Medical marijuana, meet e-commerce — not selling… but reimbursing for time
Entrepreneur John Lee thinks the pot business is ready for its own Amazon.com.
The numbers back him up. Marijuana is California's biggest cash crop, generating sales estimated at $14 billion a year. Thanks to the state's increasingly liberal medical marijuana laws, more of that money than ever before is being spent legally.
Which leaves sellers with new challenges: Taxes. Invoices. Supply chain management. Regulatory compliance.
Enter PlainView Systems, a four-month-old Sonoma startup that aims to bring sophisticated business management tools to an industry that has only recently begun operating like one. "It's a business where everyone is very, very paranoid," Lee says.
PlainView's "compassionate care marketplace" is a business-to-business exchange for licensed providers of medical marijuana and their patients. Participants can band together to form growing collectives -- a legal requirement for those that want to sell pot -- and cut deals with other members to buy and sell their inventory. The system also helps users sellers keep their records in order, generating invoices, sales reports and tax paperwork.
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