Digital cannabis dispensary management platform Dispense has completed a $2 million seed funding round, Benzinga has learned exclusively.
The round was led by NextView Ventures with NextView co-founder, Lee Hower, joining the Dispense board. Leading cannabis VC’s Poseidon Asset Management and Achari Ventures participated, along with Arrive, a Roc Nation company as well as Wayne Chang.
“We are very pleased to have the opportunity to work with Kyla Moore and Tim Officer at Dispense,” said Hower, co-founder and partner at NextView Ventures. “The growth they’ve achieved in the last year is astounding. I’ve worked with many early-stage software startups in my career, and Dispense’s software really is top-notch. We see tremendous opportunity to work with Dispense to help drive the expansion of their unique, customer-centric platform that is already making waves at some of the biggest dispensaries in the industry.”
Dispense is currently used by dispensaries in five states: Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey and Massachusetts. Among its clients are several big companies including Ascend Wellness Holdings Inc (OTC:AAWH).
Since its beta launch in August 2020, Dispense has processed over 1.5 million orders, with an order value of over $200 million with only two employees.
Co-founders Kyla Moore and Tim Officer said they plan to use the new capital to hire top talent, continue developing and enhancing their product and scale their sales and marketing efforts.
“What makes Dispense unique is that our software is built to empower our dispensary partners, giving them simple-to-use tools to not only take online orders but to build and maintain direct customer relationships, optimize their sales, and streamline their operations,” CEO Kyla Moore said. “This new funding will allow us to grow our team, expand into more states and continue to build features that align with the needs of the dispensaries and their customers.”
Emily Paxhia, co-founder and managing partner at Poseidon concluded, “We are excited to be both an investor in Dispense and a strategic partner. Their platform provides much-needed solutions to the growing cannabis retail sector, and their focus on the customer experience along with their refined software will help them scale across the cannabis industry while making retailers’ lives easier and the customers’ experiences more enjoyable.”
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