5 ms·

Massively underserved. I live in Denver and have friends with ownership stakes in local dispensaries. The quality of their software solutions (mainly POS/Comp

by eunoia 10y ago

Massively underserved. I live in Denver and have friends with ownership stakes in local dispensaries. The quality of their software solutions (mainly POS/Compliance) is laughable. Edit: This (http://www.mjfreeway.com/ http://www.mjfreeway.com/) is the defacto standard. I kid you not it went down for 2 weeks ~a year ago after scheduled maintenance went wrong. At the time it had ~50% market share, this left dispensaries around the country doing all their compliance and POS by hand for weeks. Amateur hour.

Roboprog 10y ago
Hmm. I wonder how dispensaries are different than any other retail / pharmacy operation? Can they treat the product like cold/allergy pills that have to be watched, or does there have to be legal information specific to each "SKU"/item-type???
- encoderer 10y ago
  Depending on the state, plants need to be tracked from seed to sale. That is just one aspect of it that I'm familiar with. I'm sure the compliance burdens beyond that are significant.
  - eunoia 10y ago
    A combination of federal illegality (which affects banking heavily) and special compliance requirements necessitates custom industry solutions AFAIK.
    - eitally 10y ago
      But that's really no different from discrete manufacturing, where you have to track precious metals, hazardous materials, import/export regulations, etc. I wonder why the major players don't just make the minor adaptations so they can serve this market, too.
      - lightbritefight 10y ago
        Likely federal law. Its not settled legally if providing services to recreational dispensaries can implicate your company in felony drug distribution. Its unlikely, but a risk. It may even cause issues with the bushiness main product. Things like insurance liability shifts and the like. No "big name" company has wanted to test the waters.
- TallGuyShort 10y ago
  Not that familiar with it, but part of the issue is that financial institutions above a certain size won't do business with them because it's still illegal at the federal level and they're afraid of the ambiguity. I wouldn't be surprised if that affected what PoS software they could use.
  - CaptSpify 10y ago
    Large financial institutions still dont play nicely with internet porn, which really isnt that ambiguous legally. I think a lot of it is PR as well. They dont want to be associated with moraly ambiguous industries
    - ethbro 10y ago
      A lot of this is a consequence of the George W Bush presidency, where the DoJ was encouraged to crack down on pornography using obscenity laws. From the histories I've read, one of the levers they used was informal pressure on financing institutions that served the distributors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscenity_Prosecution_Task_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscenity_Prosecution_Task_For...
      - xaqfox 10y ago
        I place the blame squarely on the Obama Justice Department's Operation Choke Point. The previous task force was at least targeted towards specific, named, businesses and brought them before a court--not a blanket, de-facto ban caused by threatening financial institutions, directly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point
jnhuynh 10y ago
It's funny that you mention MJFreeway. Their one of our competitors. I'm an engineer at [Greenbits][1], a marijuana POS system running on almost 50% of stores in Washington State. We were runner up finalists at [2015's Tech Crunch Disrupt][2]. Every quarter, we do visits to stores (some of our customers and those of our competitors). It's amazing to see the state of the industry and how underserved it is. I think part of this is that everyone, retailers and regulators, are still figuring out how to run things. The problem is nuanced because of differences in taxes for recreational and medical, tracking of the product "from seed to sale", and various weird business regulations. We learn a lot of these trips and always come back with a lot of ideas on how to improve our product for our customers and do what our competitors don't. We are visiting Denver, CO in a couple weeks. :D Also, this is a plug, but we are starting to ramp up [hiring][3]. Currently, we only have the Engineering job posting up, but we are looking for a lot of positions and more will be posted up within the next few weeks. [1]:https://www.greenbits.com/ https://www.greenbits.com/ [2]:https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/22/green-bits-launches-point-of-sale-service-for-cannabis-shops/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/22/green-bits-launches-point-... [3]:https://jobs.lever.co/greenbits?lever-via=_335J-YDmj https://jobs.lever.co/greenbits?lever-via=_335J-YDmj
- scruple 10y ago
  Just asking because I saw that the engineering position listed San Jose but it seems that there are remote employees and an office in Portland, as well. Are there opportunities for remote work for the current/future hiring needs?
  - jnhuynh 10y ago
    We do support remote. For example, I'm actually based in the Boston area. However, we are trying to build out a team in San Jose and Portland, so there is definitely a preference for people in the west coast.
- toomanybeersies 10y ago
  I used to work for a startup doing regular hospitality POS (cafes, bars, etc). It's not just MJ POS systems, it's POS systems in general. I don't know what it is about them, but they seem to attract horrible software solutions. I see you've gone with iPads, we did the same, a lot better than the industry standard touch screen monitor. You'd think that people wouldn't like the smaller screens, but we never got any complaints about it. I guess it's about how you utilise the space. I guess there is always the option to use iPad pros if you really want the real estate, although we actually had a couple of customers using iPad minis instead, I think it was for small stalls or something.
copperx 10y ago
Why can't they use a run-of-the-mill POS? or a POS designed for pharmacies?
at-fates-hands 10y ago
>> Amateur hour. Dude, when nobody wants to be affiliated with your business or be identified as someone who's supporting your business, you have to do what you have to do. It's not like companies are clamoring to support this industry. Yes, people are falling over themselves to invest in these companies, but with federal issues hanging over these places, the cash only aspects and how society looks at these companies (yes, this is slowly changing too) they are in a tough spot to find good software support.
- rybosome 10y ago
  I think the point of the post was that software can maintain such a large market share in spite of major reliability issues due to the unwillingness for developers to serve that market. "Amateur hour" was a reference to the quality of the software, not the overall operation.
  - at-fates-hands 10y ago
    That's a fair point
chiph 10y ago
A friend of a friend was hired as a CFO at a dispensary, and pretty much had to create an entire accounting system from scratch. Cash management consisted of employees driving around to the store and collecting the money, as the armored car firms wouldn't accept their business. So he set up a subsidiary that went out and bought some armored cars and was able to safely transport the money, staffed with former military. .. they had the cash for it, so why not?
- aphextron 10y ago
  Why is that? Even software firms don't want to deal with weed?
  - jeromegv 10y ago
    Not so much the software companies, it's the payment processing companies that are risk-averse.
    - stephengillie 10y ago
      As a customer, these shops have to jump through some amazing hoops just to provide standard POS debit/credit. One store has to process all payments as an ATM withdrawal, and must give change so the "ATM withdrawal" will round to the nearest $5.
  - chiph 10y ago
    When you buy an accounting system there's a lot of customization that goes on to set up your chart of accounts, configure check printing, etc. They were apparently running the business off an Excel spreadsheet, so even Quickbooks would have been a step up.
lbn 10y ago
Is this a problem due to not being able to buy physical/cloud infrastructure or developers with cannabis money or something else?

