Of interest to me is if this trend will or even is still continuing now that we don't rely on the slow communication and transportation methods of the past. I'm currently working for a company slightly past "startup stage" with a bunch of smart people in as rural a location as you can get in the North East and we constantly fly out and teleconference with big partners and clients in San Francisco without much or any net price/hassle if you factor in all the cost/time/stress savings of our location.
As far as easy to grow, I don't know, I don't have the greenest thumb in the world, but it's been pretty darn hard for me. Then if you start talking about real quality, as far as I've seen from some documentaries, it requires a lot of dedication and knowledge to get the kind of quality that I'd smoke consistently.
I guess my point is, practically speaking, I see 99% of people still buying it even if it's totally legalized and not taboo.
Your comment implies that "divine intervention" has little to do with it, but I would argue that he was at the right place, at the right time, with the right passion, and then did a lot of hard work that could have easily turned into nothing (financially), but just so happened to turn into something. He implies that he was close to working in a cube farm himself.
Just supplying the more jaded view here...coming from someone who has tried to take his skills into the freelance market for a few months and is now going back to the cube farm. :)
"In interviews, coming from a startup is going to be a red flag for larger companies."
I'm a little worried about that, yes...in my case, my startup has permanently burned away any desire to attempt one again...nothing more I want to do now than focus on code and let other people make the big decisions...I'm hoping that comes through...maybe not that fatalistically :P