Starting in November of 2015, we asked the cannabis community to nominate and vote for their favorite individuals, products, and organizations in the field for the inaugural Laurel Awards.

We weren’t sure what to expect, but we quickly took stock of the major players in the industry as more than 1,100 initial nominations and well over 7,500 official votes were submitted. The top winner by people’s choice in each of the ten categories will hold the honor for one year.

One thing that certainly was unprecedented was the major sweep that occured, with one up-and-coming technology company taking the Laurels in five different categories, including the top-level awards. This company had a small team of employees to vote, but hundreds of supporters, customers and fans throughout the cannabis community.

CONGRATULATIONS TO

Flowhub

Winner of the 2015 Laurels for:

Most Disruptive Technology

Best Enterprise Technology

Cannabis Product of the Year

Cannabis Company of the Year

AND

Kyle Sherman

CEO & Co-Founder of Flowhub

Winner of the Laurel Award for Cannabis Entrepreneur of the Year

Sweeping both the Disruptive and Enterprise technology categories, as well as ALL THREE of the top-level 2015 Laurel Awards, Denver-based Flowhub was the software that made the biggest splash during 2015, and a great example of growth and success as a cannabis company.

Essential Technology

Flowhub is a seed-to-sale software solution, meaning it helps growers, manufacturers, distributors, and retailers accurately track the complete life cycle of a cannabis plant, from the day its seed is planted to the day it is plucked off the shelf and sold to a patient or recreational customer.

The entire solution runs on a system of bar codes, which can then be scanned by Flowhub’s signature NUG device. It snaps onto a smartphone for easy scanning and uploading into the corresponding mobile app, creating a giant database of cannabis plants that can be updated in real time.

Using the personalized bar code, a plant’s growth and flowering progress can be easily tracked via mobile app – every time the barcode is scanned, it updates that plant’s profile. Then, once it’s harvested, its bar code will follow it through transportation, manufacturing, and retail process, making it easy for all parties to stay compliant and track inventory much better than with paper and pen.

Fully integrated and compliant wherever medical or recreational cannabis is legal, Flowhub is the community favorite for streamlined, high-tech seed to sale tracking. It’s loved by cultivators and retailers alike and has saved countless hours of needless work.

Good People = Good Times

Started just under two years ago, Flowhub is a young company that has already made a huge imprint on the history of cannabis.

Its CEO and co-founder, Kyle Sherman, was inspired to create Flowhub after experiencing life on a grow, and struggling with the capabilities of existing technologies.

A tech-savvy problem solver, Kyle searched everywhere for a software that could handle the demands of a large grow operation. When he didn’t find it, he set out to create it himself – the ultimate startup entrepreneur move.

Together with co-founder Chase Wiseman, Kyle built Flowhub up from the ground, and they now boast a downtown Denver office and a stellar team of 18 employees.

When it comes to a great company, the culture and employees are huge factors. Flowhub’s entire team worked diligently to nominate, vote, and tell their friends to support their company over the course of these awards.

Flowhub was also recently covered in CNN Money’s fun feature on companies that allow toke breaks during the workday.

His words: “Our philosophy at Flowhub is to get s*** done. If it helps our employees get work done, then we don’t care if they consume at work.”

With this policy in place, they’ve seen top results. Clearly, it pays to have a little fun in this industry.

Congratulations to Kyle and the entire Flowhub team – an outstanding example of a cannabis company moving toward the future.

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Cannabis Reports Provides Comprehensive Tools For Cannabis Businesses

At first glance, Cannabis Reports would appear to be yet another web-based, cannabis consumer platform for reviewing and sharing information about different cannabis strains. However, upon talking with CEO and Founder David Drake, it becomes clear that Cannabis Reports, and their industry leading API, offers a supreme peek behind the cannabis curtain to both businesses and consumers alike. On the business side, Cannabis Reports provides dispensaries with a number of invaluable tools that will improve product listings, pricing and market competition. On the production side, businesses can see what products are being sold at what price, with what THC percentage, and so on, so that they can choose to compete or fill an entirely different niche. Lastly, consumers can research and review strains, as well as search for different purchasing locations.

