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“The market wasn’t doing any transactions,” Mottahed said. “So I needed to look at doing some things differently.”

Mottahed, 45, had his life shaped by the oil and gas business. He followed in the footsteps of his dad, an Iranian-born executive at Exxon Mobil Corp., launching a career that took him to more than 30 countries, with stops in London, Houston and Lagos. Around 2004, he tried his hand as an investment banker, first at companies including Raymond James, then at his own firm, Black Spruce Merchant Capital.

After three years of dealmaking, plunging oil prices had cooled the mergers market, and Mottahed was looking for new opportunities.

Ill-Equipped

Around that time, he met Jason Kujath, a tax lawyer who was planning to leave the legal field. The two had met with cannabis companies in the course of their work and found the management teams ill-equipped to raise the capital needed to start serious companies or manage them.

Mottahed, who knew little about the marijuana business at the time, toured U.S. states where pot is already legal — Washington, Oregon, Colorado — and met with industry players to collect advice and information. The trip convinced them the opportunity was real.

“The light-bulb moment for me was when I realized that this industry will be the next industry that is created — actually and truly created — in my adult lifetime,” Mottahed said. The internet and mobile telecommunications were the other two.