The cannabis and indoor farming industries are nascent but growing rapidly, driven by food security and global legalization. To meet increasing demand, production teams are under pressure to optimize and scale up their operations.
Mel Fyfe and Carey Taylor
Blakthumb’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is an intuitive end-to-end operating system for cannabis and food production that takes a holistic approach by focusing on helping frontline teams to manage their operations.
Blakthumb accumulates the vast sources of data throughout the production lifecycle to pinpoint operational anomalies, manage and measure performance across multiple plant species and production runs, as well as deliver insights on teams and their environments.
Tidal Ventures led the early funding round and were joined by Black Nova VC, Afterwork Ventures, LUXEM family office and a Canadian angel investor.
Georgie Turner, Principal at Tidal says, “The technology focus in the indoor food and cannabis markets to date has been largely around hardware and compliance. A well-designed software product could lay the foundations for market growth and create happier, more productive teams.”
While production teams have easy access to compliance solutions, they are completely underserved when it comes to SaaS solutions for operations and to build high-performing teams. This lack of access has seen most producers continue to run their operations off
spreadsheets or whiteboards. Blakthumb flips the focus by providing teams with the tools they need to improve the transparency and effectiveness of their operations.
Mel Fyfe, Blakthumb’s CEO says, “In this industry, we have dedicated team leaders that are managing billion dollar businesses in their heads or on spreadsheets. There’s a limit to how well a person can keep on top of a system like that before something breaks or they burnout. With Blakthumb, we take the pressure off their shoulders by automating processes and preventing those simple mistakes that cost companies millions.”
Blakthumb is co-founded by two women, Carey Taylor and Mel Fyfe with a focus on impact and a mission to enable resilient communities through the power of decentralized production. The founders are from diverse backgrounds and are familiar with working in male-dominated industries. They have gained deep domain expertise through building and operating indoor farms coupled with their built environment backgrounds in architectural design and construction, operations, planning and infrastructure.
Georgie Turner adds, “We love backing founders at the Seed Phase that care deeply about a problem space and are doing their life’s work. Mel and Carey epitomise the idealistic entrepreneur mindset and have the highest levels of customer empathy we have seen.”
The funding will be used to launch Blakthumb’s flagship product, grow their team, and expand operations into the North American market.
For more information:
Blakthumb 
www.blakthumb.com