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Despite showing up in suits and ties, Privateer Holdings CEO found they didn't win any friends at first, "Nobody would talk to us," Kennedy remembers. "Everyone thought we were the DEA."

"This is the biggest opportunity I'm going to see in my lifetime," said the CEO and founder of Privateer Holdings.

“I spent a year talking to growers, accessory product providers like LED light companies, dispensaries, activists, lawyers and political campaigners and realized that this was a huge industry,” Brendan Kennedy, CEO of Privateer Holdings says.

Brendan Kennedy, CEO of Privateer Holdings, moderated and participated in a panel about business opportunities in the legal marijuana industry.

Brendan Kennedy, CEO of Privateer Holdings, is a venture capitalist focused on the emerging marijuana market. He moderated and participated in a panel Friday about business opportunities in the legal marijuana industry.

Privateer Holdings, the first U.S. private equity firm devoted to helping grow pot startups has entered the field.

Brendan Kennedy's private equity firm has a mission: cultivate start-ups with legitimate growth potential in the cannabis space. Impossible? Maybe not.

As Washington moves to legalize marijuana, pot entrepreneurs are lobbying in public forums and behind the scenes. These business interests want to shape the new marijuana marketplace. Among them, a Seattle-based private equity firm called Privateer Holdings. NPR Olympia Correspondent Austin Jenkins talks with Brendan Kennedy and Michael Blue.

As states decriminalize marijuana, entrepreneurs and investors are looking at ways to finance and profit from the industry. How will the marijuana business blossom?

Seeking to invest a potential industry worth $50 billion, Kennedy and Blue formed a cannabis-focused venture-capital fund called Privateer Holdings.

Brendan Kennedy, with cannabis-focused private equity firm Privateer Holdings agrees and says that there are still plenty of opportunities to make money in ancillary businesses without having to deal with all the legal hurdles of actually growing and distributing the product.

"It's just like the end of alcohol prohibition. I feel like it's 1995 and I'm telling people there's going to be this thing called the Internet," Leafly.com President, Brendan Kennedy said.

Kennedy and Blue want to direct the industry away from the stigma that stubbornly surrounds it; for two MBAs who want to present a legitimate business model, the tone of media coverage is critical.

With research showing that the national market for medical marijuana alone could increase from from $1.7 billion in 2011 to $8.9 billion by 2016, service companies like Leafly.com provide online user ratings and reviews of marijuana strains.

Brendan Kennedy answers some questions about the nature of the cannabis industry and Privateer Holdings.

“It’s an industry that’s in desperate need of professionalism,” says Seattle-based Brendan Kennedy, who has started up Leafly.com, a user-friendly website that allows exploration of 500 varieties of marijuana, and that provides a database of where they can be bought.