JoinMe – the Social Discovery Cannabis Start-Up Wins Grant

JoinMe is a new social discovery app aimed at the growing marijuana industry in the US. It recently won a grant of $10,000 to continue to develop its app and project. Just last week, in the US, Ohio became the latest State to legalise the use of recreational cannabis, as the market continues to grow. 

JoinMe is a venture set up by University of Boston (BU) Alumni, Marco Rotella and Claudio Bettini. Together they are developing JoinMe, a place where cannabis users can find other smokers who share similar interests, similar products, and can arrange times to meet up and share a social experience together.

They recently won an award at the seventh annual Cannabis Start-Up Competition held at the Rajen Kilachand Center for Integrated Life Sciences & Engineering. The competition is sponsored and organised by two other BU Alumni classmates, Jeff Zucker and Mike Bologna, who set up a cannabis industry strategy firm called Green Lion Partners. The JoinMe founders, in a Shark Tank (Dragon’s Den) style competition won over six judges and earned themselves the prize of $10,000 of funding and industry expert advice for their venture. 

Bettini said: 

“We are very proud of what we are doing, and hopefully with everybody’s help we are able to develop our idea even more.”

Rotella added:

“We have identified two main problems: cannabis consumers want and need partners. Social consumers have a much lower correlation with psychological side effects, such as social anxiety and agitation.” 

The app has had some success in Boston on campus and being advertised at local cannabis outlets and stores. Smoking cannabis is best done as a social activity it would seem, so it makes perfect sense to be the cornerstone of an app that helps people find others to share their experience with. The app digs a bit deeper into interest as well, to help you match with the right crowd – not simply just other smokers.