To sum up, Cannabis Reports, based out of the technology hub of America, the San Francisco Bay Area, is providing local businesses and consumers with a platform that is above and beyond most others in the space. But how does the site work and why are they doing it? I recently had the chance to talk with CEO David Drake, who walked me through a screen-share tour of all aspects that Cannabis Reports has to offer.

What’s the aim of Cannabis Reports?

DD: Our aim is to improve the relationship between people and cannabis through education, outreach and technology. I graduated with a software and theatre degree, and I was a teacher for many years before getting involved in the cannabis space. I believe that, by providing quality information to people, they will be able to support a very open cannabis future for everybody.

We are the first to put all this information together as comprehensively and as functionally as we have.

How did you go from teaching to cannabis?

DD: In 2006, I left a teaching job on the east coast to head out to San Francisco. On the way out, I picked up a job doing some programming in Montana and that is when I really got involved with the politics of cannabis. Soon after, I started Cannabis Reports so that we could trace the cannabis genetics all the way back to its origin. We realized we could figure out the landraces and seed companies these strains were coming from and that, by doing so, the platform would become a great source of information for both businesses and consumers. The site and the idea for Cannabis Reports has come a long way from where it first started, as I’ve relocated to San Francisco and the site has grown immensely.

Whats The API?

DD: One of the biggest challenges when building software for cannabis is that it’s a very diverse industry with not a lot of definition or precedence. Sure there are other companies in the space who are offering information, in pieces, that is similar to what we do. However, we are the first to put all this information together as comprehensively and as functionally as we have. In addition to our API, which is being updated every day, we came up with a universal cannabis product code and have over 17,000 organized strains, seed companies, extract companies, chocolate companies and other product companies.. Businesses are building apps on top of this technology and using it to do research.

Our tracking goes all the way back to the countries that the strains come from.

How Does SR Work For Consumers?      

DD: We did all the genetics work for all the strains, when you pull up a strain like Jack Herer, you see the seed company it comes from and the various strains that make up the parents. Our tracking goes all the way back to the countries that the strains come from. We ran the genetics as far back as we could for these strains, so users can know exactly what strains combined to form the strain they have now.

With this data and with all of this information, as you start to fill out reviews for strains, we start to build a personal profile for you. When you fill out a review, you fill it out for euphoria, appetite gain, creativity, calming, pain relief, and then anxiety. With our genetics information, we take your feedback and build a profile as to how individual strains impact you.

For example, in my profile you can see an Afghani Landrace, Colombian Landrace and Acapulco Gold. Even though I’ve never actually tried these before, I’ve experienced the genetics a number of times in other strains. We can start to make assumptions about how those will make you feel based on responses to related, or unrelated, strains. If you are searching for pain relief, Cannabis Reports can use your feedback to refresh you as to strains you have used before that may have worked, or even suggest different strains that contain the same genetics. You can even search by country of origin. This whole process really gets us back to talking about cannabis on a more interesting level.

How About Producers?

DD: In addition to being a resource for the average cannabis consumer, Cannabis Reports offers an in depth business platform where we provide plans for producers and dispensaries. You can sign up as a cultivator, chocolate maker, extract maker, delivery service or dispensary business for example. We have a different set of tools designed specifically for whatever side of the business your company is operating in.

Let’s take a company that makes cannabis chocolates for example. Of course they offer a customizable inventory platform, where businesses can track sales and trends. Cannabis Reports takes it further than that though. Businesses are encouraged to upload their lab testing, providing more transparency to the consumer side. Perhaps most important, SR uses a unique identifier called a universal cannabis product code(UCPC), so that businesses can get accurate, up to the minute data and market research.

Easy For Producers

This system tells businesses how well this particular chocolate bar is selling and what the different price points are. Businesses get all this information about their individual items so they can learn what their market looks like and how well their individual items are performing.

Additionally, businesses also get QR codes that they can add to their labeling. Consumers can scan this QR code with their phone and it’ll take you directly to the product’s website, where you can find product information, photos, add a review, find more locations where the product is for sale or get a lab test result. They also get bar codes that they can use for inventory purposes and for tracking purposes. These are all very powerful tools for businesses to have.

