KushScan

Полное описание проекта

KushScan

KushScan - mobile application that recognizes type, THC level, Sativa/Indica level of a dry kush by photo.

Need of customers: Users would like to know more about the product they are consuming

Opportunity in the market: Despite legalization, major part of the cannabis market is still in the shadows (70% to 80% is black market)

As most of our users purchase their weed “on the street” and use KushScan for identification purposes, we are going to shift the balance from black to legal market, by offering them nearby alternatives from local businesses.

Target market

Our target market is: On one hand Users that purchase their weed “on the street”, on other hand Brands and Dispensaries from the legal market.

Users

Currently we have about 12000 monthly users, the number of users is growing 30% per month, despite we do no marketing at all. Here are some distributions:

Countries: United States - 57,8%; United Kingdom - 4,7%; Canada - 3,8%; South Africa - 3,3%; Germany - 2,9%; France - 2,9%; Australia - 2,9%; Mexico - 2%; and others.

Gender: Male - 78,1%; Female - 21,9%;

Age: 18-24 - 37%; 25-34 -30%; 35-44 - 17,6%; 45-54 - 8,7%; >55 - 6,7% 

Cannabis Brands & Dispensaries

8000+ Dispensaries in the US are paying $500+ monthly to Leafly and Weedmaps for showing them on the map. We will implement the similar feature with strain recommendations based on our algorithm. Besides that, we will provide useful features for businesses(Untappd for weed), show brands advertisements in the photos feed and while the algorithm is working.

We have already reached several Cannabis Dispensaries and Brands who approved their interest in our services.

Competition

At the moment we don’t have direct competitors. Despite working on the same cannabis market, we are targeting different areas with our solution in comparison to competitors - strain recommendations in nearby dispensaries.

Closest Competitors:

• hiGrade

• Target market: mainly cannabis growers
• Overview: Mobile app that implements Premium subscription B2C model. They are selling devices for phone cameras in order to test quality and THC level of bud by photo.
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  • Leafly
• Target market: strain availability at dispensaries
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  • Weedmaps
• Target market: dispensary locations
• Overview: Web/mobile apps that implement Subscription B2B model. They are one of the biggest players on the market with millions of users and “connected” dispensaries.

Our Advantages: KushScan has unique technology of strain identification that can be used by all cannabis consumers not only growers + you do not need to pay $80 for the device. Recognition system will be connected with recommendation and entertainment features for users and provide more useful features for businesses(similar like Untappd did with beer) charging less for subscription.

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• Team

Oleksandr (CEO)

Responsible for computer vision algorithms, business development, product vision, marketing. Ring Human Detection, Samsung smart TV gesture recognition, Images classification SDK, FF-Group Human Tracker, Phd training, Topcoder prizes. Founded several working businesses in Ukraine (http://nutstar.com.ua).

Roman (CTO)

Responsible for front-end and back-end. Ring Human Detection, Facebook internships, Microsoft internship, Images segmentation using shape prior, VR project, Algorithms competition prizes. Now is working at Microsoft in Washington state.

Oleksandr (COO)

Responsible for business development, product ownership and managing the overall delivery process. Has over 14 years of experience in IT, worked in GlobalLogic, Ciklum, Intellias. Successfully built and led Agile teams, managed complex projects, created metrics and KPIs framework for large Program.

We have not so big expertise in analytic and marketing so we will involve professionals for these tasks. To speed up the development process we will hire several engineers and a designer.

Financial Overview

First year will be spent mostly on discovery stage and advertisement ramp up, so we do not expect high income, expenses will prevail. Second year we will acquire more users and plan to cover about 50% of the dispensaries market with our services. Till the end of year 3 we are going to reach all dispensaries in North America, so we expect the best outcome from our sales activities.

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• Funding Needs

• We raise money for:
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• Scan feature improvement (3 photos, detector improvement, THC regression, sativa / indica regression, +30 varieties, multiclass improvement, label detector) - $44500
• Application improvement (payment options, feed, statistics, server) - $83,000
• Hiring Analytic - $9000, marketing and buying traffic - $15000
• СЕО, СОО salary - $42000
• Server+Administrative Costs - $12400
• Office rent $8400

Total:

Time: 6 month

Money: $214300