Casa Verde Capital, Snoop Dogg’s investment fund, just closed $100 million for a second investment fund, which comes on the heels as the cannabis industry is positioned perfectly for more expansion. Karan Wadhera, the fund’s managing director, said earlier this year that what’s happening to the cannabis industry is similar to the “dot com” bubble in the late ‘90s.
There was a lot of hype, but also, a lot of projections and valuations that weren’t realistic. There was an apex, everything dropped off, but then the industry bounced back… the same thing is happening with cannabis.
Interestingly enough, cannabis was deemed an essential business in the US when COVID-19 hit, and now that governments are hurting, they might want additional tax revenue.
We don’t know exactly what the target is for the new capital fund, but this raise doubled the size of Casa Verde’s initial investment ability. The cannabis industry is projected to hit $34 billion by 2025 and considering New Jersey, South Dakota, Arizona, and Montana just passed legalization laws this year, Casa Verde is predicting a 30% growth to the market.
Cannabis businesses aren’t just grow-houses. You’ve got delivery companies, logistics, branding, retail, and other supply chain providers that are helping this industry grow.
Are you invested in any cannabis stocks? Hit reply and tell us why or why not!
Never Get Ghosted Again
Was ghosting even a thing for our parents? Who knows, but in this day and age, we expect real-time answers and visible “…” bubbles when sending text messages to other people. Instead of dealing with the dread, the anxiety, the insecurity, and the anger that comes with not hearing a reply back for minutes, hours, or, the unforgivable weeks, Honk is a new app that is just like a real-life conversation.
But wait… isn’t that what, uh, phone calls and IRL or Zoom meetings are for? Guess not for Gen Z-ers who are the app’s target market. Instead of sending a text, seeing what you previously sent, and waiting for a reply, Honks messages are shown live while you type and they don’t have a chat history or send button.
IDK about you, but not being able to type and delete a message before sending it gives me anxiety thinking about it!
If you really want someone’s attention, you can “Honk” at them to reply in your chat. Want to be extra annoying? Just keep pressing Honk. Non-stop. Yes, this is the day and age we’re in.
You only get 160 characters to type out what you want to say, and all pauses or typos are seen. Honestly, it sounds like the app is helping teens revert back to their toddler years of shouting “Mommy, mommy, mommy” until they get a reply. The app is doing well marketing to users on TikTok so far and comes from the software company Los Feliz Engineering.
Product Hunt founder Ryan Hoover is a fan, saying the app is “exceptionally well-designed” and extremely fast. The app is free, but it’ll be interesting to see how they let advertisers integrate with their “answer me now!” methodology.
Intern Turned Billionaire
When Yuta Tsuruoka’s mother said she wanted to set up her business online, but didn’t know how, Yuta was off to the races with inspiration. “We were in a world where people with no internet skills and no money, like my mom, couldn’t imagine creating online businesses,” said Tsuruoka.
At the time he was just an intern at a crowdfunding startup and decided he’d build his own software to help small business owners and entrepreneurs make their own online shops. He started Based Inc. in 2012, whose shares have been up sixfold since 2019. The market val is $1.7 billion to date and part of that comes from retail investors rallying for small-cap stocks this pandemic in Japan.
Based has seven million users on their shopping app and helps retailers build their online store, plus tools for payment processing that lets them offer financing for future sales. It’s kind of like the Japanese version of Squarespace or Shopify.
There’s no charge to create a website. Base just makes their cash from users who pay for their payment tools and they have a small fee on transactions.
This year, the number of shops on Base was over 1.2 million, an increase of about 800,000 users from last fall. Gross merchandise value has tripled, and even though the surge will eventually decline, the company has gained some big-name investors.
