Cannabis Entrepreneurs Coming to Austin
The Forrest Four-Cast: April 15, 2018
Now that former Speaker of the House John Boehner has effectively blessed the space, almost everyone can get involved in this activity. Right? The first-ever Austin Cannabis Entrepreneur (ACE) Conference comes to the Hyatt Regency on April 19–20, bringing two days of content focused on startup opportunities in this fast-growing market.
Central Texas founders and investors will want to catch the ACE opening session at 10:00 am on Thursday, April 19. Titled “Why Austin is Ripe for Cannabis Startups,” this session includes serial entrepreneur William Hurley (better known as whurley) as well as Carlos Martinez (who is launching a real-estate fund that is focused on the legal cannabis industry nationally).
The keynote speaker for the 2018 event is Troy Dayton (pictured above holding cover of a recent Fortune Magazine). As the co-founder of the cannabis investment and research firm the Arcview Group, Dayton has helped pull together more than 600 high net-worth individuals who have made invested more than $150 million into 165 cannabis-related ventures and raised more than $3 million for the legalization effort. Fortune Magazine, Details Magazine, and International Business Times have named Dayton to their Top 10 lists of most influential people in the cannabis industry. Catch his keynote presentation “Raising Capital at the Crossroads” at 2:00 pm on Friday, April 20.
Other speakers for ACE include Emily Paxhia (Poseidon Asset Management), Patrick Rea (CanopyBoulder), Morris Denton (Compassion Cultivation), Tahira Rehmatullah (MTech Acquisition Corp), Cy Scott (Headset), Keegan Peterson (Wurk), Alex Samuels (The Texas Tribune) and many more.
Other entrepreneurial-focused sessions for ACE include “Best Cannabis Startup Ideas & Developments,” “Trends and Patterns for Current Cannabis Usage,” “Lessons Learned from Colorado’s Cannabis Experience,” “Opportunities for Cannabis Entrepreneurs,” “The Politics of Cannabis in Texas,” “Opportunity Within the Emerging Hemp Market,” “Which States Will Legalize What Next,” and many more.
The last session of the event begins at 5:00 pm on Friday, April 20 and features a Pitch Competition showcasing three cannabis-based startups from around the United States: Lumen (Oakland), BDTNDR (Austin) and FLUX (Dallas). Whichever of these three startups most impresses the ACE judges receives a $1500 cash prize!
Register now for the Austin Cannabis Entrepreneur (ACE) Conference on April 19–20 at the Hyatt Regency for just $75. Or, for $110, you can attend ACE as well as get a Three Day Wristband for the 2018 Austin Reggae Festival, which runs April 20–22 at Auditorium Shores. Kabala Pyramid, Collie Buddz, Black Uhuru, and the Wailers are headliners at this year’s event.
Other Austin events for the week of April 16:
April 16: Austin Blockchain for Business Meet Up
April 16: Austin Elixir Meet Up
April 16: PyLadies ATX Meet Up
April 16: Austin Virtual League Meet Up
April 16: Angular Austin
April 16: Finding the Right Space Meet Up
April 16: User Experience: Journey Mapping
April 17: Capital Factory Accelerator Info Session
April 17: Evening of Python Coding
April 17: Community Action Night
April 17: Intro to Data Analytics
April 17: AR/VR/MR Tools & Tech
April 17: Data Analytics Info Session
April 17: Music Tech Meet Up
April 17: Storytelling for Entrepreneurs: Presentations to Elevator Pitches
April 17: Digital Marketing Info Session
April 18: Health Tech Austin
April 18: Introduction to Product Management
April 18: Entrepreneurial and Investment Opportunities in Real Estate
April 18: Learn to Code: Introduction to JavaScript
April 19: EOS Blockchain Governance Talk By Thomas Cox
April 19: VR Cafe Meet Up
April 19: Austin Hardware Startup Meet Up
April 19: Austin Cassandra Users
April 19: The Other Kind of Code: Why Zoning Matters
April 19: Bleeding Edge Web Meet Up
April 19–21: Longhorn PHP Conference
April 20: User Experience Design Bootcamp
April 20: Techstars Austin Community Demo Day
April 20: Black Business Day at the Capital
April 20–22: Austin Reggae Festival
April 22: Threadfair Benefit Fashion Show
More upcoming Austin events:
April 24: General Assembly’s Data Science Graduate Showcase
April 25: Video Storytelling
April 26: FUND Conference
April 30: State of Small Business in Austin Breakfast
May 1: Dockless Mobility on Two Wheels
May 4: George Takei at the Long Center
May 5–6: Maker Faire Austin
May 8: Austin Forum on Regulating Social Media
May 8: Philanthropitch
May 14: John Slatin AccessU 2018
May 16: 2018 WIT Showcase Event
May 22: foundingAustin Issue 7 Release Party
May 23: Find Your Event’s Next Big Idea
May 24: Austin A-List 2018
May 29: Michael Pollan Book Reading
June 1–3: ATX Hack for Change
June 1–3: Dreamhack Austin
June 6: Austin Digital Marketing Conference
June 21: Central Texas LGBT-Allies Diversity Summit
June 25: SXSW 2019 PanelPicker Speaking Application Process Begins
August 3–5: RTX Austin 2018
August 22: Snap Judgement LIVE!
If you have a creativity-focused event that you want listed in this space, then please contact hugh at sxsw dot com.
Hugh Forrest serves as Chief Programming Officer at SXSW, the world’s most unique gathering of creative professionals. He also tries to write at least four paragraphs per day on Medium. These posts often cover tech-related trends; other times they focus on books, pop culture, sports and other current events.
