The Business Of MJBiz 

Breaking down the the business of MJBiz after the $120 million dollar deal…

Founding MJBiz…

In May 2011, Cassandra Farrington & Anne Holland founded MJBiz.

Cassandra Farrington was no stranger to success having previously worked as the Vice President & Senior Project Manager of Citi, the $128 billion dollar dollar investment bank located in New York.

Anne Holland on the other hand brought the editorial expertise needed to build MJBiz into the cannabis industry’s “most trusted source of information”.

The initial goal of MJBiz was to become the “Wall street journal” of cannabis as it was clear that the cannabis industry lacked the information needed to remain up to date on all of the changes occurring in the industry.

Cassandra (L) & Anne (R)

Content as a marketing function….

To build the events side of the business they leveraged the ever increasing traffic MJBiz Daily was receiving to promote and sell tickets to MJBiz Con.

This was the true genius behind MJBiz, and it’s why the founders were able to sell their business for over $120 million USD.

Why is this so important to this story?

This approach significantly lowered their customer acquisition cost.

The first MJBiz conference was in Colorado the same week voters were voting to legalize adult-use cannabis in the state.

Despite this, less than 400 people attended the first MJBiz conference.

By leveraging the success of mjbizdaily.com, last year 27,000 people were estimated to have attended MJBiz Con

This approach also significantly increased the value of each customer.

Whereas a single website visitor is worth between two to ten cents per visit, the tickets for their flagship event MJBiz Con cost up to $899 USD.

Additionally, MJBiz was able to sell booths at these events for thousands of dollars each year, with 1300+ exhibitors in 2021.

Undervalued or overvalued?

In 2021 MJBiz generated $27 million USD in annual revenue, and my understanding is that the company was very profitable

Looking at MJBiz’s ever increasing web traffic, and assuming this is correlated to the companies revenue through their ability to convert this audience to attendants of their conferences— this deal was a bargain.

Regarding how much the founders of the company would receive from this deal, it’s conceivable that they are walking away with upwards of $50 million USD each — if they only completed one capital raise.

This success is a huge credit to both founders Cassandra Farrington & Anne Holland, and the entire team at MJBiz.

Our Take…

As an industry, cannabis needs more media & events companies not less.

MJBiz will remain an important company in the cannabis industry given the reach they have built over the last decade, and with the growing interest in cannabis — it’s a good time to own MJBiz.

As the cannabis industry continues to mature, we will also continue to see more & more established publications increase their coverage of cannabis.

Have any questions, or feedback? Add them to this google doc.