And Dispensaries?

DD: Dispensaries get the most data and a couple more powerful tools. They of course get their normal, feature pages where they have the menu listing and reviews. Their menus are set up and live managed by the businesses themselves, providing for real time inventory and product updates. The interface that dispensaries can use to manage their menu and add new products is fantastic. All the outside product information is preloaded, so as soon as you start typing in a name, your products come up. You can then add the product and set it at your price point. The platform pulls in all the other information about that product with no further need from the dispensary.

If businesses want to know the market data of Chiesel as a strain, they’ve got it. If they want to add a new edible to their system and they don’t know how to price it, they can hop in and see, “What are the prices around me?” And be able to determine what their prices should be. Additionally, it’s super easy for them to add stuff new products. If they want to add Kiva products, they type it in and we already have all the photos and descriptions loaded up. It’s just a couple clicks away.

Valuable For Dispensaries

Market Data

DD: Another great tool that Cannabis Reports has worked into the backend of its system is comparative market data. Businesses can see how they’re performing compared to other locations around them as well as the market as a whole. Then, they can look for new and exciting products in the area, which locations are selling them and exactly how much they should be paying for that product.

If your chocolate company wanted to come out with a new chocolate, they can look at the area and see price per milligram of chocolates right now. Our data might show that nobody has a 150 or 300 mg chocolate out, so that could be a good gap to fill. Additionally, producers get a list of all the dispensaries around them, so they can have their sales team expand their product availability. Plus, once a dispensary picks up your product, the producers can actually add themselves to dispensaries.

With our genetics information, we take your feedback and build a profile as to how individual strains impact you.

As they start to grow and enter new locations, they don’t have to wait for the dispensary to go update their menu. They can just say, “We’re available here now.” Then they can add the availability and their items to that menu so that that information is up to date. This is a great way for producers to really legitimize themselves and get their lab tests and information out to the public. It’s very inexpensive and we don’t sneak in add-ons. It’s all there for a low monthly cost.

They get this information for edibles, extracts, product, everything. The dispensaries get a whole bunch of really cool data, and then they can get all of their information out through our API. Our API is completely documented so we have 17,000 products, strains and extracts. This is available for them to build on so they can get all of their data out. They can use this platform to power their website and their internal menu.

This is a great way for producers to really legitimize themselves and get their lab tests and information out to the public.

UCPC

DD: Perhaps the most valuable tool to this process is the access to the universal cannabis product code. One the main challenges we faced was how to organize all this data that we were collecting. We worked with producers to come up with a 25-digit code. In it we encoded the location that the strain came from, the strain itself, company who made it, product name and then the batch number. We have the ability to track batches of product so that people can upload new lab tests or new product information.

You really get to track where the actual product came from and get a usable code to use, which is great for consumer safety, if you need to do a recall, you can actually identify it by batch number or by company or by product. This system is currently being adopted by a number of different businesses and we are in talks with a number of different states that are interested in our tracking platform.

For more video information, visit here. What do you think is the best application of a technology like Cannabis Reports? Join the conversation and comment below!

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David Standard: GrowBuddy

He’s an innovative thinker, he’s a problem-solver, and he’s certainly a model for making the best out of everything. Cannabis came into his life as a necessity and he learned how to grow the best medicine so that he could take care of his ailing family members. What became of that expertise and the piles of notes he brought home that caught his roommate’s attention, became the platform that the industry so desperately needed: a resource, an organization system, and an invaluable tool for marijuana growers… GrowBuddy. David Standard is one of the founders and is here to share with us his story, what he’s learned, and what we can learn from him!

What was the deciding factor for you to join this particular industry?

To be honest, I feel like the industry chose me. When I growing up, I never thought I was going to get into the cannabis industry. I unfortunately lost my grandfather, my mom, and my aunt to ALS and when they were going through the disease, I was growing the cannabis for them. Seeing their ravaged bodies, especially my mom’s, and how much cannabis actually helped really gave me a passion for growing the best medicine possible!

