Marijuana Venture recently nominated for award
It’s been more than a year and a half since we launched Marijuana Venture with the goal of publishing a different kind of cannabis magazine. In that time, we’ve grown like crazy, and never deviated from the original vision, which was to avoid most of the noise associated with “pot culture.” It’s not that we have anything against the scene that often surrounds the marijuana industry and its consumers, but rather, that we concluded there was a void for a print-focused magazine that addressed all the serious subjects that would come up with legal, regulated businesses subjected to intense scrutiny.
We defined “serious stuff” as the subjects most of us enjoy as much as a visit to the dentist: taxes, regulations, legal issues, business plans, etc., etc. Sure, we would have loved to cover Bud Bowls and Cannabis Cups, but we figured someone had report on — and write about — all the un-fun things mostly avoided by the rest of the cannabis world.
Obviously we did something right, as the magazine has grown to 164 pages since its launch in March of 2014 as a little eight-page folded newsletter.
On Dec. 3, sales manager Lisa Smith and I will travel to New York for the Media Industry Newsletter awards at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. Marijuana Venture is up for the “Hottest New Release” award for its meteoric rise in ad sales and distribution. We are one of 30 finalists out of 830 magazines that were considered new releases. To say I’m excited would be an understatement. But I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention that the publication has been a team effort. Garrett Rudolph, Patrick Wagner, Aaron Greenreich, Chloe Mehring, Lisa Smith, Carlene Velasquez and Sam Pawliuk have all contributed greatly, as have the numerous writers and contributors, like attorneys David Kerr and Jeff Steinborn, who were there right from the start.
In a way there is a similarity between Marijuana Venture and my other company, Topics Entertainment. Both took a path some would call less fun, but also less traveled. Topics became the number one CD-ROM publisher of non-gaming software a decade ago because we stuck to the less-sexy categories like reference, education, mapping, language, etc. Most of our competitors fought it out in the much more high profile gaming business. That strategy worked for Topics, and maybe in a way it subconsciously led me to take the less sexy (but no less important) route again in the marijuana world.
I’m super excited to be nominated for the award, and look forward to the N.Y. event.
Greg James
Publisher