It was this week that Oregon’s very first marijuana accelerator program has opened.
Portland lawyer Amy Margolis has opened the Commune, which is a 4,000 square foot space on the third floor of an office building.
According to Margolis, the program will be dedicated to boosting women entrepreneurs and their weed businesses.
Starting in August, Margolis will use the headquarters for the Initiative, a cannabis accelerator that aims to help women-owned marijuana businesses obtain venture-capital funding and grow quickly.
“The most important thing we’ll do here is teach people how to raise money,” she explained.
She added, “It’s the first accelerator in the country dedicated to women-owned cannabis businesses. The hope is that many of these women will receive significant funding.”
The Initiative’s board of directors has Amanda Reiman of the Drug Policy Alliance, cannabis genome mapper Mowgli Holmes and Rick Turoczy, the founder of the Portland tech incubator Pie.
Turcozy remarked, “We’ve seen so much incubator and accelerator activity purely focused on software pursuits. What stands out to me is this takes the accelerator model and applies it to a different industry. Amy’s focused on women entrepreneurs and providing a mentoring space for them.”
