RISE OF A 'GANJAPRENEUR'

Tempers flared as the evening of July 22 wore on, turning an Oakland
City Council meeting into a marathon debate over the future of
medical marijuana in one of the country's most pot-friendly cities.

For months the media had chronicled the unfolding of a modern-day
Gold Rush -- quickly dubbed the "Green Rush." Now, the path to El
Dorado rested in a bid to permit pot growing on an industrial scale.
Opposition to the plan by dispensary operators erupted publicly after
quiet lobbying failed.

Newcomers were blamed for upsetting the comfortable landscape crafted
by seasoned advocates who stood to lose control and profits. One of
the newcomers included Dhar Mann, a 26-year-old who runs a corral of
businesses that include weGrow -- the nation's first hydroponic
superstore, a real estate management company and an exotic car rental
agency. He owns a BMW M5 that drives "faster than I care to." He is
the director of his parent's business, Friendly Cab Co., the largest
taxi operator in Oakland.

"Not all of us can use daddy's money," quipped James Anthony, the
attorney and public face of the Harborside Health Center dispensary,
during the July meeting. Anthony didn't say Mann's name, but it was
clear whom he was talking about.

Mann hadn't helped matters by announcing his intention to become the
Levi Strauss of the marijuana industry, stripping away the carefully
constructed and managed medicinal cannabis image used to ease pot
into the mainstream.

The association with Strauss seemed apt. Both are the son of
immigrants -- Mann a second-generation Indian-American -- and both
shepherded the family business to success.

But Samuel Brannan, a tireless self-promoter who became the first
millionaire of the Gold Rush, would make a better comparison. When
word of gold got out in 1848, Brannan purchased every shovel he could
find in San Francisco and ran through the streets yelling, "Gold!
Gold! Gold from the American River!" He made a fortune selling
supplies to miners.

Mann is propelled by the same impulse that drove Brannan, Strauss and
what drives every entrepreneur: opportunity.

Seizing opportunities earned the young upstart a place at the table
with far older men who risked arrest to guide marijuana from an
illegal enterprise to a multimillion-dollar medicinal industry. His
naked ambition also earned him their resentment as they vie for a
costly and hard-to-come-by large-scale grow permit.

Like a Startup

On the ground floor of its warehouse, weGrow resembles an IKEA
showroom for medicinal pot, complete with state-of-the art "big bud
boxes." Mann, dressed in jeans, two-toned loafers and a stretchy
buttoned-up shirt, shows off the equipment displays proudly, easily
slipping into the technicalities of LED lighting and yield techniques.

"Soil is the most basic way of growing," he explains in a voice
marked by growing up in Oakland and spending four years at Alameda's
Saint Joseph Notre Dame High School. Videos looped on a TV screen
hang over the replica of a growing room. One is made to look like a
news clip and blends deceptively into an actual news clip from the
grand opening of weGrow. He changed the name from iGrow to weGrow in
July after a business with a similar name threatened to sue.

Mann leads the way upstairs to his office, past a row of others that
resemble a tech startup company. In one room, a team of young men and
women pore over grant applications from nonprofits invited by Mann to
apply for a share of weGrow's revenue. Mann takes a seat behind a
glass-topped desk in another. He says weGrow is based on "sweat
equity" and recounts how he dropped out of UC Davis because he
founded a successful marketing then mortgage company before he could
buy beer legally. The way he tells the story, his parents didn't find
out about it until they read a campus newspaper story because Mann
paid his own tuition.

"They freaked," he said.

By the time he turned 22, he had at least a half-dozen properties,
several dozen employees on his payroll and the confidence that comes
from watching his parents build their taxi company from one cab into
a monopoly.

"I was born into the taxi business," he says.

His mother carried him in her arms when she went to Oakland City Hall
for their first taxi permit, according to one account. While she and
her husband put in 16-hour days, the 10-year-old would sit in his
driveway trading and selling baseball cards and has been trying to
figure out ways of "building value" ever since.

"You start small and grow into it," he says.

Mann returned to UC Davis, minoring in political science but
finishing with a bachelor's degree in economics. He then returned
home, when the family business was in need of "modernizing," as he puts it.

