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Ask HN: I know this isn't reddit, but please review my cannabis-related startup

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Ask HN: I know this isn't reddit, but please review my cannabis-related startup

#1

Post by sv123 »

Our site is an easy way to keep track of various marijuana strains and the different effects that they have on you. I was a newly-minted medical marijuana patient in California when this idea struck me. Visiting different dispensaries the volume of choices can sometime be overwhelming and they are as nuanced as a fine wine. I started keeping track of how I felt while smoking the various strains in a spreadsheet. Got together with a couple of friends and built the site in a few weeks (slow on the HN scale, I know).

The basic idea is to aggregate all the ratings and allow you to search and filter by the effect or medical relief that you are looking for. A secondary goal with the site was to make it very work friendly. There is no pot porn or pictures of giant leaves. Definitely not geared towards the stereotypical pot heads, focusing on all the other pot heads in the world that you don't know about.

http://www.leaf.ly

Re: Ask HN: I know this isn't reddit, but please review my cannabis-related startup

#2

Post by jknupp »

When you say the site is "work friendly", I would imagine the site will still be added to many employers' list of restricted sites. I'm not sure that the actual content of the site would be the issue, rather the general category (i.e. drug related).

Medical marijuana is still not legal in most states. Viewing the site at work in a state where medical marijuana is not legal would probably raise a few eyebrows if noticed.

Re: Ask HN: I know this isn't reddit, but please review my cannabis-related startup

#3

Post by evo_9 »

Nice design, good looking site. In a mostly legal state (colorado) this wouldn't raise any eyebrows - denver or boulder.

FYI: The search doesn't work - I tried a couple of strains listed on the homepage - such as G-13 - and it didn't return anything. I also tried some partial word searches and got nothing back.

Re: Ask HN: I know this isn't reddit, but please review my cannabis-related startup

#4

Post by sv123 »

jknupp wrote: post #2

When you say the site is "work friendly", I would imagine the site will still be added to many employers' list of restricted sites. I'm not sure that the actual content of the site would be the issue, rather the general category (i.e. drug related). Medical marijuana is still not legal in most states. Viewing the site at work in a state where medical marijuana is not legal would probably raise a few eyebrows if notic…

Yes, that's true. I guess my definition would be if you are at a somewhat open workplace that isn't actively blocking sites, then you can be relatively comfortable having it up on your screen and not need to minimize it when anybody walks by.

Re: Ask HN: I know this isn't reddit, but please review my cannabis-related startup

#5

Post by sv123 »

evo_9 wrote: post #3

Nice design, good looking site. In a mostly legal state (colorado) this wouldn't raise any eyebrows - denver or boulder. FYI: The search doesn't work - I tried a couple of strains listed on the homepage - such as G-13 - and it didn't return anything. I also tried some partial word searches and got nothing back.

I know :(. We used the bing API to quickly set up search but they appear to be terribly slow at including pages in the index. After approximate one month, they are still only showing the homepage. Working on an alternative now, users definitely getting stuck.

Re: Ask HN: I know this isn't reddit, but please review my cannabis-related startup

#6

Post by gyardley »

Decent site. Probably not something you can raise money with or easily sell given the uncertainty surrounding marijuana laws in America, so I'd focus on revenue immediately and hope to make money out of cashflow.

Lead generation to dispensaries probably would work best - given the amount of first-time 'freebies' out there, I suspect they'd be willing to pay a fair amount for a new customer.

Re: Ask HN: I know this isn't reddit, but please review my cannabis-related startup

#7

Post by JangoSteve »

It's a very nice design as other have pointed out. I like the periodic-table-theme for the different strains.

And I especially like the detailed page for each strain (e.g. http://www.leaf.ly/hybrid/ak-47). However, I wonder if the pie charts are the best way to convey the break-down of each strain. Sure, it makes it easy to see the relative effects for a given strain, but it makes it difficult to visualize the effects of one strain compared to another, because the position of a given effect in the graph is different for each strain. Maybe a simpler bar graph or something of that nature would be in order.

Also, along the same lines, maybe you could make it easier to do side-by-side comparisons. (btw, I also like the "Related" section on the detailed pages)

Re: Ask HN: I know this isn't reddit, but please review my cannabis-related startup

#9

Post by mtr »

sv123 wrote: post #5
evo_9 wrote: post #3

Nice design, good looking site. In a mostly legal state (colorado) this wouldn't raise any eyebrows - denver or boulder. FYI: The search doesn't work - I tried a couple of strains listed on the homepage - such as G-13 - and it didn't return anything. I also tried some partial word searches and got nothing back.

I know :(. We used the bing API to quickly set up search but they appear to be terribly slow at including pages in the index. After approximate one month, they are still only showing the homepage. Working on an alternative now, users definitely getting stuck.

From an SEO perspective, doing a "site:leaf.ly marijuana" search in Google resulted in only 6 results. "Cannibis" only shows 7. Adding more of these references and/or putting them in the URL may help.
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