Justin Hartfield | |
|---|---|
 Headshot of marijuana entrepreneur Justin Hartfield. Taken in 2013. | |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Influencer [1] |
| Known for | co-founder of WeedMaps |
| Children | 1 |
Justin Hartfield is an entrepreneur and venture capitalist from Orange County, California. He is a co-founder and general partner at the Ghost Group venture capital firm and was the CEO at WeedMaps before stepping down in 2016 [2] to pursue other ventures.
Born to a Jewish family, [3] Hartfield founded WeedMaps in 2008 while working at an search engine optimization (SEO) consultation business. [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] WeedMaps allows medical marijuana collectives to rate their own marijuana dispensaries. [9] [10] [11] Under Hartfield, WeedMaps grew to nearly two million monthly visitors with a monthly revenue of $1.5 million. [12] Hartfield served as the first CEO of the company until 2016 when he stepped down but remained board chairman of the company. [13] [9] [14]
Hartfield founded the privately held Ghost Group in 2012 and serves as the company’s CEO. [4] [15] Through Ghost Group, Hartfield and his business partner Doug Francis launched Emerald Ocean Capital, a venture capital firm in the legal marijuana industry. [4] [7] [15]
In addition to Hartfield’s work in the legal cannabis industry, he has also filled roles as a marketing and search engine optimization expert. From 2010 to 2012, he was the Chief web officer at the publicly traded SearchCore, Inc. [15] [16]
Justin Hartfield resides on the boards of National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and the Marijuana Policy Project. He contributed over $100,000 to the Measure F campaign, which advocates for an open market system for marijuana sales. [13]
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