Two engineers build the world's largest cannabis distributor

Executive overview

Traditional logistics companies cannot ship cannabis, and the regulated market made finding reliable operators nearly impossible. Jun and Vince solved this by controlling the entire physical supply chain — from warehouse to retailer door.

Nabis now moves $1 billion in cannabis products annually and holds ~20% of California's legal market.

Building end-to-end physical infrastructure in a stigmatised industry creates a defensible moat competitors can't easily replicate.

From Facebook to cannabis distribution

• Jun studied applied mathematics and computer science at Harvard, then joined Facebook as a software engineer
• At Facebook, soft skills — communication, sales — went undervalued; this drove him toward entrepreneurship
• In 2017, he identified three emerging waves: AI/ML, crypto, and cannabis legalisation in California
• Witnessing cannabis used responsibly in California challenged views formed in Korea and Virginia
• Traditional cannabis logistics were loosely regulated with unreliable, untrustworthy drivers

Building the early business

• Started Nabis six years ago with co-founder and best friend Vince
• Early operations: 60–70 hours per week coding, plus 40 hours driving deliveries
• Core value proposition: reliable, on-time delivery with no theft
• Growth compounded weekly — 5 deliveries, then 10, then 20 — proving product-market fit quickly
• Built proprietary software to automate deliveries as volume scaled; off-the-shelf tools don't serve cannabis operators

The Nabis model today

• Picks up product from brands anywhere in California, stores it in Nabis warehouses
• Retailers order via the Nabis marketplace; orders trigger pick, pack, and dispatch
• Controls physical movement of goods end-to-end — the Amazon model applied to cannabis
• Retailers get two-day delivery certainty because Nabis holds the inventory
• Team of ~350; $45 million raised in equity funding to date

Fundraising in a stigmatised market

• Took two years to find a bank willing to hold company funds
• Early investors repeatedly said no despite strong revenue traction — one walked out after hearing a $50K–$100K weekly revenue pitch
• Institutional VCs acknowledged the opportunity but cited headline and regulatory risk
• Raised initially from friends, family, and tech luminaries (Paul Buchheit of Gmail, Justin Kan of Twitch)
• Rejection fuelled a "vindictive drive" to prove sceptics wrong rather than demoralise the founders

Mindset and long-term outlook

• Background irrelevance: neither founder came from cannabis; engineering instincts transferred directly
• Y Combinator backing helped signal credibility to later investors
• Jun frames Nabis as the first chapter — would rebuild from scratch if the company were sold tomorrow
• Goal: become a career entrepreneur who solves large, complex problems repeatedly across industries