Dockside Cannabis, like many companies, has humble origins and deep roots in the local community. Dockside has worked hard to maintain both our humility and our roots while building greater trust and expanding our horizons. This is our story.
Aaron Varney, Maria Moses, & Oscar Velasco-Schmitz are the heart and soul of Dockside Cannabis, and the reason our company exists. All of them stem from backgrounds in either business, technology, or both- and their unique stories are what brought Dockside to life!
Aaron and Maria first met at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute (now Presidio Graduate School) which was the first school in the nation to offer a degree in sustainable business. In Maria’s words, the program was “full of dreamers; people who had been in the business world and were dissatisfied with the pursuit of profit driving everything”.
Maria and Oscar met while working for Microsoft in the early 2000’s. At the time, a large portion of the people who worked in tech were cannabis smokers, but the culture surrounding it was quiet and many people kept their use to themselves. After having seen that cannabis was a valuable tool to building/strengthening community ties, Oscar began his career as a “cannabis evangelist” and began tirelessly working to normalize use and end negative stigmas surrounding the plant.
