Ernst RustenhovenAge: 38
Company: I Love Growing Marijuana
Title: CEO
I Love Growing Marijuana CEO Ernst Rustenhoven grew his first cannabis plant while he was still in high school in the Netherlands.
“That experience left a mark,” he says. “It wasn’t just about getting high — it was about the process, the patience and the independence it gave me.”
That passion for growing stayed with Rustenhoven for decades, but it wasn’t until he was working at Amsterdam-based Slingshot Ventures that he found a chance to combine his professional life and love of growing cannabis.
“I saw a huge opportunity in home cultivation,” he says. “Not just as a product category, but as a way to reframe how people engage with cannabis. Growing your own is personal, empowering and increasingly more common.”
Rustenhoven joined ILGM last year and embarked on a full-scale rebrand of the online seed bank to stoke the fires of home cultivation enthusiasts through media campaigns, community engagement, education and advocacy.
“We’ve rolled out new branding, revitalized our e-commerce platform and executed a national Home Grow Tour to build community and connect directly with our customers face to face,” he says.
While the company has debuted new services like its AI Growing Assistant and has more product offerings looming, Rustenhoven says the Home Grow Tour is “without a doubt” his biggest achievement.
“We’ve spent over a decade building trust online, but there’s something powerful about meeting people face-to-face, answering their questions in real time and hearing their cultivation stories firsthand,” he says. “This tour has been a turning point. It reinforced our core belief that home growing is more than a trend — it’s a lifestyle people are deeply invested in.”