The Cannabis Gold Rush: 50+ Startups Across Delivery, Compliance, News, And More

In April 2016, Pennsylvania became the 24th state to to legalize medical marijuana. With over 35 million Americans using medical marijuana each year, cannabis legalization is at the heart of a national debate — and a host of startups are looking to play a big part in its going mainstream.

Within the growing crop of cannabis startups, company formation and funding is happening across a number of categories, as highlighted below:

Delivery / Subscription eCommerce / Marketplace: Startups in this category include DCM-backed Eaze Solutions, which helps patients receive medical marijuana in California from dispensaries on-demand, as well as Meadow, which recently raised $2.1M for its delivery service and specialized cannabis sales software.

Compliance / Tracking: Startups in the area of cannabis compliance and seed-to-sale tracking software include FlowHub and MJ Freeway, which raised $8M from Tao Capital Partners and Roger McNamee in December 2015.

Transaction / Payments / Banking / Order Management: Companies helping facilitate ordering, payments, and banking of cannabis include Y Combinator-backed SericaPay and bank compliance platform Hypur.

Data / Analytics: Companies offering cannabis industry data as well as medical cannabis lab analytics include BDS Analytics and Steep Hill.

Social Networking: Social networking sites specified for the cannabis market include MassRoots, which recently filed to go public on the NASDAQ.

News / Discovery / Content: Companies helping to deliver news, content or ways to discover cannabis include marijuana dispensary and strain review site Leafly and cannabis lifestyle media site Merry Jane.

Investors / Accelerators / Holdings Cos: Cannabis-specific investors, accelerators and holding companies include Privateer Holdings, which itself has raised $82M from investors including Founders Fund as well as Casa Verde Capital, Snoop Dogg’s cannabis-focused fund.

Products: Startups offering consumer and enterprise cannabis-specific products include marijuana breathalyzer Hound Labs and marijuana packaging supply startup Kush Bottles.

Branding: Startups creating new cannabis brands or offering brand management include Strainz and Suncliff.

The graphic below highlights some, but far from all, of the various startup companies entering the cannabis market. As we earlier highlighted, cannabis startups raised over $213M in 2015 as deals hit a new high in Q4’15.

Below is a full list of the companies on the graphic broken down by target area. If there are other emerging companies that you think should be highlighted, leave them in the comments as well.