Pubdate: Mon, 6 Sep 2010
Source: Oakland Tribune, The (CA)
Copyright: 2010 Bay Area News Group
Contact: http://www.insidebayarea.com/feedback/tribune
Website: http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/314
Author: Angela Woodall
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California)

RISE OF A 'GANJAPRENEUR'

Tempers flared as the evening of July 22 wore on, turning an Oakland 
City Council meeting into a marathon debate over the future of 
medical marijuana in one of the country's most pot-friendly cities.

For months the media had chronicled the unfolding of a modern-day 
Gold Rush -- quickly dubbed the "Green Rush." Now, the path to El 
Dorado rested in a bid to permit pot growing on an industrial scale. 
Opposition to the plan by dispensary operators erupted publicly after 
quiet lobbying failed.

Newcomers were blamed for upsetting the comfortable landscape crafted 
by seasoned advocates who stood to lose control and profits. One of 
the newcomers included Dhar Mann, a 26-year-old who runs a corral of 
businesses that include weGrow -- the nation's first hydroponic 
superstore, a real estate management company and an exotic car rental 
agency. He owns a BMW M5 that drives "faster than I care to." He is 
the director of his parent's business, Friendly Cab Co., the largest 
taxi operator in Oakland.

"Not all of us can use daddy's money," quipped James Anthony, the 
attorney and public face of the Harborside Health Center dispensary, 
during the July meeting. Anthony didn't say Mann's name, but it was 
clear whom he was talking about.

Mann hadn't helped matters by announcing his intention to become the 
Levi Strauss of the marijuana industry, stripping away the carefully 
constructed and managed medicinal cannabis image used to ease pot 
into the mainstream.

The association with Strauss seemed apt. Both are the son of 
immigrants -- Mann a second-generation Indian-American -- and both 
shepherded the family business to success.

But Samuel Brannan, a tireless self-promoter who became the first 
millionaire of the Gold Rush, would make a better comparison. When 
word of gold got out in 1848, Brannan purchased every shovel he could 
find in San Francisco and ran through the streets yelling, "Gold! 
Gold! Gold from the American River!" He made a fortune selling 
supplies to miners.

Mann is propelled by the same impulse that drove Brannan, Strauss and 
what drives every entrepreneur: opportunity.

Seizing opportunities earned the young upstart a place at the table 
with far older men who risked arrest to guide marijuana from an 
illegal enterprise to a multimillion-dollar medicinal industry. His 
naked ambition also earned him their resentment as they vie for a 
costly and hard-to-come-by large-scale grow permit.

Like a Startup

On the ground floor of its warehouse, weGrow resembles an IKEA 
showroom for medicinal pot, complete with state-of-the art "big bud 
boxes." Mann, dressed in jeans, two-toned loafers and a stretchy 
buttoned-up shirt, shows off the equipment displays proudly, easily 
slipping into the technicalities of LED lighting and yield techniques.

"Soil is the most basic way of growing," he explains in a voice 
marked by growing up in Oakland and spending four years at Alameda's 
Saint Joseph Notre Dame High School. Videos looped on a TV screen 
hang over the replica of a growing room. One is made to look like a 
news clip and blends deceptively into an actual news clip from the 
grand opening of weGrow. He changed the name from iGrow to weGrow in 
July after a business with a similar name threatened to sue.

Mann leads the way upstairs to his office, past a row of others that 
resemble a tech startup company. In one room, a team of young men and 
women pore over grant applications from nonprofits invited by Mann to 
apply for a share of weGrow's revenue. Mann takes a seat behind a 
glass-topped desk in another. He says weGrow is based on "sweat 
equity" and recounts how he dropped out of UC Davis because he 
founded a successful marketing then mortgage company before he could 
buy beer legally. The way he tells the story, his parents didn't find 
out about it until they read a campus newspaper story because Mann 
paid his own tuition.

"They freaked," he said.

By the time he turned 22, he had at least a half-dozen properties, 
several dozen employees on his payroll and the confidence that comes 
from watching his parents build their taxi company from one cab into 
a monopoly.

"I was born into the taxi business," he says.

His mother carried him in her arms when she went to Oakland City Hall 
for their first taxi permit, according to one account. While she and 
her husband put in 16-hour days, the 10-year-old would sit in his 
driveway trading and selling baseball cards and has been trying to 
figure out ways of "building value" ever since.

"You start small and grow into it," he says.

Mann returned to UC Davis, minoring in political science but 
finishing with a bachelor's degree in economics. He then returned 
home, when the family business was in need of "modernizing," as he puts it.

