When serial entrepreneur Ori Bytton ventured into cannabis, he didn’t do it in a small way.
In 2018, Bytton co-founded Natura, which now operates a 15-acre, state-of-the-art production campus in Sacramento, California, that houses a 200,000-square-foot grow facility, a 65,500-square-foot manufacturing and distribution facility and a 25,000-square-foot showroom and education center.
The company employs 400 people and white-labels products for several California cannabis brands in addition to producing its own breakout brand Sluggers Hit, which has expanded into Arizona, Massachusetts, New York and Canada.
While the production campus is monumental, Bytton says the team guiding the company is “the real backbone.”
“We’re a very light executive team,” he says. “Everybody has been with us since origination. The company has a family vibe almost; it’s a very large organization and very formal, but on the other hand, very informal and very easy to make decisions.”
After moving from Israel to the United States at 21, Bytton founded Canopy Energy, one of California’s largest solar companies, and worked in high-end real estate before making a sudden turn into the cannabis industry.
“For my circle of friends, my family, it was kind of unconventional, and for me it was very unconventional,” Bytton says. “They were like, ‘why cannabis? Why won’t you go start some tech startup?’ It was a crazy decision.”
In 2016, he founded a real estate management company specializing in leasing industrial space to cannabis operators. And as he began working closer with operators, he saw cannabis as a way people can heal from the incredible stresses of modern life, including anxiety, depression, sleep deprivation and PTSD.
“A lot of people say they smoke cannabis recreationally at the end of the day to take the edge off,” he says. “I personally think most people consume cannabis medically.”
Marijuana Venture’s 2026 40 under 40 feature was sponsored by MoonDust USA
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