That was really the deciding factor and then from there, it spawned to something even bigger when I started growing for a dispensary. My roommate at the time, Daniel Starbuck, was a developer and he saw me coming home every day with books and notebooks of all my notes and so he built me a simple program to manage all of it and from there, it turned into what we have today, GrowBuddy. We found an inherent need in the industry for a piece of software to help growers grow better medicine and that’s really why I believe that the industry chose me, in a way.

What were you doing before the green rush?

Before starting GrowBuddy, I was in college studying business and working on getting my pilot’s license; I was on track to become a commercial airlines pilot. That’s honestly what I thought I was going to do with my life, but that’s very different now and I’m glad everything worked out the way it did!

What are you doing to impact the industry?

With GrowBuddy, we essentially created the ultimate ‘grow’ journal. The grow-it-yourself-er’s (or as we like to call them, the GIY’s) are people who want to grow their own medicine at home and when it becomes legal, their own marijuana at home. Our platform gives them the tools they need to grow the best bud in the world. There’s no reason that someone can’t grow the same quality of cannabis at home as you could find at your local top-notch dispensary. We really are giving them the tools they need to do that, while also becoming the largest source of information regarding growing cannabis.

There’s no reason that someone can’t grow the same quality of cannabis at home as you could find at your local top-notch dispensary. We really are giving them the tools they need to do that, while also becoming the largest source of information regarding growing cannabis.

GrowBuddy is designed so that as it moves from the black market to the white market and people become less paranoid about synching their information to the cloud, users can be open to sharing their tips and tricks with others. Hopefully, we’ll get away from where we’re at now which is ‘I don’t want to give away my secret sauce. I don’t want another grower to grow exactly like I do’. As more people start growing and the information becomes available, people are going to be more willing to share their tips and tricks. It’ll be like brewing your own beer at home, except in this case, it’s growing your own bud at home, your own medicine. We will be the largest platform that people can get together and share their nutrition schedules, share their tips and tricks, and actually get problem-specific help through GrowBuddy when problems arise in their gardens.

Describe your work ethic to us in one word.

I have two: relentless and fair. I will do whatever it takes to get what I need to get done, done; But, I’m never going ask a business partner, an employee, to do something that I wouldn’t do. I’ll be done there in the trenches, but it will get done!

Tell us about a time in your career that didn’t go as planned and what you did about that? How did you handle it?

Well, pretty much, the cannabis industry has been my career and anyone who has been in this industry for a good length of time knows that usually nothing goes according to plan; Everything changes every week in this industry. A time that definitely stands out in my mind was back in the early days of developing GrowBuddy; We were just killing it, moving along, and pushing out new features, and we came came to the point in which the application was getting so robust and so big that we became worried about it becoming a little laggy on devices like tablets and iPads, so we had to stop all feature development until we found a solution. Luckily, our all-start developer Daniel, spent 7 months developing a custom data-loading system and now GrowBuddy runs buttery-smooth on any device and will continue doing so no matter how big and robust GrowBuddy gets.

What book have you read that you’ve been inspired by? Any particular read we should put on our list?

A book that really helped me was, Crossing the Chasm. It’s a about selling disruptive products to mainstream customers and while it mainly focuses on technology, it’s very helpful in teaching you how to market your product and how to get it out there. I would also recommend anything written by Dale Carnegie, his books really helped me when I was first getting started with the business and finally, a book that I only recently finished, but really learned a lot from was The Virgin Way by Richard Branson. He really reminds you to keep it fun; You only get one chance for creating a company culture and hearing about his form of leadership and how he ran Virgin is really inspiring; I want GrowBuddy to be like Virgin in that it’s fun, laid-back, and everyone cares about everyone.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten?

I don’t know if it’d be considered advice persay, but a quote I love is, “The journey awakens the soul.” Whenever I hit a rough patch in my life, and I have it tattooed on myself, I have that to look at and remember that life is a journey. Everything you go through, whether it is good or bad, you’re learning from it and it’s going to make you stronger. So, just remember that life is a journey and you’re growing both emotionally and spiritually and it’s important to remember that you just need to keep moving forward with it.

