Cannabis culture is often draped in a stereotype clouded by black lights, bongs, and Bob Marley. But when you cast aside Cheech, Chong, Harold and Kumar, the weed world is a lot more relatable than what the media portrays.
Launched on November 3, LA’s newest cannabis content site
, lives by a simple slogan: “It’s not about what’s inside the joint, but more about the person behind it.”
Rather than sponsored product reviews and political updates, the site hopes to act as a lifestyle site focused on the casual toker.
“We think of ourselves sort of like a Vice or BuzzFeed but also like a Cigar Aficionado,” said co-founder Silas Dunham. “If you’re reading about cigars, it's not just about the origins of the tobacco in the cigar but it also finds a cool spot to grab a glass of whiskey or a cool place to travel and, yea, smoke a cigar too, but we don’t care about you smoking a cigar we care about you experiencing these cool things.”
The site features culture editorials, reader polls and music reviews aimed at the sophisticated smoker. Dunham refers to this reader as “tomorrow’s cannabis consumer” — a solid representation of the increasingly commercial weed industry.
Dunham and his cofounders had previously worked at a variety of other big names in the cannabis industry including Leafly and Privateer holdings where they saw the potential as well as the chaos of the weed industry.
“It’s a very strange industry. I haven’t been in it all that long, but I’ve been in it at the highest level so it's been really interesting to see how many organizations are smoke and mirrors and how many are actually really serious players. It’s the wild wild west and its pretty crazy.”
The Kind is currently run by a team of 10 employees in DTLA. Their writers come from content sites including Vice and ESPN, and their head of content is the former Editor-in-Chief of Hustler. After one month, the site received about 25,000 unique users, 50,000 page views, and 25,000 followers across the three major social media platforms.
The Kind hopes to double their numbers month-over-month as they explore what types of content truly drive the site. According to Dunham, the five year plan is to operate five different publications under The Kind including original videos, articles and even a record label.
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