by eunoia 10y ago

Roboprog 10y ago

Hmm. I wonder how dispensaries are different than any other retail / pharmacy operation? Can they treat the product like cold/allergy pills that have to be watched, or does there have to be legal information specific to each "SKU"/item-type???

encoderer 10y ago
Depending on the state, plants need to be tracked from seed to sale. That is just one aspect of it that I'm familiar with. I'm sure the compliance burdens beyond that are significant.
- eunoia 10y ago
  A combination of federal illegality (which affects banking heavily) and special compliance requirements necessitates custom industry solutions AFAIK.
  - eitally 10y ago
    But that's really no different from discrete manufacturing, where you have to track precious metals, hazardous materials, import/export regulations, etc. I wonder why the major players don't just make the minor adaptations so they can serve this market, too.
    - lightbritefight 10y ago
      Likely federal law. Its not settled legally if providing services to recreational dispensaries can implicate your company in felony drug distribution. Its unlikely, but a risk. It may even cause issues with the bushiness main product. Things like insurance liability shifts and the like. No "big name" company has wanted to test the waters.
TallGuyShort 10y ago
Not that familiar with it, but part of the issue is that financial institutions above a certain size won't do business with them because it's still illegal at the federal level and they're afraid of the ambiguity. I wouldn't be surprised if that affected what PoS software they could use.
- CaptSpify 10y ago
  Large financial institutions still dont play nicely with internet porn, which really isnt that ambiguous legally. I think a lot of it is PR as well. They dont want to be associated with moraly ambiguous industries
  - ethbro 10y ago
    A lot of this is a consequence of the George W Bush presidency, where the DoJ was encouraged to crack down on pornography using obscenity laws. From the histories I've read, one of the levers they used was informal pressure on financing institutions that served the distributors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscenity_Prosecution_Task_Force https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obscenity_Prosecution_Task_For...
    - xaqfox 10y ago
      I place the blame squarely on the Obama Justice Department's Operation Choke Point. The previous task force was at least targeted towards specific, named, businesses and brought them before a court--not a blanket, de-facto ban caused by threatening financial institutions, directly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Choke_Point

