In his country home on the outskirts of Ottawa, Bruce Linton is far enough from his neighbours that the early-morning caws of his wife’s Senegal parrot do not result in complaints.
“That was a big factor in buying this house,” he said. “It’s a lot more difficult to get rid of your neighbours than your wife’s favourite family member.”
This “animal harassment” is nothing new to him, Linton said, bringing up the hobby farm where he spent his childhood.
“It was in the middle-of-nowhere southern Ontario. My parents thought it would be a good life for the kids, which it was—but it was also tough.”
Linton said this modest upbringing resulted in his “lifelong anxiety related to cash.” Even as the founder and former co-CEO of the world’s largest cannabis company, Canopy Growth Corp., this apprehension remained essential to his success.
“You can’t be motivated for money, but at the same time, you have to be terrified of losing [it],” he said.
Linton’s interest in business came as a result of a connection he made while serving as a student representative on Carleton University’s board of governors.
“[While] on the board of governors, I had met and gotten to know a guy named Sir Terence Matthews, who’s made himself quite a wealthy person because of his entrepreneurial skills in the high-tech industry,” he said.
At the end of their last board meeting together, Matthews offered Linton a job interview, hiring him as an apprentice in 1992. Matthews would go on to become Wales’s first billionaire and a dot-com magnate, selling his largest company for $10 billion in 2000.
Linton’s Canopy Growth would be worth twice that amount by 2019.
In 2012, while sitting on a few mid-range investments, Linton came across an article about police frustration regarding the way medical cannabis was being regulated.
“As I dug into it, I thought ‘Well, no wonder they don’t like it,’” he said. “If you could convince a doctor you were sick and Health Canada said ‘We agree,’ you could grow cannabis plants at your house or get someone else to grow them for you. You didn’t even have to tell the police.”
After a day’s worth of research, Linton decided his next investment would be in the centralization of medicinal marijuana.
He established Tweed Inc. in 2013, though as the Liberals campaigned on the legalization of recreational marijuana in 2015, the company was re-branded as Canopy Growth Corp. in preparation for a new market.
By 2018, Linton’s efforts saw Canopy Growth become the first cannabis producer on the New York Stock Exchange. However, after serving as the company’s co-CEO for six years, Linton was fired by the board in July 2019.
“Usually when someone gets terminated, you’re supposed to hide out, but I think that’s probably a good plan if the reason you were terminated is because you were a fraudulent person,” he said.
“Ultimately, what it resulted in is somebody needed to come in who would agree more frequently than I did.”
Linton’s 18-year-old son, Adam, said he reacted to the news by suggesting his father pursue “something different.”
“He’s ‘done’ weed already,” the younger Linton said, shrugging, “and he’s never been the type of person to go back to something he’s already done well.”
His son’s input inspired Linton to look forward to what other companies have to offer him now that he is back on the job market. Since September 2019, Linton has been doing what he does best: “catering to the rich.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s an heir to a psychedelics company [or] the acting CEO for a software company,” he said.
“What I’m trying to do is be the first place they call when there’s a problem.”
Since his dismissal in July, Linton has taken on the role of adviser for multiple different enterprises within the “sector” — his term for anything related to the global regulation and distribution of cannabinoids.
“What’s nice about being an adviser rather than a CEO is that I have enough time to pay attention to the tech, pay attention to the web, pay attention to the research that goes into all the business,” he said.
“You also end up with these people offering you pretty extraordinary incentives to just do what you do already,” he said, adding what he believes to be his best piece of advice for budding entrepreneurs.
“The advice I’ve been giving to young people this summer is to get fired as soon as you can once working, because you become very popular once you’re fired,” he said.
“But then I explain that it’s better—if you can—to build, in about six years, a $20 billion company, and then get fired. So, if you can do that, that’s actually better.”
Linton paused to smile before continuing.
“But for real—it’s hard to say it—but you don’t know how anything is going to turn out, so you should always try. If you show up and give your best effort—I don’t know where you end up, but it’s a lot better than if you don’t. Whatever you’re doing, just get in the deep end right away.”
Feature image from file.
