Casa Verde Capital’s Karan Wadhera on Investing in Cannabis and Emerging Markets

Minnie Ingersoll
Minnie Ingersoll is a partner at TenOneTen and host of the LA Venture podcast. Prior to TenOneTen, Minnie was the COO and co-founder of $100M+ Shift.com, an online marketplace for used cars. Minnie started her career as an early product manager at Google. Minnie studied Computer Science at Stanford and has an MBA from HBS. She recently moved back to L.A. after 20+ years in the Bay Area and is excited to be a part of the growing tech ecosystem of Southern California. In her space time, Minnie surfs baby waves and raises baby people.
Casa Verde Capital’s Karan Wadhera
Courtesy of Karan Wadhera

On this episode of the LA Venture podcast, Casa Verde Capital’s Karan Wadhera talks about the cannabis industry, investing in risky environments and working with music legend Snoop Dogg.


Wadhera grew up playing music and had always wanted to be in the music industry. Around 1999, as a student dabbling in html, he got his shot.

“I started learning how to code and make basic websites, pre-social media. And through that really, like a rabbit hole, got connected to record labels, and would get these sort of consulting assignments in college to help out with different artists,” said Wadhera.

Those assignments brought him into contact with artists including John Legend, Snoop Dogg and Kanye West.

“And I did it while I was in college,” he said. “That's how I got to know L.A., and a lot of the industry here.”

Eventually, Wadhera landed a job with Goldman Sachs working in Hong Kong and Mumbai, then transitioned over to Nomura Securities as the head of India sales trading.

“Trading at that time [in] emerging markets was scary. You always thought you were going to get your face ripped off, someone was going to cheat you,” he said. But navigating that tricky environment ultimately helped him build relationships and experience working in risky financial worlds.

“No one was raising their hand to go to India when I went—and cannabis was similar.”

Wadhera always knew that he eventually wanted to do something on his own. He left Nomura without lining up another job and moved to L.A., where he had maintained a friendship with hip hop legend, entrepreneur and cannabis enthusiast Snoop Dogg.

In 2016, shortly after Colorado legalized recreational marijuana and shortly before California followed suit, Wadhera signed on as a managing partner for Casa Verde, a firm dedicated to funding cannabis companies co-founded by Snoop.

Wadhera said Los Angeles has become the hub of the cannabis industry, largely “because we're such an important cannabis market,” he said.

“There's funds in San Francisco and New York and everywhere. But you know, L.A. really has emerged as one of the center points, both culturally and from a brand perspective and for investing in cannabis.”

Wadhera said he’s seen a number of different characters in the cannabis space in his six years working in the industry.

“There's people who've been in the illegal black market industry transitioning into the legal industry. There's the very, very corporate people with dollar signs in their eyes who've come here and are trying to structure every deal like a distressed deal and then there's people in the middle who love the culture,” said Wadhera.

Casa Verde is focused on investing in cannabis, but the firm has also recently made investments in psychedelics as well, starting with Boston-based Delix Therapeutics. For now, Wadhera said, the opportunity is in companies who are exploring the possible medical and pharmaceutical benefits of the drugs for people suffering from PTSD or severe depression.

“When and if there's the adult-use side of [psychedelics]... then it actually kind of falls more into our space,” he said. “And we would do more there. It makes perfect sense, because we’ve built the infrastructure for it, right?”

Click the link above to hear the full episode, and subscribe to LA Venture on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

dot.LA Engagement Fellow Joshua Letona contributed to this post.

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Starships Were Meant To Fly: Astrolab's New Jeep-Sized Rover Gets a Lift from SpaceX

Lon Harris
Lon Harris is a contributor to dot.LA. His work has also appeared on ScreenJunkies, RottenTomatoes and Inside Streaming.
Starships Were Meant To Fly: Astrolab's New Jeep-Sized Rover Gets a Lift from SpaceX
Photo by Samson Amore

This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene.

Local Los Angeles-area startup Astrolab Inc. has designed a new lunar vehicle called FLEX, short for Flexible Logistics and Exploration Rover. About the size of a Jeep Wrangler, FLEX is designed to move cargo around the surface of the moon on assignment. It’s a bit larger than NASA’s Mars rovers, like Perseverance, but as it’s designed for transport and mobility rather than precision measurement, it can travel much faster, at speeds of up to 15 miles per hour across the lunar surface.

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Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn

Kristin Snyder

Kristin Snyder is dot.LA's 2022/23 Editorial Fellow. She previously interned with Tiger Oak Media and led the arts section for UCLA's Daily Bruin.

Meet the Creator Economy’s Version of LinkedIn
Creatorland

This is the web version of dot.LA’s daily newsletter. Sign up to get the latest news on Southern California’s tech, startup and venture capital scene.

LinkedIn hasn’t caught on with Gen Z—in fact, 96% rarely use their existing account.

Considering 25% of young people want to be full-time content creators and most influencers aren’t active on LinkedIn, traditional networking sites aren’t likely to meet these needs.

Enter CreatorLand.

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https://twitter.com/ksnyder_db

This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M

Decerry Donato

Decerry Donato is a reporter at dot.LA. Prior to that, she was an editorial fellow at the company. Decerry received her bachelor's degree in literary journalism from the University of California, Irvine. She continues to write stories to inform the community about issues or events that take place in the L.A. area. On the weekends, she can be found hiking in the Angeles National forest or sifting through racks at your local thrift store.

This Week in ‘Raises’: Total Network Services Gains $9M, Autio Secures $5.9M
This Week in ‘Raises’:

It has been a slow week in funding, but a local decentralized computing network managed to land $9 million to accelerate deployment of its new product called Universal Communication Identifier (UCID™). Another local company that secured capital included Kevin Costner’s location-based audio storytelling platform and the funding will go toward expanding the app’s content library and expanding into additional regions in the United States.

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