Justin Hartfield is an

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

and

venture capitalist Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in terms of number ...

from

Orange County, California Orange County (officially the County of Orange; often initialized O.C.) is a county (United States), county located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in Southern California, United States. As of the 2020 United States census, the population ...

. He is a co-founder and general partner at the Ghost Group venture capital firm and was the

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

WeedMaps WeedMaps is a tech company serving the cannabis industry, founded in 2008 by Justin Hartfield and Keith Hoerling. Headquartered in Irvine, California, Weedmaps has more than 400 employees, and has offices in Denver, Tucson, New York, Barcelona ...

before stepping down in 2016 to pursue other ventures.

Career

Born to a

Jewish Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...

family, Hartfield founded WeedMaps in 2008 while working at a

search engine optimization Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of Web traffic, website traffic to a website or a web page from web search engine, search engines. SEO targets unpaid search traffic (usually referred to as ...

(SEO) consultation business. WeedMaps allows medical marijuana collectives to rate their own marijuana dispensaries. Under Hartfield, WeedMaps grew to nearly two million monthly visitors with a monthly revenue of $1.5 million. Hartfield served as the first CEO of the company until 2016 when he stepped down but remained board chairman of the company. Hartfield founded the privately held Ghost Group in 2012 and serves as the company’s CEO. Through Ghost Group, Hartfield and his business partner Doug Francis launched Emerald Ocean Capital, a venture capital firm in the legal marijuana industry. In addition to Hartfield’s work in the legal cannabis industry, he has also filled roles as a

marketing Marketing is the act of acquiring, satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of Business administration, business management and commerce. Marketing is usually conducted by the seller, typically a retailer or ma ...

and

expert. From 2010 to 2012, he was the Chief web officer at the publicly traded SearchCore, Inc.

Board positions and contributions to the industry

Justin Hartfield resides on the boards of

National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML ) is a social welfare organization based in Washington, D.C., that advocates for the reform of marijuana laws in the United States regarding both Medical cannabis in the United St ...

(NORML) and the

Marijuana Policy Project The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) is the largest organization working solely on marijuana policy reform in the United States in terms of its budget, number of members, and staff. Its stated aims are to: (1) increase public support for non-pu ...

. He contributed over $100,000 to the Measure F campaign, which advocates for an open market system for marijuana sales.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hartfield, Justin American venture capitalists 21st-century American Jews University of California, Irvine alumni Businesspeople from California