(Photo: iTunes)
The guys behind Leafly have just launched a mobile app, and thousands of people are downloading it each day.
Leafly is a strain and dispensary finding service that has quickly become the poster child of the marijuana industry. Founded in 2010 by three programmers from California, the site also takes on the role of Yelp by allowing marijuana users to rate and review products.
The site has grown rapidly over the years, with legal marijuana expanding into more states. But with mobile browsing also on the rise, the company decided it was time to offer all of its web features through an app.
“Something that we did was really focus on the user experience and trying to keep that same Leafly user experience that people are used to with the website,” says Cy Scott, one of the three co-founders.
“The original app was over 2 years old and wasn’t optimized for newer iPhone and Android screens. It was also a lacking experience. You could browse strains and find dispensaries, but that was it.”
The revamped app launched last week and can be downloaded on iOS and Android devices.
With the update, users can now create an account, read blog posts, follow dispensary updates, and track personal usage in a journal. Scott describes the journal as one of the best features.
“Different strains affect people differently. If somebody says Sour Diesel has these effects and it’s good for this condition, maybe you have a different condition and it behaves a bit differently for you. So you can now journal that through the app.”
Other features are on the way, including doctor listings and multiple language support, Scott says, although they won’t be available through the app till early March. The company is also looking to expand into Canada and already has a French site set up.
Leafly’s dispensary finder on Android (Photo: Google Play)
Over the past three years, Leafly has had the help of a Seattle-based private equity firm called Privateer Holdings – and the MBAs that run it – whose main focus is investing in the cannabis industry.
The firm, led by Yale business school graduate Brendan Kennedy, made its first investment in Leafly in 2011, and has only recently branched out into other ventures.
That, along with the website’s attention to mainstream appeal, may have helped Leafly stay ahead of the competition.
“I think most of the cannabis-related apps are sort of lacking right now. There’s not much to model yourself after.”
Leafly’s main advantage is its active user base. Since launching the new version last week, Scott says, over 250,000 original app users have switched over. The website itself gets more than a million visitors each month.
And considering Colorado’s new laws, it’s no surprise that traffic has increased 50% over the last 30 days.
“Around the New Year, we saw almost double the traffic from Colorado,” Scott says. “A lot of people were looking at it and there was a lot of media attention.”
“Our traffic from Colorado is still higher than it was before the New Year, but it did slow down from that big spike we saw. We’re still seeing a lot of people searching Colorado from other states, who may be interested in visiting as tourists.”
Source Leaf Science
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