Suits, Settlements

The family, under a variety of business names, had settled scores of
lawsuits, according to court documents. The state sued them in 2002
because they built a parking lot on top of a protected stream -- a
tributary of San Leandro Creek -- then refused to restore the
waterway. WeGrow sits on the edge of that same property. The
warehouse stood empty until Mann took it over.

Operations appeared to improve although he is now fighting off a
claim against his property management company, MannEdge, that he
evaded paying workers' compensation insurance. He says the workers
were employed by a contractor he hired to work on a property he
manages and pledged to fight the claim. He calls the fine a "success
tax" -- the curse of running a lot of businesses.

Mann smokes little marijuana, preferring edible forms instead, he
said. He has a patient card, although he wasn't so much interested in
buying it as growing it. He took his first cannabis cultivation class
at Oaksterdam University less than a year ago.

Then he hit on the hydroponics idea. His original distributors pulled
out of weGrow because the store openly touts products made for
growing pot, which could land them in the cross hairs of federal
authorities. Marijuana, medical or otherwise, is illegal under federal law.

Undaunted, Mann turned around and created a distribution company with
Derek Peterson, a former analyst for Morgan Stanley Smith Barney.
Together they plan to take the company public and open hundreds of
stores across the nation. Meanwhile, Mann runs the University of
Cannabis -- the "Princeton of Pot" -- and is developing a reality
show about being "ganjapreneurs" called "Hempire."

He downplays the danger posed by the gap between federal and local
policy governing medical marijuana -- but he doesn't dismiss it.

"I would be shortsighted to say there is no risk," he says. "But we
don't see why it would be a priority."

Birthday Party Guests

He also started channeling energy and money into local politics.
Since 2008 he donated about $10,000 to Oakland City Council members,
under a variety of names. Several members of the seven-person council
showed up at his 26th birthday party held in a private room at the
high-end Ozumo Japanese restaurant. In January, councilmembers
Rebecca Kaplan, Larry Reid and Desley Brooks touted weGrow's
financial potential to Oakland at the opening.

The council won't be in charge of deciding who receives one of
thefour large-scale growing permits. But it gave the go-ahead in July
for the industrial-scale cultivation, setting off what Mann calls the
"Harborside Crossfire."

"We are honored by Dhar Mann joining us now," quips one of Oakland's
staunchest medical marijuana proponents, Richard Lee, when Mann
arrives a half-hour late to a meeting of the Measure Z committee. The
panel, which advises city officials about medical marijuana policy in
Oakland, gathers in the City Council chamber this night, Aug. 19,
instead of its customary hearing room. A blues band performs in the
plaza outside, playing "Stand By Me."

"Sorry," Mann replies quietly, ducking into a seat between Lee and
James Anthony, where Kernighan would usually sit.

Relations were better before the "cultivation war," Mann had said
earlier about the friction. Indeed, Harborside's founder, Steve
DeAngelo -- in his trademark fedora, tie and two long braids -- makes
a cameo in an online cartoon created by Mann about a "superhigh hero"
called CannMann who uses his powers derived from medical marijuana to
save Pottam City. The cartoon -- complete with a sexy female
physician -- appeals to the core group of pot smokers, males 18-35,
and makes no pretense about the abuse of medical marijuana system.

'It's Inevitable'

The approach that reveals Mann's youthful brashness would be
unthinkable by advocates who reject suggestions that pot causes
negative side effects and that medical marijuana is anything but
medicinal. Mann says future episodes will focus more on the medicinal
value. WeGrow has already exceeded Mann's rosy expectations of a
half-million dollars in the first year. Customers, he said, "can
easily drop 10 grand on a system."

Just as Apple did in the tech industry, Mann said, "It's inevitable
that newcomers will come and be game-changers. Somebody had to take
the leadership."

Anthony and DeAngelo declined to comment or discuss their relations
with Mann, who has already seen alliances shift. He is learning to
shift with them. Not unlike the young ambitious Gold Rush
entrepreneurs, Mann began to upgrade his image. Photos of him online
posed in slick suits are replacing the pictures of him in beefy
muscle T-shirt and sunglasses, signaling his future ambitions. He
says he would consider running for public office, a seat on the Port
of Oakland commission or sticking with business development. Whatever
would benefit Oakland most, he says.

For now, he says, he is "building a good resume" and trying to be
active in the city. But the door to public office, he added, "is
definitely open. I guess time will tell."