Adam Bierman made a name for himself as a co-founder of MedMen in 2010 by modeling cannabis dispensaries after the Apple Store and later announcing what would have been the largest merger in the cannabis industry at the time.
In 2018 Bierman took MedMen public and the company reached a valuation of $2 billion — arguably the first U.S. cannabis unicorn.
Things turned sour after the company s 2018 bid to acquire PharmaCann in a $682 million all-stock deal didn't reach the finish line. In 2020, Bierman left the company, and lawsuits followed.
On December 13, Bierman won a $3.1 million arbitration settlement. Lawyers for MedMen Enterprises Inc. MMNFF did not reply to emails seeking comment on the agreement. Bierman doesn't have any comment on what the company has been up to since he left, including a failed merger with Ascend Wellness Holdings AAWH. Bierman doesn't rule out a return to the industry.
Cannabis is one of the sexiest and fastest-growing industries in the world, and it has to do with selling a substance that is still federally illegal, displacing criminality - what a story! It is a business opportunity and an asset class that is large enough that most of its participants will fail at the end of the day. Bierman is vague about his specific plans for cannabis while he shops around a book on the business with the working title Forget Stoner. It's time to forget about it, because it's time to forget what our parents thought of a stoner or what society taught us a stoner is, according to Bierman.
In order to illustrate how productive cannabis users can be in real life, the ads featured photos of firefighters, chefs and other people with the tag line Forget Stoner.
Bierman, known for his unapologetic audacity and drive to move the industry forward, said complaints about competition from the legacy market in California and elsewhere are overblown.
He said that there was no reason to believe that cannabis will be otherwise for the cannabis industry because regulated industries have always prevailed over unregulated competition.
Why are regulated cannabis companies capturing only a share of total demand? Bierman said that it was a result of a lack of passion and inspiration.
Bierman is known in the industry as a charismatic guy with a big dream and a personality that could be abrasive, a senior executive at a major publicly traded U.S. cannabis company, said he is not well known in the industry as a charismatic guy with a big dream. He had to deal with challenges around spending and allocation of resources.
Bierman said that I was bold and brash in my fight and I didn't take no for an answer. I like to think that battles helped pave the way for the industry into the future. California's regulated cannabis business and the overall cannabis market continue to offer opportunities, he said.
What is more exciting than an $11 billion market coming into operation in California? Bierman said something. It's a journey that is not finished and that ends with the end of prohibition and the stigmatization of marijuana. We need passion to chart that plan.