SpringBig co-founder Nat Shaul says the Boca Raton-based company entered the cannabis industry by chance.
When founded in 2012, SpringBig was a loyalty program and communications platform for small, independent businesses, acting as a sort of "digital punch card" to offer rewards to frequent customers. Eventually, Shaul, who is also the firm's VP of marketing, realized that cannabis companies were using the platform at a far higher rate than businesses in any other industry.
"After that, we pivoted to only cannabis companies," she said.
Today, SpringBig has more than 1,000 clients – including cannabis dispensary chains and brands such as Keef, an infused beverage company – across 2,300 locations in North America.
The marketing platform estimates it reaches 65% of the country's 38 million legal marijuana users through its software as a service platform, which enables businesses to market their goods and loyalty programs directly to customers via text message. SpringBig reports its targeted messages, intended to help retailers engage and retain customers, have a 99% open rate.
The company has raised nearly $20 million in venture capital since 2017, when it began to exclusively serve cannabis businesses. This year, it gained another 200 clients after it acquired the customer experience platform BudTender for an undisclosed sum. SpringBig now has 160 employees, up from about 50 in early 2020.
Shaul says she's still in awe of SpringBig's skyrocketing success. The 31-year-old said she never imagined she would see a legal cannabis industry in the U.S., let alone co-found a marijuana-adjacent venture.
"It never even crossed my mind because the idea of working in cannabis seemed so unreachable," she said. "When I was growing up it was still looked at as a hard drug."
But times have changed. These days, the recreational use of cannabis is legal in 18 states and medical use is permitted in 36, including Florida.
2020 was an especially lucrative year for the fast-growing sector.
According to sales data platform BDSA, U.S. cannabis sales hit a record of $17.5 billion last year, up 46% from 2019. Florida had $1.23 billion in medical marijuana-related sales in 2020, a 54% increase from $800 million in 2019.
Industry insiders hope federal legalization could move from pipe dream to reality under the Biden administration, a move that would open up even more business opportunities for cannabis ventures. But making the cannabis space easier for businesses isn't enough, Shaul said.
She hopes the administration will also pursue criminal justice reforms that would expunge convictions for federal non-violent marijuana crimes. SpringBig is a supporter of the Last Prisoner Project, an advocacy and policy group committed to freeing the approximately 40,000 Americans currently incarcerated for cannabis offenses.
"Anybody who is still in jail for cannabis [possession] shouldn't be there, especially in states where it's recreationally legal," she said. "We believe that's wrong."
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