It all started with a free slice of pizza.
Matthew Gaffney, N. Victor Nwadike, and Kevin Tolliver were all Morehouse students when they first met at an internship info session on campus.
While asking questions (and enjoying the free pizza, as all good college students do), the three realized they had complementary skill sets in marketing, product, and engineering.
The question was: What were they going to build together?
The three ultimately saw an opportunity to create a CBD lifestyle brand and a new marketplace to help users get quality products from local stores. And after building and testing the idea, their startup CannaGo is ready to launch in Atlanta.
The new last-mile, next-day delivery service and marketplace brings non-medicated skin care products, cosmetics, essential oils, and other CBD smoking products safely and directly to your door.
CannaGo and the Changing CBD Market
While CBD has been tied up in larger legal debates, it has gained widespread acceptance and was ultimately legalized in Georgia in May 2019 with the passage of The Georgia Hemp Farming Act (HB 213).
Now, Mom & Pop shops are across the country — particularly in Atlanta — have emerged to serve clients looking for quality products. This is particularly important for the close to 15,000 patients in Georgia’s medical marijuana list who may lack access to a quality CBD store.
To expedite the process, CannaGo uses secure dropoff, age verification, and certified drivers to connect local Atlanta stores with new customers.
For the team, CannaGo is differentiating itself by improving the delivery driver experience. After watching other food and cannabis delivery services navigate the market, they realized the importance of ethically paying drivers and building a quality fleet of drivers across the city.
The key, Gaffney says, is transparency.
The Entrepreneurial Journey
The CannaGo team told Hypepotamus that navigating the legal side of the CBD industry and building out the proper infrastructure has been one of the hardest parts of their entrepreneurial journey to date.
“It’s forced us to be empathetic to other people…and also to see talent where other people might not,” Nwadike said.
The three co-founders have taken little funding to date, but have surrounded themselves with a team of advisors to help navigate the business side of the CBD industry.
As a “CBD lifestyle brand,” a significant amount of their marketing efforts go towards education. That looks like viral Tik Tok mini-series to help end the stigma around CBD, which has garnered them close to 19,000 followers quickly.
CannaGo will officially launch July 6th.
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