Marin County cannabis software startup Trym gets funding for cultivation modernization system

A Novato company creating software to manage cannabis cultivation has received $3.1 million in seed money from four investors.

Trym, which incorporated in 2018, will use the money to continue developing its computer-based modules designed to help organize cannabis cultivation operations.

“What we found was a vast majority of growers were running their companies in notebooks and on spreadsheets,” co-founder Matt Mayberry said.

Customers buy a membership allowing them to access software on a platform that is divided into three modules, available as a monthly service with fees starting at $200 a month for small farms, leading up to 10 times that amount to assist large operations. He declined to release revenue figures on the company that’s headquartered on Western Drive and began operating in July.

The first module is a team-management platform, similar to Salesforce, but for cannabis companies. It comes with a function that outlines tasks for employees and monitors their progress.

The second one focuses on compliance to help negotiate this highly regulated industry.

The third platform provides information that tracks “harvest analytics.” For example, a good year for crops may be measured and stored for future seasons.

It may be all about the weather and the chemistry between grower and plant.

“Right now, there’s a focus on building a platform that’s a prediction model,” Mayberry said, referencing the software’s ability to use data from one good year for crops to repeat in another.

The investment funds received by 7thirty Capital, Delta Emerald Ventures, Welcan Capital and Arcview Collective Fund will be earmarked for advancing Trym’s products and programs.

With a staff of 15 and two business partners, Mayberry has signed on about 100 farms in 14 states for services provided by Trym — which references “trimming” the fat of an unnecessary byproduct of business operations, the CEO explained.

Mayberry, a 38-year-old software engineer, once dabbled with cannabis growing while attending college before he worked his way into the solar-power industry. He even considered going to architectural school about the time of the 2009 economic crash that led to the Great Recession, but decided against the life choice given the housing market went into turmoil.

Once Proposition 64 passed in California allowing for adult, recreational marijuana use, Mayberry witnessed and later seized on the opportunity to get in on the action.

“Prop 64 generated a lot of excitement,” he said of the state ballot measure passed in 2016. “It’s taken off. There’s no putting the genie back into the bottle.”

It seems at least one of his investors would agree.

“The growth opportunity in the cannabis cultivation software market is very exciting for us,” said Micah Tapman, managing partner of 7thirty Capital, based in Boulder, Colorado. The other three investment groups hail from New York.

Vikas Desai, founder of Welcan Capital, believes Trym has filled a void in the market by blending growing tasks such as “environmental monitoring, workforce management compliance and cultivation operation oversight” in a one-stop shopping solution.

“We’re excited about their continued ramp in becoming a clear leader and their ability to build in a capital-efficient manner moving forward,” Desai told the Business Journal.

Michael Perlman, president of Santa Rosa-based Pearl Pharma, founded in 2014, signed on for two Trym services to simplify operations associated with cultivation management and compliance issues. He estimated the computer modules save him about five to 10 hours a week.

The agreement becomes more important as he plans to expand his company in March with a 32,000-square-foot facility to add on 800 plants to his small indoor operations in Los Angeles and Santa Rosa.

“It organizes all the metric data,” Perlman said.

As a small-to-mid-sized Humboldt County grower who’s not a client, Nate Whittington suggested that even though he tracks his operations with pen and paper in hand he can see where a larger farm may seek out the services of a software platform.

“Down the road, this may be a tool for distribution where the sales side may get more use,” he said, adding that especially if “the learning curve” is not that difficult and the ownership of intellectual property is not an issue.

“I hear all the time from others: ‘We need someone to run the data,’” he said.

Susan Wood covers law, cannabis, production, as well as banking and finance. For 25 years, Susan has worked for a variety of publications including the North County Times in San Diego County, Tahoe Daily Tribune and Lake Tahoe News. She graduated from Fullerton College. Reach her at 530-545-8662 or susan.wood@busjrnl.com