Q&A With Weedmaps CEO Justin Hartfield Posted 8 months, 6 days, 14 hours, 30 minutes ago by Anna Helhoski   |   Comment

Justin Hartfield, CEO, Weedmaps answered a few questions for us about his company and his upcoming session at the summit, “Calling All Investors: Financing in the Industry.”

CBSummit: Weedmaps has become highly successful for finding marijuana related services. How did your past business experience lead you to creating Weedmaps?

Justin Hartfield: Before I was doing Weedmaps I was in internet marketing space, so I did SEO and content writing, and I had a few products of my own with ebooks. I also did consulting for other companies so I got into marijuana through technology.

CBSummit: How does the service work for listings? What’s the pay structure?

Justin Hartfield: So it’s free for everybody, but to gain access to premium features it’s $420 a month. For brick and mortar delivery services it’s a little less.

CBSummit: What sort of challenges did you face early on in terms of financing and creating a profitable model?

Justin Hartfield: Well, it took 18 months for me to decide to flick the switch from being a free site to a premium. So I had to build up a brand along the way - web development, internet, scaling servers, marketing - and that was interesting, still is interesting. You know there’s of course barriers from companies like Visa and Mastercard, or T-mobile and AT&T that have tried to stop us from doing business when normally other businesses would be able to, but it’s marijuana

CBSummit: You also created Emerald Ocean Capital Fund to help develop consumer and enterprise businesses in the industry. How did that come about?

Justin Hartfield: Ghost Group owns our various marijuana assets, and the Capital Fund was created as a venture capital fund for the industry. We wanted to be forward thinking, forward looking and to provide resources to entrepreneurs that have great business ideas or models in the marijuana industry legally.

CBSummit: What kind of success stories has the Emerald Ocean Capital Fund launched?

Justin Hartfield: Capital Fund is brand new and so it hasn’t funded any companies yet. A lot of the companies we see are in the very early stages. We’re doing a lot of mentoring and companies we’re inviting to incubate in our offices in Denver or in Irvine. We’re finding at this stage of the game the industry is not ready for venture capital; it’s still too young but it’s a great platform to reach out to entrepreneurs.

CBSummit: What areas of the industry do you see lucrative potential for?

Justin Hartfield: There’s so many different areas. There’s of course legal growing and retailing in Colorado and Washington soon to be Alaska, Oregon, maybe Florida. There’s software, on the grow mangement side and there’s also retail software, firmware, hardware, vaporizers, e-pens. So many awesome innovations are happening in those sectors right now in terms of vaporization also in butane, also hashish oil and extraction - that’s really popular right now.

CBSummit: Where do you see the marijuana industry going in the next five to ten years?

Justin Hartfield: I do suspect there will be some setbacks. I think the prohibitionists will strike back and I think we’ve already seen some of it, but in general, I think the polls in dictate every year Americans gain support for legalization -- 60 percent prefer legalization -- so I think the country’s moving in that direction. In five years, I think we’ll have legalized marijuana in more states like California, maybe New York. Maybe in 10 years we’ll have legalized on the federal level.

CBSummit: What can attendees expect from your upcoming session, “Calling All Investors: Financing in the Industry” you’ll be co-presenting with Emily Paxhia, Poseidon Asset Management and Troy Dayton, The ArcView Group?

Justin Hartfield: I’ll be talking about the various types of investments available in the marijuana industry, some of the trials and tribulations of my own company and hopefully help some interested entrepreneurs.

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