Cannabis
See the 13-slide presentation that a Facebook engineer and a Wall Street analyst used to convince investors to bet on a new kind of software tool for the cannabis industry
subscribers.
Become an Insider
and start reading now.
Have an account? .
- Canix is a software company that helps cannabis businesses manage their day to day activities and operations.
- Cofounders Stacey Hronowski and Artem Pasyechnyk hail from companies like Facebook, Cowen, and H.I.G. Capital.
- The company recently closed a $2.5 million round to further grow its operations to become the one-stop shop for cannabis operators.
When Stacey Hronowski first entered the cannabis space as a consultant for a Bay-area cannabis company, she says she was taken aback at the amount of manual work that businesses were doing just to keep track of their operations.
“Even incredibly efficient founders were spending a lot of time on Google Sheets, on pen and paper, trying to keep track of their inventory,” Hronowski told Insider.
subscribers.
Become an Insider
and start reading now.
Have an account? .
That’s when she started to map out the idea for a compliance tool for the cannabis industry. Hronowski founded a company called Entrc, now called Canix, to address what she saw as a gap between the strict compliance regulations that cannabis companies needed to adhere to and the tools available to help.
Canix closed a $2.5 million round on Monday to further grow operations. The company wants to become the top business-management software for cannabis companies, the founders said.
The seed round was led by Phyto Partners, Floret Ventures, Andrew Freedman (Colorado’s former cannabis czar), and others. The San Francisco based company is also a Y Combinator graduate.
Cofounders Hronowski and Artem Pasyechnyk hail from the finance and software sectors. Before founding Canix, Hronowski worked as an analyst for Cowen and on platforms for companies looking to develop e-commerce marketplaces. Pasyechnyk was a software engineering manager at Facebook.
Pasyechnyk and Hronowski said their backgrounds were instrumental in building the company. It has 300 US clients and revenue is growing 12% per month, they said.
While Hronowski’s background in finance has allowed the company to stay nimble and capital efficient, Pasyechnyk’s experience has helped attract engineers from companies like Facebook, Square, and Coinbase.
Canix’s software allows cannabis businesses — from cultivators to manufacturers to retail operators — to track their inventory, sales, compliance matters, and forecasts.
With the funding, Canix says it’s planning to grow geographically while expanding its forecasting modules so that the platform can extend beyond day to day operations and help clients plan their businesses.
Take a look at Canix’s pitch deck below:
Canix is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform geared toward the cannabis industry.
The company says that cannabis businesses face many operational challenges, like compliance burdens and opaque data, which can’t be addressed with the ERP software currently available.
Canix’s software aims to address these hurdles by providing operators a way to track their inventory, sales, compliance, and forecasts. The platform is available on desktop and mobile device.
The company stared in June 2019. It has signed 300 companies onto its platform and brings in $123,000 in revenue per month.
This slide features testimonials from clients who use Canix’s platform.
The company says organic growth accounts for a large portion of the company’s growing client base and that around half of potential clients end up coming aboard the platform after a demo of the product.
Canix’s cofounders hail from companies like Cowen, H.I.G. Capital, and Facebook. The engineering team has worked at Uber, Coinbase, and other firms.
The company says it’s structured its operations in a way that’s been capital efficient, spending only $75k monthly, which has let it stretch out the funding from its last seed round.
This slide outlines Canix’s roadmap. By the end of 2021, the company says it plans to expand to Canada, Thailand, and other countries while adding new features to its current platform.
The cannabis ERP market in the US, in the states where adult-use marijuana is currently legal, is worth around $800 million according to Canix.
The company says its vision is to create a marketplace where cannabis cultivators, manufacturers, and distributors can connect and operate easily on one platform
The company was aiming to raise between $1.5 million and $2 million in this round. Canix closed the round on February 15 with $2.5 million.