Saul Kaye, Sruli Weinreb, Jesse Kaplan and Yohanan Danino.. (photo credit: DAVID ZIMAND)
When people think of Israel, the word “cannabis” probably isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. But investors are saying it should be, and on Thursday they gathered in New York to meet Israeli cannabis start-ups.
iCan Connect, New York’s first-ever Israeli Cannabis Investor Symposium, provided 130 investors with the opportunity to learn about the innovative Israeli cannabis industry, meet executives and researchers, and evaluate investment opportunities. Ten Israeli cannabis start-ups presented including Fotonica Bio-Lighting Solutions, iCANsee – which is a pioneer of the ocular delivery of cannabinoids – and CannaDu, a medical cannabis and life sciences investment fund.
Saul Kaye, founder & CEO of CannaTech – the organization behind iCan Connect – started the company five years ago following two decades of work in retail pharmaceuticals.
“Cannabis came along and I was incredibly intrigued,” he told The Jerusalem Post. Kaye grew up in Australia and made aliyah around the same time that he began his pharmaceutical career.
“We’re preaching Israel as Start-Up Nation all around the world. I get to go around the world and show the world how Israelis use cannabis, which is an illegal substance,” he said.
The one-day gathering brought together Israel’s early stage and mature cannabis companies and entrepreneurs with qualified investors, family offices, money managers, venture capital firms, private equity funds and institutional investors.
“I brought a lot of investors to iCAN,” Brenda Smith, an investor, told the Post at the event. “This conference reminds us that it’s a global market. In order to play in the space it’s not enough to work in your personal market – you have to be a global player.”
An early investor in cannabis, Smith said she got involved “because of the plant and all the opportunities it can help people.”
Smith returned from a business trip to Israel weeks prior to the symposium.
“I love seeing the innovation that comes out of Israel,” she said. “I think Israel’s knowledge in the clinical research will change the world – and they have a 40-year jump on every other country.”
This was the first US symposium, the event having previously been held in Tel Aviv, Panama, Sydney, Davos and Hong Kong. Kaye said New York was an ideal location because “the weight of capital coming into this. New York and Wall Street are about to turn into cannabis. A couple of years ago the conversation about cannabis was hyper-local – California, Colorado. Now the conversation, and the opportunity, is global.”
Kaye said that he ran into some controversy at the Hong Kong conference due to the illegal status of cannabis, but he saw no backlash in New York.
Also in attendance at the symposium – held at The Green Fig on Manhattan’s 10th Avenue – were Yohanan Danino, a former Israel police chief, now a cannabis executive, and Tal Ohana, mayor of Yeruham.
“I’m here to ask you to come and invest in Yeruham,” Ohana said. “We will support you, and the Israeli government will do much more – subsidies for land, for high skilled labor, taxes.”
Kaye said that Israel is a great incubator “because of the massive government support for innovation. We de-risk investment and foster growth. And you don’t have to look far to see all of the ways cannabis can treat people.”
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