Brandon Pollock & Nick Friedman

After their first success with a water filtration company that they own, Brandon Pollock and Nick Friedman, CEO and chief financial officer of Theory Wellness in Massachusetts, respectively, were consulting for two different California medical dispensaries.

The pair were fascinated by the industry’s ability to help people as well as its business potential.

“We took what we learned, what we liked and what we didn’t like and decided to launch in Massachusetts, which was just getting a medical program started,” Pollock says, calling it a “vision of the future.”

“The decision was part pure entrepreneurial, anticipating the emergence of a new industry, and part personal,” says Friedman, noting that his father had recently been paralyzed in a skiing accident and he was curious about alternatives to opioids. “The rest, well, just unfolded one step at a time.”

That was 2015 and as the Bay State’s medical program grew and transitioned to adult-use in 2017, Theory Wellness did too. Today, it owns three stores in Massachusetts and two in Maine with a third scheduled to open this spring. The vertically integrated company has about 350 employees and expects revenues to top $100 million this year.

Friedman says the duo’s water company gave them the experience they needed to be successful with Theory, partially because they were “bootstrapping it” and learned to be resource-efficient and systematic in decision-making.

Theory’s first shop opened in Friedman’s hometown and there’s now a store in Waterville, Maine, home of Colby College, where Pollock and Friedman met and launched their first business. With New York legalizing, Theory has its sights set on bringing its bicoastal knowledge to the New York City suburb where Pollock grew up.

“It’s a really interesting opportunity because there’s almost zero medical infrastructure in place,” Pollock says. “So they’re going to be launching the second-biggest market in the country all from scratch, almost.”