The idea that the Federal government may crack down is certainly unsettling. Even without the detailed traceability public records data being available, the cat is already out of the bag.
For instance, by entering a highly regulated industry, these businesses have to submit a ton of paperwork - including federal income taxes, company formation documents, employment information, etc.. Furthermore, to operate successful, they have to advertise, and are already visible in print papers, billboards, trade shows, magazines, etc.
If anything, we hope that this data demonstrates that legal cannabis is an industry just like any other: prices go down as competition increases, variety and quality increase over time, jobs are created, there is significant tax revenue, etc.
One last thing: there is nothing identifying about the customers that is in this data, since everyone pays in cash.
(Apologies for my slow response, comments are throttled, and HN is asking me to wait before submitting new answers.)
Thanks for the questions. My apologies for the slow response, HN is throttling my comments. Here we go:
1. I'm no lawyer, but we did confirm with the state public records office that we can charge for this -- so yes, selling this data is legal. I think this is true for other public data sets as well, considering the numerous businesses that pull public records data, munge, and resell (e.g., background checks).
2. The rationale for charging for it was simple: the data in its raw form requires processing that our customers can't afford to do. If you're a retail store, hiring a programmer or even Excel-savvy analyst is too expensive. These businesses are happy to pay a fee to access this data.
3. Pricing: we spoke with numerous potential customers when developing the idea and product. Pricing is a part of the product, and was something we tested by asking for their tolerance.
Traceability exists in all states where it is legal, so other states do collect this level of data.
However, Washington is the only state with an incredibly transparent public records law that makes this data available to the public.
Given that, and to answer your question: no, we do not plan on implementing this in other states -- but we do have some related cannabis industry software ideas that we will launch in a few weeks.
We debated this one quite a bit, and ultimately went with a free tier instead of free trial because: (a) it gives us public free content that can be used for SEO, and (b) reduces the barrier for trial and sign up.
Finally, the free tier is data from a year ago instead of the most recent publicly available data (2 months ago), so while retailers can get some benefit, the paid tier is much more fresh and actionable.
Hi folks, I'm one of the founders. Happy to answer any questions. A few tidbits:
* The data comes from WA public records. Can you believe that every single plant, harvest, and retail transaction is not only stored (that's a law called traceability) but also made available as a public record?
* We have been live since January, 2017, so this is very new.
* The model is SaaS, we have several paying customers already.
* Most of our customers are cannabis businesses in the state, using the site to understand price, competition, and benchmarks (what products to sell etc.).
https://lcb.wa.gov/mj2015/faqs-on-taxes
https://dor.wa.gov/find-taxes-rates/taxes-due-marijuana