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MISSOULA, Mont. — When 23-year-old entrepreneur David Keen first thought of his newest venture last year, Hemporary, he claimed he saw opportunity knocking that no other person could see. “It’s like it came to me in a dream,” a fidgety Keen said, drumming his hands on a table. “I thought, ‘Man, this is the one that’s going to work,’ and six months in, it’s starting to look like I was right.”
No one is really sure what Keen’s venture even does, and some speculate Keen himself, who refused to divulge his “secret keys,” doesn’t even know. Yet he swears it’s making “mad stacks of fat cheddar, hand over fist.” “It’s like paper covering rock, but with money,” he said proudly.
Hemporary is the latest in a long line of Keen’s startup ventures, including his short lived carwash/dating app Sudzy, which encouraged single women to meet and wash men’s cars after matching with each other. The app, his most successful before Hemporary, netted a total of 14 downloads prior to the venture’s acquisition by Facebook for $300.
With Hemporary, Keen claimed he’s seeing significantly more success, and on the heels of widened acceptance and legalization of recreational cannabis, he expects his business to expand tremendously. “My dad said if my next venture didn’t work I was going to be cut off, and cannabis seemed like a sure thing,” Keen said. “I’m still not sure why my last project, Treasure Chests, didn’t work out — it was basically a bank, but also a Hooters. Who doesn’t love money and tits?”
While Keen himself is not a smoker, he has tried cannabis on occasion, and first tried to get into the business long ago, though illegally, selling marijuana in high school. “It was mostly seeds and stems,” Keen said, “And I definitely sold it above the market price, but we were in the suburbs, so I needed some startup capital to move forward with my synergistic motivational programs. That was my code name for coke.”
“I’ll be honest, I think cannabis would be better if it was cocaine,” he added. “I feel like cannabis dulls my senses, and like, I need to keep a sharp mind. Cocaine really gets the ideas flowing. If we can find a way to do cocaine, but smokeable, and legal like cannabis, that’d be my ideal. But progress is progress.”
Keen is bullish on Hemporary’s potential. However, in the event of a failure, he is prepared to sell the assets and turn it around into a new venture without his father’s financial support. “The sky’s the limit. Anyone can be an entrepreneur like me, you just have to have the right ideas,” Keen said. “For instance, my next venture is going to be great: it’s a breakfast restaurant, right? But it’s also a strip club. We’re gonna call it Brunch Hump, and it’ll be open every weekday from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.”
Bryant Smith is a comedian based out of Chattanooga, TN and can be seen performing throughout the Southeast once the pandemic is quelled.