And first off, yes. Welcome back. Jay Rosenthal 1:39 Thank you. These are a few of my favorite things to talk about myself. And we'd Excellent. See what? Let me talk about how I got to start? Well, first of all, Qasim Virjee 1:49 I'd love to hear that because Jay Rosenthal 1:51 I was looking for a place to record really worst versions of what we're doing right now. Yeah, where I would have people come in wanting to be around downtown. And at the time, there was this real trend of like all the cannabis CEOs coming through downtown Toronto on their, like their money show, basically, right? They were raising capital, raising capital going public talking to investors, base street meetings, right? Like, do 20 In one day, 22 days, I wanted to be in that stock so we could get them talking about cannabis. And it was great. And this was a great location to do that. And then they stopped coming because of COVID. That was part of it. And then we were fully remote. But it was the time and business of cannabis. And we were like if we could just do something nearly every day, right? We would just be filling a gap. And people are just hungry and thirsty for this information, both in the industry outside the industry looking in. And that's what we needed a space for. And this was like ideal we did events here to Qasim Virjee 2:45 know tell me a little bit about the backdrop like career backdrop or otherwise interest backdrop, how did you get involved in kind of like documenting what's going on in this? You know, totally nascent at the time. I mean, even now, it's only been a couple years, right? So it's still very young. Yeah, Jay Rosenthal 3:00 it's funny, I was just we were just in Las Vegas last week for the big trade show and cannabis. And some were saying like, what was your background that brought you to do this? And I