Whenever I hit a rough patch in my life, and I have it tattooed on myself, I have that to look at and remember that life is a journey. Everything you go through, whether it is good or bad, you’re learning from it and it’s going to make you stronger.

How would you advise someone who wants to join the industry?

Three words: Build, measure, learn! I’m going to steal that from the Lean Startup methodology. There’s a ton of people out there with a bunch of great ideas, but there is a lack of financial backing in this industry. So, don’t get caught up with perfecting your idea before you get the idea out there and get some feedback. Get it out into people’s hands and let them tell you what they think about it. You’ll save time and money by doing that and you’ll end up with a much better product because of it.

What is a skill or trait that you think is necessary to make an impact in this industry?

Imagination. This industry is huge, there’s room for almost everyone! You can come up with some crazy idea and chances are that it’s a pretty decent idea. You need to be imaginative, be flexible, and agile enough to steer your way through this industry as it evolves. It changes constantly from one day to the next. Think about MBank in Oregon who just had to shut down and close their accounts that relates to cannabis; one day you have a bank, and the next day, you don’t.

This industry is huge, there’s room for almost everyone!

What are your thoughts on activists who don’t agree with mega-corporations approaching the hemp and cannabis industry?

Well, mega-corporations are going to approach this industry. It’s going to happen! At the end of the day, cash is king. They’re going to come in and so you can either create something that they’re going to want to buy or you need to align yourself with others that think the same way you do because it’s going to be a fight. I think there are plenty of people who don’t want them to come in, but it’s going to happen; however, I don’t think they’re ever going to get that boutique-quality weed like the small businesses can. They’re never going to be able to scale it large enough that you can buy it at a 7Eleven like a cigarette. So, I do believe that you’ll always have those small mom and pop stores in your town where you can go and get the best weed possible.

If we are sitting across from each other a year from now, how will our conversation about the ‘green rush’ be going?

A year from now, we’ll be one year closer to de-scheduling cannabis. I imagine we’ll be celebrating that with some weed and beer pairing and then hopefully for the rest of the conversation, we’ll be discussing innovative grow technology and other products entrepreneurs have come up with. Then, I imagine you’ll have to cut me off at some point because with a little bit of weed and beer… I’ll talk your ear off all day!

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Investor Insight: Brian Sheng, New York, NY

If you’re the kid in class getting all the A’s, you quickly realize you have something to offer to those who aren’t. This is where entrepreneurship began for Brian Sheng of Fresh VC. From there, he experimented with an array of businesses and eventually came to find his strengths being utilized best in the art of venture capitalism! He has an eye for success and now dedicates his time to finding that in the growing companies of the cannabis industry. You won’t find one generic answer in our interview with him, he’s here to give it to us straight.

How did your entrepreneurial journey begin?

I dabbled in a lot of different businesses when I was younger. In high school, I started a small tutoring company just like any other kid who had good grades. I tried to play the import/export price arbitrage game and find popular products through niche subsidized sales channels and then sell them elsewhere for a huge markup. I also completed a few contracts advising international clients and came to find that my knowledge of both the Asian and U.S markets were very valuable.

What was the motivating factor for you to invest in the cannabis industry?

Market timing is a very important part of our investment decisions. If you asked someone a year ago: If they thought marijuana would become federally legal, their answer would’ve been very different from the answer they would have given 6 months ago versus the answer they’d give today; that’s because the cannabis industry is rapidly evolving and I think it will become federally legal (both medically and recreationally) in the U.S much faster than people think. In fact, the spending plan that was just passed last month includes a section that prohibits federal resource from being spent to crack down on state-legal dispensaries.

At our core, Fresh VC is still a technology venture firm, so we saw a great opportunity in Eaze as it sat at the intersection of technology-enabled service and cannabis. Aptible is another great company we invested in that’s a technology-enabled service and is also in the healthcare industry. Eaze does not actually touch the product, so it is definitely less risky than a direct cannabis investment. Finally, Keith McCarty (Eaze CEO) is a rock star and has a great understanding of the business.

One thing many first-time entrepreneurs struggle with is raising money. How would you suggest someone to overcome this problem?

