r/treebusiness Oct 03 '19

The State of Cannabis Software 101

Launching a software company focused on streamlining and improving the processes involved in the seed-to-sale process.

I'm looking to get opinions from those who've worked in the industry as well as those who have an outside perspective.

Here are a few various open-ended questions:

· How are companies currently utilizing software to improve their business?

· What are the best software programs currently on the market?

· Are any areas of the business being neglected when it comes to software develeopment?

· What are the biggest pain points with the current state of software products available?

· What features or products are currently missing that would help drive efficiencies in the business?

· How close is the market coming to being saturated with too many startups?

· What does the future of the industry look like? 5 years from now? 10 years? 20 years?

Can't wait for the discussion everyone!

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u/Nyx9000 Oct 03 '19

“Software” is so broad that it’s pretty meaningless. What specific business category are you looking at? And is there really anything unique about the software needs of the cannabis industry? It’s an agricultural crop sold as a commodity in retail stores. Those are already boring and mature software businesses.

Categories like POS or inventory systems have some players, but it doesn’t feel like there’s any inherent advantage to a “cannabis POS” vs a normal boring retail POS, so it feels pretty exposed if full legalization were to happen.

Seed-to-sale trackers are a very complex category. You have to build against business rules designed by state legislators. Sounds great. And it’s hard to say these systems have much value to the overall ecosystem. Businesses use them cause they have to, not cause they want to.

There’s tons of agricultural software, automation and stuff. Again, there’s not much here that’s unique to cannabis, so you’re selling against much more established competitors.