It is not always easy for Chuck Rifici, of Tweed Marijuana Inc., who has a $20M paper net worth — especially when the Tories keep reminding you about it.
Chuck Rifici was 28 years old and newly rich, with $500,000 in the bank, a windfall he reaped after selling the Internet start-up he launched as a second-year engineering student at the University of Ottawa. To celebrate his sudden wealth he did a few practical things, such as buying an apartment in Ottawa and setting aside enough dough to pay for an executive MBA at Queen’s University, and a few age-appropriate and impulsive things, like getting a silver Dodge Viper luxury sports car. He eventually traded in the fast car for a more practical ride upon learning, as the young and newly rich often do, that riches have a way of running out faster than the newly rich can find ways of spending them.
Eleven years later, Mr. Rifici is rich again, and not merely half-a-million bucks rich, either, but closer to $20-million. It is a paper net worth the co-founder of Tweed Marijuana Inc. has achieved since his Health Canada-licensed medical marijuana grow-op, one of only 13 in Canada, went public in April. Shares in the company, of which Mr. Rifici owns eight million, were trading for $2.50 on Friday.
“I think, in life — cash is king,” he said, musing upon his paper fortune while driving his current car, a mid-sized Mercedes SUV, in the Ottawa area. “Until the money is actually in the bank, you try and put it out of your mind.”
Joe O’Connor – National Post – January 24, 2015.
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