Earlier this week, MassRoots (OTC: MSRT) revealed that it is targeting competitors Leafly and Weedmaps with the introduction of its Dispensary Finder service.  The company introduced the offering with a discounted price of $42 per month and reported today that it has already signed up in excess of 100 dispensaries.

We reached out to MassRoots, which has built an online community with over 900K registered users, to better understand its strategy.

The main driver for this expansion into a Dispensary Finder was derived from our community asking for it over and over again. They are finding great inspiration all over our site through exchanges with other cannabis enthusiasts, but when it came time to actually take action on their discovery they were forced to leave our ecosystem to look elsewhere.

Jeremiah Marquis, VP of Sales and Business Development

We will alleviate that issue and bring our community straight to the businesses they need and want. We are the only ones with this unique ability out there and can’t wait to bring it to market.

The company’s initial offering price was originally slated to end today but has been extended through Sunday, when it will increase to $99. MassRoots has plenty of room to raise prices further, as Leafly listings range from $450-995 per month, with Weedmaps offering a range of options that extend from $399 to as high as $10,000 per month.

Dispensaries care about the number of unique monthly visitors/users using the dispensary locator. If we can get our users to no longer leave our app to go to Weedmaps for this purpose, these dispensaries will be able to reach those users only if they sign up for our service.

CEO Isaac Dietrich

Dispensary Finder is the first of several initiatives that MassRoots is introducing this summer, with the company expected to unveil “Product Pages and Reviews” in August, followed by “Sponsored Posts 2.0” and “Enhanced Profiles” by September. It is also contemplating the addition of a monthly subscription by early 2017 aimed at producing customized recommendations and discounted prices for products. Now that MassRoots has built up a critical mass of users, these offerings can help the company better monetize by connecting the community to commerce.

Exclusive article by Alan Brochstein, CFA

Based in Houston, Alan leverages his experience as founder of online community 420 Investor, the first and still largest due diligence platform focused on the publicly-traded stocks in the cannabis industry. With his extensive network in the cannabis community, Alan continues to find new ways to connect the industry and facilitate its sustainable growth. At New Cannabis Ventures, he is responsible for content development and strategic alliances. Before shifting his focus to the cannabis industry in early 2013, Alan, who began his career on Wall Street in 1986, worked as an independent research analyst following over two decades in research and portfolio management. A prolific writer, with over 650 articles published since 2007 at Seeking Alpha, where he has 70,000 followers, Alan is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and a frequent source to the media, including the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, Fox Business, and Bloomberg TV. Contact Alan: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn | Email