Julia Jacobson

When Julia Jacobson left the tech startup she founded, she was ready for an entirely different lifestyle.

She had guided the e-commerce company through its launch and an acquisition and stuck around for another couple years with the new parent company, but by that time, “I became incredibly burnt out,” she says.

“I didn’t want to have anything to do with e-commerce or tech or sitting and staring at a computer all day,” she says. “I had this bizarre, really deep desire to physically put my hands in the dirt.”

Today, she’s the CEO of Aster Farms, a leader in sustainable cannabis farming in California, where she gets to indulge her desire to connect with nature and work with living plants — at least for a couple days a week. The rest of her time is divided between licensing and compliance, focusing on the company’s growth strategy, raising capital, managing investor relations and being the entire human resources department for Aster’s 12 employees.

Although the California market has been incredibly challenging, Jacobson says the state has actually done a good job in rolling out its legalization program and allowing more small, independent farms to exist.

Aster Farms produces a variety of flower and hash products that are currently available in about 50 state-licensed cannabis shops. The company is in the process of expanding its cultivation footprint to 120,000 square feet — up from 50,000 square feet — and looking to acquire another farm that will roughly triple the company’s production capacity next year.

“Our thesis at Aster Farms is that when the novelty of legal cannabis wears off, people are going to care about what’s in their cannabis, the same way they care about what’s in their food,” Jacobson says.