Suits, Settlements

The family, under a variety of business names, had settled scores of 
lawsuits, according to court documents. The state sued them in 2002 
because they built a parking lot on top of a protected stream -- a 
tributary of San Leandro Creek -- then refused to restore the 
waterway. WeGrow sits on the edge of that same property. The 
warehouse stood empty until Mann took it over.

Operations appeared to improve although he is now fighting off a 
claim against his property management company, MannEdge, that he 
evaded paying workers' compensation insurance. He says the workers 
were employed by a contractor he hired to work on a property he 
manages and pledged to fight the claim. He calls the fine a "success 
tax" -- the curse of running a lot of businesses.

Mann smokes little marijuana, preferring edible forms instead, he 
said. He has a patient card, although he wasn't so much interested in 
buying it as growing it. He took his first cannabis cultivation class 
at Oaksterdam University less than a year ago.

Then he hit on the hydroponics idea. His original distributors pulled 
out of weGrow because the store openly touts products made for 
growing pot, which could land them in the cross hairs of federal 
authorities. Marijuana, medical or otherwise, is illegal under federal law.

Undaunted, Mann turned around and created a distribution company with 
Derek Peterson, a former analyst for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney. 
Together they plan to take the company public and open hundreds of 
stores across the nation. Meanwhile, Mann runs the University of 
Cannabis -- the "Princeton of Pot" -- and is developing a reality 
show about being "ganjapreneurs" called "Hempire."

He downplays the danger posed by the gap between federal and local 
policy governing medical marijuana -- but he doesn't dismiss it.

"I would be shortsighted to say there is no risk," he says. "But we 
don't see why it would be a priority."

Birthday Party Guests

He also started channeling energy and money into local politics. 
Since 2008 he donated about $10,000 to Oakland City Council members, 
under a variety of names. Several members of the seven-person council 
showed up at his 26th birthday party held in a private room at the 
high-end Ozumo Japanese restaurant. In January, councilmembers 
Rebecca Kaplan, Larry Reid and Desley Brooks touted weGrow's 
financial potential to Oakland at the opening.

The council won't be in charge of deciding who receives one of 
thefour large-scale growing permits. But it gave the go-ahead in July 
for the industrial-scale cultivation, setting off what Mann calls the 
"Harborside Crossfire."

"We are honored by Dhar Mann joining us now," quips one of Oakland's 
staunchest medical marijuana proponents, Richard Lee, when Mann 
arrives a half-hour late to a meeting of the Measure Z committee. The 
panel, which advises city officials about medical marijuana policy in 
Oakland, gathers in the City Council chamber this night, Aug. 19, 
instead of its customary hearing room. A blues band performs in the 
plaza outside, playing "Stand By Me."

"Sorry," Mann replies quietly, ducking into a seat between Lee and 
James Anthony, where Kernighan would usually sit.

Relations were better before the "cultivation war," Mann had said 
earlier about the friction. Indeed, Harborside's founder, Steve 
DeAngelo -- in his trademark fedora, tie and two long braids -- makes 
a cameo in an online cartoon created by Mann about a "superhigh hero" 
called CannMann who uses his powers derived from medical marijuana to 
save Pottam City. The cartoon -- complete with a sexy female 
physician -- appeals to the core group of pot smokers, males 18-35, 
and makes no pretense about the abuse of medical marijuana system.

'It's Inevitable'

The approach that reveals Mann's youthful brashness would be 
unthinkable by advocates who reject suggestions that pot causes 
negative side effects and that medical marijuana is anything but 
medicinal. Mann says future episodes will focus more on the medicinal 
value. WeGrow has already exceeded Mann's rosy expectations of a 
half-million dollars in the first year. Customers, he said, "can 
easily drop 10 grand on a system."

Just as Apple did in the tech industry, Mann said, "It's inevitable 
that newcomers will come and be game-changers. Somebody had to take 
the leadership."

Anthony and DeAngelo declined to comment or discuss their relations 
with Mann, who has already seen alliances shift. He is learning to 
shift with them. Not unlike the young ambitious Gold Rush 
entrepreneurs, Mann began to upgrade his image. Photos of him online 
posed in slick suits are replacing the pictures of him in beefy 
muscle T-shirt and sunglasses, signaling his future ambitions. He 
says he would consider running for public office, a seat on the Port 
of Oakland commission or sticking with business development. Whatever 
would benefit Oakland most, he says.

For now, he says, he is "building a good resume" and trying to be 
active in the city. But the door to public office, he added, "is 
definitely open. I guess time will tell." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake