With a wide range of experience in marketing, Martine Pierre had no intentions of being a tech founder.
“I’m not a technical person,” she says. “I don’t know how to code. That’s not my language.”
But when a tweet saying she wanted to help more Black men and women join the cannabis industry went viral, she began brainstorming what would ultimately become Cannalution, an education platform at the intersection of cannabis and Web 3.0.
Cannalution will operate like a cannabis-focused MasterClass, the subscription-based education provider that teaches users everything from cooking to writing to business. While Pierre saw other education providers focusing on the cannabis space, most were pushing people in the direction of getting jobs in cannabis.
“There wasn’t much conversation surrounding entrepreneurship,” she says. “For me, I think that entrepreneurship for Black and Brown people in this space is really important, because that’s what’s going to give us real ownership. And without ownership, there is no equity.”
Pierre is conducting beta testing with an early version of the Cannalution app known as an MVP (minimum viable product) and will roll out the final product in stages. The company currently has a waitlist of more than 4,000 people interested in the platform, all due to word of mouth marketing and Twitter.
But even as Pierre builds out a content library and develops the educational infrastructure, she’s getting her own education in the tech world.
“I’m a student, again,” she says. “It’s a big learning curve. When I first started, there were so many things I probably would have done differently, just because I don’t know any better at the time.”