jnhuynh 10y ago

It's funny that you mention MJFreeway. Their one of our competitors. I'm an engineer at [Greenbits][1], a marijuana POS system running on almost 50% of stores in Washington State. We were runner up finalists at [2015's Tech Crunch Disrupt][2]. Every quarter, we do visits to stores (some of our customers and those of our competitors). It's amazing to see the state of the industry and how underserved it is. I think part of this is that everyone, retailers and regulators, are still figuring out how to run things. The problem is nuanced because of differences in taxes for recreational and medical, tracking of the product "from seed to sale", and various weird business regulations. We learn a lot of these trips and always come back with a lot of ideas on how to improve our product for our customers and do what our competitors don't. We are visiting Denver, CO in a couple weeks. :D Also, this is a plug, but we are starting to ramp up [hiring][3]. Currently, we only have the Engineering job posting up, but we are looking for a lot of positions and more will be posted up within the next few weeks. [1]:https://www.greenbits.com/ https://www.greenbits.com/ [2]:https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/22/green-bits-launches-point-of-sale-service-for-cannabis-shops/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/09/22/green-bits-launches-point-... [3]:https://jobs.lever.co/greenbits?lever-via=_335J-YDmj https://jobs.lever.co/greenbits?lever-via=_335J-YDmj

scruple 10y ago
Just asking because I saw that the engineering position listed San Jose but it seems that there are remote employees and an office in Portland, as well. Are there opportunities for remote work for the current/future hiring needs?
- jnhuynh 10y ago
  We do support remote. For example, I'm actually based in the Boston area. However, we are trying to build out a team in San Jose and Portland, so there is definitely a preference for people in the west coast.
toomanybeersies 10y ago
I used to work for a startup doing regular hospitality POS (cafes, bars, etc). It's not just MJ POS systems, it's POS systems in general. I don't know what it is about them, but they seem to attract horrible software solutions. I see you've gone with iPads, we did the same, a lot better than the industry standard touch screen monitor. You'd think that people wouldn't like the smaller screens, but we never got any complaints about it. I guess it's about how you utilise the space. I guess there is always the option to use iPad pros if you really want the real estate, although we actually had a couple of customers using iPad minis instead, I think it was for small stalls or something.

copperx 10y ago

Why can't they use a run-of-the-mill POS? or a POS designed for pharmacies?

at-fates-hands 10y ago

>> Amateur hour. Dude, when nobody wants to be affiliated with your business or be identified as someone who's supporting your business, you have to do what you have to do. It's not like companies are clamoring to support this industry. Yes, people are falling over themselves to invest in these companies, but with federal issues hanging over these places, the cash only aspects and how society looks at these companies (yes, this is slowly changing too) they are in a tough spot to find good software support.

rybosome 10y ago
I think the point of the post was that software can maintain such a large market share in spite of major reliability issues due to the unwillingness for developers to serve that market. "Amateur hour" was a reference to the quality of the software, not the overall operation.
- at-fates-hands 10y ago
  That's a fair point

chiph 10y ago

A friend of a friend was hired as a CFO at a dispensary, and pretty much had to create an entire accounting system from scratch. Cash management consisted of employees driving around to the store and collecting the money, as the armored car firms wouldn't accept their business. So he set up a subsidiary that went out and bought some armored cars and was able to safely transport the money, staffed with former military. .. they had the cash for it, so why not?

aphextron 10y ago
Why is that? Even software firms don't want to deal with weed?
- jeromegv 10y ago
  Not so much the software companies, it's the payment processing companies that are risk-averse.
  - stephengillie 10y ago
    As a customer, these shops have to jump through some amazing hoops just to provide standard POS debit/credit. One store has to process all payments as an ATM withdrawal, and must give change so the "ATM withdrawal" will round to the nearest $5.
- chiph 10y ago
  When you buy an accounting system there's a lot of customization that goes on to set up your chart of accounts, configure check printing, etc. They were apparently running the business off an Excel spreadsheet, so even Quickbooks would have been a step up.

lbn 10y ago

Is this a problem due to not being able to buy physical/cloud infrastructure or developers with cannabis money or something else?