tldr; this year bud.com launched as a California benefit corporation delivering recreational cannabis.
June 2016 we had a baby - wow - I became a father! That was a fantasy long-dreamt. I adjusted my life to support my partner & child, and allow me to keep up a good household for this little fascinating being.
At the same time I realized my professional & creative powers aren't going to get much better before they diminish. So I itched to make something meaningful that could also provide for me and my family, on more my terms than an employer's.
In 1994 I registered bud.com. I've run various software & projects on the site since then; none lasting too long. In 2013, various folks began approaching me with semi-serious business plans, eager to employ "bud.com" in service of cannabis business. I talked to 2-3 people per year thereafter, and in 2015 I started attending cannabis industry events to network to the best of my wide-mouthed gladhandery. "I own bud.com, what should we make with it?" I would say to most anyone I met.
In 2017 this culminated in meeting someone who said, "why don't you use bud.com to bring people pot?" and we started hatching a cannabis delivery service. In September 2017 I quit my job as cultural ambassador for a Japanese investment firm and startup incubator, and for eight months or so, I've been CTO of bud.com: relying on my wife Ilyse's health insurance and spending my savings to build up an eCommerce site and customer support tools for recreational cannabis delivery.
bud.com began delivering legal recreational cannabis in the East Bay of California in January 2018. I can now walk into our local partner's warehouse full of cannabis for sale on bud.com - a far throw from my weed-scrounging youth. It feels like a deep form of human liberation that people would be allowed to ask for this plant and have it when they want to. I hope we can set our society up for shared success in a legal cannabis era.
preparing the bud.com warehouse for launch - many little jars of cannabis, bins of rerolled joints, boxes of edibles
We formed bud.com as a "benefit corporation" which obliges us to account for and improve our social & ecological impact. We want to pay attention to the plant medicine roots of recreational cannabis, and ensure that there's some compassion in our business. So that's a nice thing to be able to establish in a company from the start. We're working out exactly how to build a beneficial cannabis company; last week bud.com launched a veteran's discount program after members of that community asked us to make their cannabis more affordable.
As I was parsing the various pitches and schemes people presented for bud.com, I realized I didn't want to sell the domain, I wanted to participate. I wanted bud.com to be a ticket to adventure.
It's been 10 years since I last tried co-founding a startup. So many tech tools are further along. Software is cheap. Developers can be found online and our species has more support & structures for working remotely. I was CEO then, and learned what parts of that role I'm not so good with. So this time I'm the CTO of bud.com - I set the priorities, schedule, and budget for our tech, and then recruit good folks to help build it. I am glad to stretch myself into a technical role; I've always enjoyed debating structure with engineers; even if I failed 50% of the two CS classes I took in college, I was a member of the Swarthmore College Computer Society.
Working in the cannabis industry presents unique challenges: many software vendors aren't comfortable now hosting cannabis companies; many basic functions of online business you have to build yourself or work around. Fortunately that pain is shared across California cannabis companies; it's the same craggy, wet, hard surface we're all attempting to stand on. There's regulatory uncertainty, cultural uncertainty, a lack of qualified professionals from major disciplines, and a lack of professionalism. All that means it's a field ripe for experimentation - and an extremely stimulating day-to-day worklife.
Someone asked me "how does it feel to be present at the birth of a new industry?" I remembered the web in 1994, mobile phone games in 2001 & 2010. After decades experimenting, I can safely say I enjoy working on emerging tools. I'm naturally long-winded, unafraid to deploy a bit of self-expression in a new medium. Figuring out how to structure a project to ensure long-term viability and scalability is a greater personal challenge. This time I've shown up to a new industry with a better sense of how business + finance + people + motivation + social context work. And I'm grateful to have found excellent compatriots.
Armando, Jasmine, Justin - part of the initial bud.com launch team
This is a fun early stage in this enterprise. I work from home most of the time and I schedule occasional four hour meetings to take my 2 year-old daughter somewhere fun in San Francisco. I wonder sometimes about choosing to involve myself with a demanding business when I could instead devote more of my time to parenting my kid. I have a baby at home, and I started another family in an office somewhere else. But ultimately I decided I can be a better parent to her if I am doing meaningful work in my career. I'm learning more and more about the tradeoffs of adulthood, which makes me ever-more grateful to have so much adventure in my work as I cultivate a stable home.
So, with pride I can say that bud.com offers cannabis delivery to Alameda county cities including Oakland, Berkeley, Hayward, San Leandro, Emeryville, Piedmont, Alameda, Castro Valley, Dublin, Pleasanton. bud.com offers Contra Costa county cannabis delivery to Alamo, Canyon, Concord, Danville, Diablo, Lafayette, Moraga, Orinda, Pleasant Hill, San Ramon, Walnut Creek. With a bit more time, we expect to expand to offer more things to more people in more places.
