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On this podcast, Expert DOJO’s Brian Mac Mahon interviews Mike Weiss, the CEO/Founder of Nature’s Dream, creators of the Cannacopia mobile app that enables you to discover which cannabis strains help you feel the way you want, based on your desired moods and effects. Mike has been an entrepreneur his entire life and responsible for many “firsts” in multiple industries spanning music, home video, multi-media, Internet, and now cannabis.
Many of you probably heard, seen, or used some of his past innovations, such as Morpheus, the peer to peer filing sharing giant that was the #1 Most Downloaded Software in its day. As Mike says, “if you disrupt deep-pocketed incumbents, then be prepared to get sued”. That’s what happened when Morpheus was sued by 28 of the world’s largest entertainment conglomerates in 2001. This historic David v Goliath story almost had a happy-ending when Morpheus won its litigation in the US Federal Court, unanimously upheld in the US Court of Appeals. However, their years of hard-fought legal victories were overturned by the US Supreme Court in 2005 in the landmark case MGM vs. Grokster.
In this podcast, Mike states that entrepreneurs don’t just start businesses because they want to make a buck; they start businesses to solve personal problems because no marketplace solution exists. And that’s how Cannacopia came to be—to solve a problem that Mike experienced first-hand back in 2014 with his first ever visit to a medical marijuana dispensary in Los Angeles.
It was an eye-popping experience for him when confronted with dozens of different cannabis strains, each with the weirdest names you could possibly imagine…. Blue Dream, Strawberry Cough, African Mother Fu**ker, Green Crack and on and on. The “budtender” behind the counter attempted to explain the effects of each of the many strains they stocked. The problem was that by the time he saw the 5th or 6th strain he was confused and unable to keep track of the different effects each of these strains provided.
Then he found an app that he thought solved his problem, downloaded it on his smart phone, and headed back to that very same dispensary the following week. Brimming with confidence, he whipped out his phone, opened the app, and began typing in strain name after strain name looking at the results of each. But by the time he was typing in that 5th or 6th strain, he once-again encountered a few problems:
1. His fingers started getting tired typing in strain name after strain name;
2. The friendly budtender behind the counter…wasn’t so friendly anymore because he was taking so much time typing in strain names;
3. Then he found it impossible to remember the effects of those first few strains to compare them with the latest—perhaps a short-term memory loss that other cannabis consumers might also share.
That’s when the light bulb went off in Mike’s mind and he came to the realization that it’s not the name of the strain that matters, it’s the effects that he wanted to feel that mattered most. Mike figured that all these other cannabis apps had it ass-backwards. He was convinced that people should not have to search on strain name after strain name to find the perfect strain; instead, the perfect strain should find you based on the way you want to feel.
With over 7500 available strains to choose from, Cannacopia solves the buyer’s confusion of what strains of cannabis to purchase, where to purchase, how much to spend, and where to find the best value. Users can rate, review, and recommend. Cannacopia’s patent-pending technology is the only platform that enables you to just ‘dial-in’ your desired mood, physical effects, medical conditions and taste preferences to show you which strains will get you there.
But Cannacopia is not stopping there. The next step is to provide recommendation of actual cannabis products, not just the strain names, ranging from flower to vape oil cartridges to edibles and more based upon your desired moods and effects and each products’ chemical profile of terpenes and cannabinoids. Going even further, Cannacopia is working with dispensaries to display their live inventory so you will know where you can purchase your recommended cannabis products nearby.
Cannacopia’s business goal will be reached once the ban on federal banking for cannabis is lifted. The Cannacopia Marketplace will enable consumers to order and purchase their recommended products directly within Cannacopia and to be fulfilled by area sellers.
If you get a chance, please take a listen to our podcast and you’ll learn more about Cannacopia, the cannabis industry, entrepreneurship and how one person’s dream became reality.