How 2 Young Entrepreneurs Built Cannabis Delivery Software Tracking Millions in Cannabis Transactions Serving ⅓ of California's Cannabis Market

WebJoint Co-Founders: Christopher Dell’olio (L) and Hilart Abrahamian (R)

The following post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga.

In the big-risk, big-reward world of cannabis, few companies have been able to go public, and the ones that have are often Canadian agricultural businesses such as Village Farms International Inc. VFF.

Fewer still are cannabis software companies — Akerna Corp. KERN was the 1st cannabis software company to be listed on a major U.S. exchange, and that wasn’t until 2019. Although cannabis continues to get more mainstream  —  with ETFs like ETFMG Alternative Harvest ETF MJ, for example  — the sector as a publicly traded entity is still in its infancy.

Most recently, WebJoint announced a crowdfunding offering that will wrap up soon.

WebJoint’s co-founders were just 18 when they began their venture and now serve more than 30% of the California cannabis delivery market. Here’s how they did it and how they’re working to push the industry forward.

From Zero to Hero 

“Most business textbooks would probably tell you that a business like ours had zero chance of success,” Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer Hilart Abrahamian said. “In fact, we did a lot of things wrong.” 

Abrahamian, along with business partner Christopher Dell’Olio, are the masterminds behind WebJoint, a cannabis delivery software currently serving more than ⅓ of licensed and operating cannabis deliveries in California.  

“The story of how WebJoint came to be wasn’t anything close to an ‘aha moment.’ In fact, it’s a story of pivoting until you find your success, which is perhaps the biggest lesson to be learned here,” Abrahamian told Starter Story last year.

Perhaps one of the team’s riskiest moves was birthing WebJoint 1.0 before California fully legalized cannabis. California legalized cannabis for recreational use in November 2016. WebJoint has been in the cannabis industry for nearly 10 years now.

The company, which now serves clients such as The Source SLO, Lakeside Remedy,  and Hyperwolf Delivery, began as a basic web design firm working with multiple industries. However, Abrahamian and Dell’Olio quickly realized the potential of serving a niche market and refocused their efforts on cannabis.

After building about a dozen websites for cannabis business owners, the duo was able to gain a behind-the-scenes look at the operations of their clientele. This insight led the team to develop software that might be able to create great value.

The Passion Behind the Project

Abrahamian has been a serial entrepreneur since he was 13. His 1st business was teaching graphic and web design on YouTube, now owned by Alphabet Inc. GOOGL. 

From there, he went on to start a clothing line, an image hosting website (back in the Myspace days) and a $1-a-day, subscription-based web design firm based on the Dollar Shave Club business model.

“The image hosting site got so popular that my web host literally shut me down,” Abrahamian said. “When I had just graduated high school, I really wanted to make a professional, subscription-based website that taught web design. Back then, there weren’t a thousand websites that had online courses like there are today. So I approached my now business partner, Christopher Dell’Olio with the idea, and he enthusiastically jumped on board.”

Enter Dell’Olio. At the time, Dell’olio was working as a freelance web developer, working with a number of cannabis retailers to build their websites.  

“By working with the retailers early on, I saw how difficult it was for them to track their inventory and intake customer orders online. I saw an opportunity for us to build software to meet their needs,” Dell’Olio said.

As a cannabis consumer himself, Dell’Olio has experienced a great deal of frustration simply trying to order his favorite products online.

“Half of the time the menu was inaccurate and tons of SKUs (stock keeping units) were always unavailable. I knew if I was experiencing this problem, thousands of cannabis consumers were experiencing it, too. So I sought to try and solve this issue with the creation of WebJoint.”

“Before us, retailers were tracking inventory on pen and paper. They were trying to meet compliance requirements with rudimentary tools because cannabis technology didn’t really exist back then. On top of that, the biggest cannabis brands in the space were incapable of accepting orders directly from their own websites. Now, with both our Delivery Software Suite and our Direct-to-Consumer Platform, we’ve built the largest delivery network in California and enable cannabis brands to accept online orders and track their marketing return on investment by tapping into our network of retail clients for fulfillment.”

Today, WebJoint is an all-in-one business management solution for cannabis retail deliveries in California. The system provides features such as inventory management for delivery drivers, e-commerce solutions for online ordering, automated driver dispatching, geofencing and GPS tracking and automated tax calculations.

WebJoint intends to be everything a California cannabis retail delivery company would need to optimize its daily business operations and follow compliance with state cannabis regulations.

Visit https://www.startengine.com/webjoint for more information about WebJoint’s software and services.

The preceding post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.