Editor's note: This year we honored some of the brightest young minds in the Bay Area innovation sector as part of our Inno Under 25 feature. Check out all the profiles from this year's honorees here.
After California voters made recreational marijuana use legal in 2016, entrepreneurs went to work mapping out businesses to grow and sell cannabis. Riley McDonnell wasn’t one of them. McDonnell instead found a different niche in April 2017 as he started GlassPass, a company where people could buy and sell high-end glass smoking paraphernalia. Then a student at the University of Southern California, McDonnell hit upon the idea after he packed, lit and toked from a bong in a USC dorm room.
All he wanted that night was “a good-looking piece of glass” to smoke marijuana out of and he ultimately realized he could create an online marketplace where glass enthusiasts could safely sell and buy luxury bongs and pipes, some costing as much as $10,000. GlassPass, which connects glass artists and cannabis connoisseurs, makes money by taking a cut of each transaction and charging users to advertise on the site. Since 2021, the company has processed $4.5 million in sales, $1.9 million of that so far this year.
According to McDonnell, the company is in the process of raising venture funding to boost growth and hire more developers, though he said the startup with 70,000 users doesn’t “need funding to survive.”
Riley McDonnell, founder of GlassPass, shows his app which is a marketplace for high-end bongs and pipes.
Riley McDonnell
- Age: 25
- Education: Bachelor's of Science in Business Administration from the University of Southern California
- Residence: Pacifica
- Role: Co-Founder and CEO
- Company: GlassPass LLC
Did you ever expect something you were doing out of enjoyment to turn into a business?
I’ve always known that I wanted to be an entrepreneur, having started my first “business” washing cars in high school. I never planned to start a business in this industry, but when I did it felt natural. Looking back, it seems like fate that I ended up in this industry because my social life always involved smoking with friends out of glass. But I never really decided “I want to start a cannabis business.” It just kinda happened.
How does the company manage catering to both users who buy glass for art and the ones who use pieces recreationally?
The thing about cannabis is most of the people that smoke it are very open minded. A lot of times you appreciate each other’s glass from afar and on the internet. So it was relatively relatively easy to connect those different worlds and have people connect.
With social media censorship of cannabis content, how do you go around that?
For the average artist who relies almost solely on Instagram, [it] has been really tough. I’ve seen over the last few months there’s been an explosion of posts from people saying “I can’t post my stuff.” That’s where we kind of swoop in and try and help them by offering them a place where their posts aren’t going to be deleted. They can work closely with their followers and have a closer relationship with them.
What’s the next move for the company?
Right now we are in a very niche market of essentially glass collectors. Our next step is to batten down the hatches and start expanding to the mainstream of smoke shops, curating events, bringing the community closer. And then at the same time teaching people what the difference is between a normal bong that’s $100 and a higher end bong that’s $1,000.
