Josh Weinstein

For the past seven years, Josh invested in two dozen early stage companies and fostered the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the cannabis industry by hosting education and networking through CannaGather.  Josh hosted monthly education and networking events of 2-300 entrepreneurs, operators, and investors before expanding to cities around the country. Speakers included members of Congress, billion-dollar company CEOs, athletes, advocates, and more. COVID made continuing to host in-person events difficult.

Born and raised in NYC. Josh went to Dalton and was captain of two national championship chess teams. Josh moved to Stuyvesant High School where he became the 2004 U.S. High School speed chess champion and was featured on NY1 as the scholar-athlete of the week as captain of the soccer and hockey teams.

Graduated from Princeton in 2009 with a degree in East Asian Studies focusing on modern China and Chinese language after spending three summers in China. Josh was President of the Undergraduate Student Government and was awarded the 1901 Medal as the senior that has done the most for Princeton. Josh also co-founded CollegeGovs - a listserv for student body presidents. For his thesis, he created a new type of web-based survey methodology that stemmed from a student government initiative-Photocracy.org/AllOurIdeas.org-that went on to receive significant investment from Google.org plus the The World Bank and was used by the UN, Wikipedia, and The Washington Post.

Another project Josh worked on became the basis for a trio of social sites, primarily GoodCrush.com -- an anonymous matching-based dating site a few years prior to Tinder. Josh raised $1mm in venture and was named one of the “15 Hot Young Stars in New York Tech” by Business Insider. Although things were going well, he became passionate about live video and shifted focus to YouAreTV.

YouAreTV was a live video platform that enabled the audience to not just watch but also video call-in and participate, as featured on Bloomberg and used by the Mexican President's Office, Viacom, and more. Josh has been a guest speaker at DLD, Princeton, NYU, the CUNY Grad School of Journalism as well as programs such as Founder Institute and TechStars.