Justin Hartfield is an

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...

and

venture capitalist Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

from

Orange County, California Orange County is located in the Los Angeles metropolitan area in Southern California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 3,186,989, making it the third-most-populous county in California, the sixth-most-populous in the United States, a ...

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

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 ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

family, Hartfield founded

in 2008 while working at an 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 process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to emph ...

and

search engine optimization Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines. SEO targets unpaid traffic (known as "natural" or " organic" results) rather than dire ...

expert. From 2010 to 2012, he was the

Chief web officer A chief web officer (CWO) is the highest-ranking corporate officer (executive) in charge of an organisation's Web presence, including all internet and intranet sites. As a corporate officer position, the CWO reports directly to the CEO. A CWO will ...

at the publicly traded SearchCore, Inc.

Board positions and contributions to the industry

Justin Hartfield resides on the boards of

NORML 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 and non-medical use. Acc ...

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

External links

About Justin Hartfield
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hartfield, Justin American venture capitalists American Jews University of California, Irvine alumni Businesspeople from California