Surprisingly, the 70-year-old tech superstar was very open about her cannabis use, revealing her fondness not only for the super-trending, non-psychoactive CBD, but also for THC, the psychoactive compound in cannabis that makes people feel “high.”

“I consider myself a progressive, experimental person,” Bartz told me in a recent conversation when she talked about her first experiences with medicinal cannabis, which she described as “crazy good”.

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Bartz studied computer science and programmed her first computer in 1968. Back then, her friends kept asking why she was doing something that took up so much time and did not allow her studies to be taken into account.

Despite the skepticism of her friends, Bartz carried on. She vividly remembers the first time she ever finished writing a program. “Impressive! That will change everyone’s life!” She thought at the time.

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But be careful, because being progressive is not the same as being stupid, warned Bartz. She came up with a story to illustrate her progressive thinking.

It happened about 35 years ago when she was working at Sun Microsystems. One of her employees started a beer company with a supposedly great recipe, had a plan to move production to Bartz’s home state of Minnesota, and asked her if she wanted to invest in it. “It turned out that it was Pete’s Wicked Ale behind Sam Adams, the second largest artisanal beer maker in the United States. I made a lot of money.

“This is another example like what I see in Caliva … It’s different and it has a great team,” she said.

As readers can now see, Bartz has decades of experience in building and investing in innovative companies. I wondered if she had learned anything from her early programming days in the late 1960s that could apply to the cannabis industry today.

Bartz replied with one of her words:

This means: “In order to move forward, one must not be afraid of failure. But if you fail, try to find out asap and then hopefully take half a step forward and keep doing it. People who are too structured and fearful of trying something new and failing will not make it in a new environment like this one. You have to have a couple of ‘cojones’ – you have to be able to come out and try. “

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With another line she landed again, laughed again, showed her characteristic humor and good mood: “If you don’t try, you definitely won’t.”

‘Fail. Fast forward. ‘

I was addicted to this “fail. Fast forward. ”Bartz philosophy. After failing and advancing many times, what advice could she give us?

Photo by Christina Winter via Unsplash

“Especially when you think that everything that is done is done – boom! Something else comes out. Look what happens to the cure for cancer and some very specialized targeted drugs … I think the same thing will happen in the cannabis industry where there will be not just different strains and potencies, but different ones [molecular] Combinations that really do different things for the body, ”she said, calling for a rescheduling of cannabis – and a change to its federal illegal status so it can be properly studied and tested.

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So here’s the real advice:

Be open-minded. Often that means not only being open-minded about where the product might be going, but also open-minded about the kind of people you need right now. For example, in the beginning you might need agricultural technology [expertise] more than you need suction technology [expertise]… Companies can stall and it is they who work on the new ideas. I mean, look at Apple: Apple was in crisis for a while, quite a long time actually, it just wasn’t an interesting company. Then a new leader comes along and … inflates it

So the lesson here is that you need to be adaptable, adaptable, and smart enough to make some really tough decisions.