The Discovery (2019)
In 2019, I was tasked at Blond to research the cannabis industry. As a project analyst, my job was simple: identify market opportunities.
While researching, I discovered something fundamental: you cannot predict the effect of cannabis on a person.
This wasn't a niche issue—it was the market's fundamental flaw. But the real bottleneck was deeper: people couldn't self-dose properly. This left enormous value on the table. Most consumers couldn't find what worked for them, so they either gave up or got lucky.
The Insight
The deeper I dug, the clearer it became: this problem was solvable through AI.
I decided to leave Blond and build something new.
The Jump into Unknown
I knew nothing except: there's a massive opportunity here.
So I taught myself everything:
- The endocannabinoid system
- Cannabis research landscape
- Who the leading researchers were
- What knowledge existed (and what didn't)
6 Years of Building
Over six years, I developed lezel—a hardware company designed to help people personalize their cannabis use.
The Product: Smart hardware that generates a dynamic cannabis protocol tailored to each individual.
What We Did:
- Raised capital
- Built a team
- Developed proprietary personalization technology
- Learned what works (and what doesn't) in a regulated market
What This Taught Me
lezel is the foundation of everything I do now:
- How to enter an unknown space without a map
- How to find signals in noise when data is incomplete
- How to build through uncertainty without perfect information
- How AI can solve real human problems—not just optimize existing ones
lezel is still active. The company continues to explore personalization in regulated markets, and the lessons from building it inform every project I touch now.