This is a problem that all entrepreneurs face, but even more so with an upstart industry like cannabis. I would say, do your research and figure out which professional investors are actively investing in this industry. This includes investors who specifically say they invest in the cannabis industry, as well as investors who have made a cannabis-related investment in the past 6-12 months. The other way is to raise money from friends and family for the first round and focus on having great early traction to convince opportunistic investors in the future.

This is a problem that all entrepreneurs face, but even more so with an upstart industry like cannabis.

What is your best advice to cannabis entrepreneurs when they pitch their project to you?

My advice is to establish legitimacy and pitch professionally. I have received many emails and messages in the past couple of months regarding cannabis-related companies. The majority of pitches aren’t well thought out and use too many buzzwords. Many investors already have a negative bias towards cannabis-related startups so it definitely doesn’t help to have poorly written messages. It is also important to demonstrate a strong understanding of the legal risks involved and be open to talking about those. Investors will be impressed with founders who are thinking about the legal risks in the right way, especially with the cannabis industry.

Lastly, there are a lot of interesting lifestyle opportunities available in the cannabis industry. As venture capitalists, we are much more excited by a company that can display explosive growth potential rather than a company that can steadily generate $10M a year in revenue. There’s nothing wrong with creating a great lifestyle business, but venture capital isn’t the right source of funding for that kind of business.

Can you share your thinking on how to identify a company as a great opportunity?

Most investors would give a generic answer and say it’s a combination of market size, team, traction, and product. It’s generic because identifying a great early-stage opportunity is incredibly difficult. The founders are supposed to be way more knowledgeable in their field than myself, so I try to focus on the qualities of the team that stands out. I love to understand why founders are working on a problem, what their motivations are, and how they think my role as an investor can help them .

While most startup companies begin with a round table of partners discussing many good ideas, how the founder make those ideas happen is exponentially more important. When an executed idea flourishes, the founder gets the credit. Of course, this may sound unfair to the other partners, but when that idea fails, the founder is criticized for executing the directives. I personally determine my investment decision from my observation and facts I explore about the founder.

What are the key ingredients in building a successful start-up?

Lots of people smarter than me have written extensively about this topic. I’m actually a huge fan of Peter Thiel’s book ‘Zero to One.’ Having an extremely driven team, the right skill set, a good team dynamic, and a unique view of the problem they are solving are always good key ingredients.

How does the role of the founder evolve as a company goes from seed to early growth to later-stage scaling?

At the early stages, a founder’s resources are constrained and has to manage every part of the company. They are at once fundraisers, product developers, recruiters, salesman, and more. As the company grow, founders will need to manage more employees and make sure people in the company are aligned with the company vision. At later stages, it’s no longer time-efficient for founders to do everything.

Good traits in startup founders are often fatal to a later-stage company if they don’t adapt. The founders need to realize their roles will evolve and specialize. The larger a company gets, the more the founder will need to learn to manage and delegate and become a leader and not just a do-er.

What is your new knowledge in regards to investing in the cannabis industry?

I think it’s surprising that there are so few investors in the cannabis industry. When I talk to entrepreneurs in the space, it’s clear how excited they are about the new opportunities.

As an investor, what are some of the key things you wish cannabis entrepreneurs knew?

We are looking for entrepreneurs looking to build a lasting successful enterprise. We are not looking for people simply following the herd and trying to make easy money. There’s nothing wrong with building successful lifestyle businesses, but we are looking for companies that have explosive growth potential.

We are looking for entrepreneurs looking to build a lasting successful enterprise.

What needs to happen in order to create a billion-dollar company in the cannabis industry?

I think even keeping things the way they are, a billion dollar company in the cannabis industry can be created. It obviously becomes a lot easier as medical and recreational marijuana becomes legal in more states and it will also help out related industries.

How do you decide between shutting down, keep funding, or selling your start-up?

I think this is usually dictated by factors outside of a founder’s control (macro conditions, out of cash, threats from bigger competition, etc.) However, it could also be dependent on the team behind the startup. There are many examples of entrepreneurs who were on the brink of failure and they could’ve sold or shut down, but instead persevered and created lasting enterprises!

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