In The Magazine
40 Under 40: Vince C. Ning & Jun S. Lee
The founders of Nabis, the leading weed wholesale platform in California, cut their tech teeth in some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley.
Founded in 2018 by serial software entrepreneurs Vince C. Ning and Jun S. Lee—before the first legal sale of adult-use cannabis in California—Nabis has established itself as the leading weed wholesale platform in California. They built the company from the ground up, starting as delivery drivers and moving products to dispensaries across the Golden State.
You could say it’s the Amazon of the weed industry, and its founders are the burgeoning Bezoses of cannabis fulfillment.
The only end-to-end wholesale cannabis marketplace platform, Nabis offers B2B support between brands and retailers. With its fulfillment, warehousing, payment processing, financing, data analytics, sales and marketing services, cutting-edge technology enables more brands and retailers to innovate, launch and scale.
Scaling the adult-use cannabis market depends heavily on wholesale distribution. With Nabis, brands can use the online marketplace to sell their products so that retailers can quickly place orders for multi-brand, multi-product orders with two-day shipping guarantees.
Before starting Nabis, the software engineers cut their tech teeth in some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley: Ning worked as an engineer at Microsoft before founding SaaS platform Scaphold, Inc., a software company that would come to be acquired by Amazon. Lee started his career as an engineer at Facebook before founding Allganize, an artificial intelligence company.
Nabis has grown more than 140 percent in volume year-over-year and represents a portfolio of 100 top-tier brands. Nabis now distributes ten percent of California’s legal weed—the largest cannabis market in the world. It exclusively supplies more than 200 brands to dispensaries across the state, shipping in excess of $350 million in cannabis products annually.
In 2021, Nabis secured $23 million in Series B venture capital funding with investments from Twitch founder Justin Kan, legendary NFL quarterback Joe Montana and Gmail creator Paul Buchheit.
Nabis is eyeing up the red-hot New York market and intends to apply for a distribution license as the Empire State awards licenses before launching its imminent adult-use cannabis market.
This story was originally published in the print edition of Cannabis Now.
