Ifedigbo and Martin founded the Hood Incubator because they saw the recreational cannabis trade not just as a business opportunity but “as a way to correct the injustices of the war on drugs launched in the early 1970s. Though minorities like Grant had played an outsized role in building the marijuana market, they also faced a disproportionate response from law enforcement, as Martin explained to the crowd assembled that night in early 2017. As recently as 2015, Oakland officers arrested black residents nearly 20 times more often than white residents for cannabis-related crimes. Ifedigbo noted that black people had owned or founded less than 5 percent of cannabis businesses nationwide and, across all industries, black-founded startups had received just 1 percent of venture capital funding. For many years, while officials awarded more and more licenses for medical marijuana-related businesses, only one black Oaklander held a dispensary permit.

“The cannabis industry has an opportunity to make equity a core component of the industry’s DNA,” Ifedigbo said later. “Other industries have generally seen social impact [initiatives] as an afterthought.”

Oakland officials were already looking at how to use new regulations to help African-American and Latino residents get jobs more significant than what one longtime City Council member called the “security guard in the parking lot.” But Ifedigbo, 29, and Martin, 32, knew that giving these aspiring entrepreneurs permits without training—or training without permits—would likely spell failure. In January 2017, the Hood Incubator launched the nation’s first cannabis business accelerator for people of color. They began training a dozen or so aspiring entrepreneurs whose business ideas included everything from edibles, like cannabis-infused salsa, to delivery companies hoping to be the Blue Apron or Uber Eats of the weed business.