Meet Austin Heap, CEO of Potbox

Medical Marijuana Delivery startup Potbox- For the Finer Cannabis

Need a Cannabis Delivery Service? Meet PotBox from CannabisNet on Vimeo.

As the national market for legal marijuana matures, a handful of savvy entrepreneurs have matched premium cannabis delivery services with a curatorial concept. Potbox.com, an online market featuring artisan herb hand-selected to meet each subscriber's preferences, offers California's medical marijuana patients a quarter-ounce of two types of weed and two hand-rolled joints exclusively through a monthly shipping service. Currently priced at $149.50 a month, Potbox represents and attracts, respectively, a new type of pot provider and cannabis customer both very different from the typical images of sleazy dealers and lazy stoners.

Austin Heap, Potbox's Co-Founder and CEO, reveals the company's initial inspiration, business ethos, and consumer insights.

Austin Heap, CEO of Potbox

Stephanie Sack: Where are you from, and what is your educational/entrepreneurial trajectory? Where do you live now?

Austin Heap: I’m originally from Ohio, went to college in Boston, then moved to San Francisco which I happily call home. I knew very early on in life that I liked creating things and working for myself, so when it came time to go to college I applied to all the best entrepreneurship schools. Looking back, it’s amazing how much that decision has impacted and helped me in life.

How and why did you come to the idea of monthly shipment box as a profession, and why did you begin pairing cannabis-based products with the internet shopping model? Has there been pushback from financial services or credit card processors?

AH: Previously I worked for a subscription billing company and got to watch a number of box-based startup companies grow and valuate in rapid fashion. One night, my friend Ian Buczkowski and I were brainstorming about how we could build a meaningful box-based business around something about which we were both passionate. As medical marijuana patients, we were fed up with the experience and questionable quality at many cannabis dispensaries. That’s when Ian came up with the idea for Potbox. While the idea sounded great, there was no way Ian and I alone could execute on it. We needed an expert to be able to pull this off.

As the universe would have it, a few weeks later we met Evrett Kramer -- our third co-founder -- who had been working in the cannabis industry for over 20 years and had the connections that Ian and I lacked. We quickly figured out that if Potbox was ever going to happen, this was the group that could do it.

In terms of financial services, our approach is to be radically honest with our providers to make sure they’re comfortable with and understand our business. We hope that taking this approach builds strong and long-lasting relationships and allows us to continue to set the gold standard for cannabis companies.

What has the market's response been? Do you think the element of curatorial service attracts a specific type of cannabis consumer, and if so, who is the typical customer?

AH: The market response has really been amazing -- beyond any of our expectations. Since we launched seven months ago, we’ve become the second largest brand on MassRoots, the largest social network for cannabis users. It’s surreal to wake up and see your company in Rolling Stone, Playboy, and CNN!

One thing we already know is that the average cannabis consumer is changing, and fast. People are so accustom to portrayals of cannabis users as slackers who have the munchies, don’t have jobs, and can’t hold a coherent thought. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.

The modern cannabis consumer is discerning in their taste, appreciates the genetic variety, and enjoys exploring new things. It’s a spectrum of users ranging from business executives and professional people to artists and soccer moms who for the first time can make informed decisions about what they choose to put into their bodies. Our customer base reflects this: it’s mostly doctors, lawyers, and business executives.

How many members are currently signed up? How and where is this audience growing?

AH: We do not publish our sales data. The most I can share is that our waiting list has well over 10,000 people on it, we're really just blown away by how positive the reaction has been.

Packaging is obviously a huge component to the Potbox brand. How and why were these design elements selected and developed?

AH: Potbox is for the discerning cannabis consumer – one who admires the premium packaging, and our effort to elevate cannabis from being a black market street drug, into the grey and ultimately into the white. One who appreciates the ethical and sustainable farming practices, and having a choice as to the quality of the medicine that goes into their body. One who is not afraid to have an expert curate their cannabis – the same way a sommelier picks their wine with dinner. We want all of these attributes to immediately come through then you see and touch our product, so it all starts with best-in-class packaging.

Do you think cannabis products will ultimately flourish in the general online space, or will ongoing legalization disrupt the market further?

AH: I think the future of marijuana is bright and exciting! There’s a handful of really innovative companies out there that having amazing teams and are raising the bar every day. It’s exciting to be in a fast-paced industry, there’s no other industry like it.

Ultimately, I expect that cannabis industry to pan out like any other ‘normal’ industry. Historically speaking, if you look at how prohibition of alcohol wrapped up and what companies were born out of that process, you’re likely to see the same patterns with cannabis.

Is the cannabis market ultimately a health and wellness market? A recreational market? A women's market? A luxury market?

AH: It’s been a long and absolutely failed war on a plant. When you think about the amount of people we’ve put in prison and how prohibition has really just fueled an often violent black market, it’s mind blowing that we’re still having this discussion. And that’s without even getting into the medical benefits!

I’m for full legalization with a strong framework for oversight and accountability. The quicker this industry looks and behaves like a conventional industry, the better.

The first thing we need to do though is stop treating medical and recreational cannabis users the same. We’re doing a major disservice to people whose lives depend on cannabis with these flimsy medical requirements in states like California. No one has ever uttered the phrase “it was difficult to get a medical recommendation for cannabis in California”... not one human. And that’s a shame, because we shouldn’t be playing this game.

One of the things I didn’t expect when starting Potbox was the number of people who would reach out and share their stories with us. From cancer to HIV, people have opened their hearts to us to share how cannabis has helped and continues to help them in their lives. Everyone you meet in life is fighting a different battle, and for these people medical marijuana is their ammo in that fight.

Cannabis is far from a silver bullet though. The science behind it has really just begun to get really interesting and, almost monthly, we’re learning something new about cannabis that we didn’t know before.

Do you consider yourself a pioneer in this field? Why or why not? How do you compare to your competitors, if there are any?

AH: I think it’s too soon to call anyone in the current generation of cannabis companies a “pioneer”. There’s a lot of people with a lot of ideas and theories. They’re not all going to be right and the vast majority of them will fail, so we’ll only know who the true pioneers are in time.

What is the long-term plan for Potbox? Are you looking to sell? Acquire other properties? Develop and manage events?

AH: We have several potential expansion targets, but because individual State regulations are constantly in flux, today’s ideal location may be a bust tomorrow. We have to be very judicious with our expansion plans. So for the short-term we’re focusing heavily on the San Francisco and Los Angeles markets.

That said, our big hope is that the Federal government will declassify cannabis as a Schedule I substance and remove restrictions on shipping. Once that happens, we foresee our business growing astronomically. When we launched in July, it took only two days for us to get requests from all 50 States, several military bases and dozens of countries around the world. This tells us that we’re on to something big, that we have a product that people really want.

What is your personal relationship to cannabis?

AH: I started using cannabis when I was 15 years old and it has been a consistent part of my life since then.

I’m naturally a very high-energy person -- which I know drives my husband crazy sometimes. I can’t sit still long enough to watch a movie, I stand most of the time even if there’s a chair available, and 14- hour work days seem somewhat normal. Because of this, cannabis has been an incredibly positive thing for me: it takes me from 1,000 simultaneous thoughts down to about 100, which is much more manageable. It’s nature’s Ritalin. I think if you ask people that know me they’d describe me as the busiest “stoner” they’ve ever met.

Before you laugh at that, check out the science from Heidelberg University Medical Centre on ADHD and cannabis.

Marijuana Delivery Service Startup Potbox Talks To Cannabis.Net