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The UpTake: Going from cofounder of Zynga and its FarmVille enterprise to a legalized marijuana startup may sound like a stretch, but Tom Bollich sees parallels, and one of the main ones is that the industry is beholden to entities beyond its control, in this case the government.
Tom Bollich, a cofounder of Zynga, has switched to another potentially lucrative enterprise that involves leisure time: he is the chief executive officer of Surna, a Colorado company that sells chilling systems and other equipment that is used to grow commercial marijuana.
Sounds like a world away from running the gaming company that turned FarmVille into a sensation, but there are similarities, according to Bollich, who left Zynga in 2009.
"It does remind me a little bit of Zynga," he told CNN Money."We had a company that was built on someone else's platform. We were beholden to Facebook or MySpace or whatever platform we were on. Now we are at the mercy of the whims of politicians and voters."
Surna is based in Boulder, Colorado, a state that's been dubbed the "Silicon Valley of Weed" since sales of legalized recreational marijuana began earlier this year, and it's certainly not alone in being a business that faces regulators. Voters in Washington state legalized marijuana in 2012 (sales began this year), and the 2014 midterm elections brought Oregon, Alaska and Washington D.C. into the mix.
Bollich said his company is "actively" looking for acquisitions. Surna specializes in producing water-chilled cooling systems that are used by cannabis growers, but Bollich says the company also aims to provide a greater percentage of a commercial grower's build-out costs by expanding into more areas like feeding systems or even data.
He also wants Surna to eventually create a software system that integrates marijuana growers' systems and allows them to monitor their operations from a smartphone. "I am a programmer after all," he told CNN.
One of his Zynga cofounders, Mark Pincus, is also experiencing startup life after Zynga. He stepped down as Zynga CEO in April amid declines in usage and layoffs, and remains non-executive chairman of the gaming company, but he recently announced the launch ofSuperlabs, a combination incubator-startup factory in San Francisco.
http://upstart.bizjournals.com/entr...a-co-founder-now-ceo-of-colorado-weed-co.html
Tom Bollich, a cofounder of Zynga, has switched to another potentially lucrative enterprise that involves leisure time: he is the chief executive officer of Surna, a Colorado company that sells chilling systems and other equipment that is used to grow commercial marijuana.
Sounds like a world away from running the gaming company that turned FarmVille into a sensation, but there are similarities, according to Bollich, who left Zynga in 2009.
"It does remind me a little bit of Zynga," he told CNN Money."We had a company that was built on someone else's platform. We were beholden to Facebook or MySpace or whatever platform we were on. Now we are at the mercy of the whims of politicians and voters."
Surna is based in Boulder, Colorado, a state that's been dubbed the "Silicon Valley of Weed" since sales of legalized recreational marijuana began earlier this year, and it's certainly not alone in being a business that faces regulators. Voters in Washington state legalized marijuana in 2012 (sales began this year), and the 2014 midterm elections brought Oregon, Alaska and Washington D.C. into the mix.
Bollich said his company is "actively" looking for acquisitions. Surna specializes in producing water-chilled cooling systems that are used by cannabis growers, but Bollich says the company also aims to provide a greater percentage of a commercial grower's build-out costs by expanding into more areas like feeding systems or even data.
He also wants Surna to eventually create a software system that integrates marijuana growers' systems and allows them to monitor their operations from a smartphone. "I am a programmer after all," he told CNN.
One of his Zynga cofounders, Mark Pincus, is also experiencing startup life after Zynga. He stepped down as Zynga CEO in April amid declines in usage and layoffs, and remains non-executive chairman of the gaming company, but he recently announced the launch ofSuperlabs, a combination incubator-startup factory in San Francisco.
http://upstart.bizjournals.com/entr...a-co-founder-now-ceo-of-colorado-weed-co.html
