HALLEY Venture Partners

Co-founders Brendan Kennedy and Michael Blue led investment decisions from the firm's launch. Both came out of Privateer Holdings, the first private equity platform to raise institutional capital for cannabis. Their background combined regulated-industry operating experience — Privateer owned brands like Marley Natural and the dispensary finder Leafly — with the compliance and governance rigor traditional limited partners require (per public record).

HALLEY made direct equity investments in plant-touching operators — cultivation facilities, processing labs, branded consumer products — rather than the ancillary technology and real estate plays most venture firms use to stay on the safe side of their limited partnership agreements. This was an explicit structural bet that the regulatory risk premium on direct exposure would compress as state legalization advanced. The portfolio was built for equity owners who receive the full operating upside of regulated cannabis assets, not a rent or royalty stream.

In 2018, the HALLEY principals launched Silver Spike Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company targeting cannabis and health companies. Silver Spike was a distinct entity from the venture fund and served later-stage opportunities that could benefit from public-company currency. In June 2021, Silver Spike merged with WM Technology, the parent of Weedmaps, taking the technology layer public while HALLEY's venture fund continued to manage its private portfolio of operators (per SEC filings, 2021).

HALLEY operated as a direct-investment venture fund, acquiring minority and influential minority stakes in privately held cannabis operating companies. The firm did not function as a fund-of-funds or allocate to other cannabis managers. The subsequent Silver Spike SPAC was a parallel vehicle for public-market access, not a fund commitment.

The firm concentrated on Series A and Series B rounds in companies with operational assets, material revenue, and state licenses — a departure from the pre-revenue and incubator deals common in early cannabis venture. HALLEY sought sufficient scale to warrant board-level engagement on license applications, facility build-outs, and multi-state expansion strategy.