There are many things that bother Jon Cooper about the market for marijuana.

“It’s nearly impossible to find a consistent product,” said Cooper, one of the legion of tech start-up guys and M.B.A.s plunging into the world of pot. “You go into a dispensary and buy something called ‘Sour Diesel’ and try it. You go to another dispensary, buy ‘Sour Diesel,’ and it’s a different experience. You go back to the first dispensary, buy it again and it’s not the same, either.”

Despite the inconsistency, nobody doubts marijuana’s popularity as a consumer product: 38 percent of Americans admit to having tried it, and 7 percent use it on a regular basis. But for decades, it has been produced and sold primarily on the black market, which has only recently developed shades of gray and white.

This has wrenched the ancient psychotropic substance into the machinery of 21st-century consumer capitalism — with all the consultants, marketers, brand advisers and scientists that come with it. A joint might never be as easy to access as a can of beer or a cigarette. But thousands of people and millions of dollars are hard at work to make it as predictable and dependable as one. Call it the Bud Light-ification of bud.

There’s a pressing economic reason for the pot industry to get better if it is to survive, aside from its formidable legal challenges. The plant is relatively cheap and easy to grow, and not complicated to process either. Left to the whims of the open market — meaning ignoring taxes and regulations — the price of a joint could plummet to the price of a tea bag or a packet of sugar. So how will investors help the market mature while still making money?