PotBot: Leafly + WebMD for Cannabis Connoisseurs

Cannabis enthusiasts, meet your “virtual budtender.”

By Rob Marvin

The legal-marijuana scene is crowded with all manner of tech start-ups hocking everything from vaporizers and seed-to-sale software to social media marketing. Even tech giant Microsoft is dipping its toes into the space. They were all on full display at Cannabis World Congress (CWC) in New York City.

Marijuana recommendation startup Potbotics, founded in 2013, takes a clinical, research-driven approach to medical cannabis use. Potbotics co-founder and CEO David Goldstein spoke to PCMag at the show (see our video, below) about how the start-up combines the intuitive feel of consumer web and mobile apps with its medicinal database technology.

The company was at CWC showing off its PotBot app for desktop, iOS, and coming soon to Android. The app works similarly to WebMD. Users looking for medical marijuana enter their symptoms and conditions, and the app recommends the strains and potency levels they need and the closest medical dispensary to get it. The startup also offers PotBot kiosks for sale to dispensaries.

There are thousands of marijuana strains, and depending on the indica, sativa, or hybrid strain you choose, the effects on your body can be radically different. Different strains have medical value for combatting anxiety or depression, sleeping better, improving productivity, managing migraines, epilepsy, asthma, and pain relief from cancer treatment and glaucoma. The list goes on. The tricky part is making sure you know which strain you need.

The one big catch with a startup such as Potbotics is that there’s already a well-entrenched player in the “encyclopedia for weed” space,and its name is Leafly. The marijuana-dispensary, strain-review site has brand recognition and a deep catalog of reviews. It also publishes news, runs a weed accessory store, and offers cannabis business consulting services.

Goldstein said the big difference between Leafly and PotBot is the quality and validity of information. Leafly, he explained, is like Amazon or Yelp in that anyone can write reviews; it’s one of the reasons the site’s product catalog is so expansive. PotBot, on the other hand, collects only scientific and medical research on different strains and bodily effects in its database. The start-up aggregates cannabis news and maintains a medical encyclopedia section of its website with the same mindset, which it calls PotBot MD.

PotBot’s app-based combo of Leafly and WebMD-like tech is on full display in the video, but Potbotics is also developing two other products: a wireless EEG helmet called BrainBot for doctors to analyze neural response to cannabinoids and NanoPot, a DNA reader that scans cannabis seeds to optimize grow yields. When it comes to the highest of the high-tech cannabis innovations, we’ve only scratched the surface.

Originally published at www.pcmag.com.