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The Unfiltered, Face-in-Hands Story of How Nugg Came to Be
This is our story, but it's yours too.
DISCLAIMER
What you’re about to read will take ten, maybe twenty minutes if you read through to the very end.
*GASP*!
I know what you’re thinking -- ain’t nobody got time for that.
But before you bow out, realize that by reading what comes next, you’ll learn exactly who’s behind the curtain of this company and what our purpose is. You’ll learn about how you’re part of that purpose, and what position you’re being promoted to.
This is our story, but it’s also yours.
You’re the hero, we’re your trusted sidekick, and together we can accomplish much in the name of cannabis.
We’ll do a cliff-notes version of this story on our website and elsewhere, but we want to be upfront about who we are, why we’re here, and how you fit into the picture.
So again, it’s not short. It’s not pretty. But it’s sorta funny and totally true.
Describing these things in a few sentences or sound bites won’t do our shared journey justice, which is why we all deserve the full scoop.
So grab a cup of coffee, a bottle of water, a pipe packed with your favorite strain, or whatever else lets you kick back and relax, and enjoy the tale.
Or just skip around in the sections below to uncover what Nugg is all about.
Who are these guys anyways?
Our journey begins at 742 West 28th Street, Los Angeles, Room 5.
Yep, that’s our fraternity house at the University of Southern California. Glorious, isn’t it?
Kam, Collin, and I (Alex) met as brothers of Pi Kappa Phi. Sure, we were technically part of the whole #fratlife thing, but it didn't define us. In fact, we used this alcohol-stained environment as motivation to work our asses off while everyone else was getting shwifty. (Rick & Morty reference #1, boo-yaa!)
The year was 2013, September. We were juniors. Kam was gearing up to take the LSAT to pursue a career in law, while Collin and I studied entrepreneurship.
People were starting to take their lives seriously, and we didn’t know exactly what we wanted to do.
What we did know was that we wanted to create a life for ourselves that allowed us to work whenever, wherever, on something exciting that would change people’s lives.
We wanted to be “entrepreneurs,” whatever the hell that meant.
And let’s not beat around the bush, we wanted cash in our pockets too. We all need security, right?
Back then we didn’t know how we’d get there, but we knew we needed to start somewhere, to learn the ins-and-outs of how the masters of the world create value (real or fake) for others and get paid to do it.
So, let’s talk beginnings.
How did you get your first start in the real world? How did you plan to support yourself and make your first buck?
Here’s what we did.
How we funded Nugg as seniors in college
At the time, Lyft and Uber were taking on transportation with their ride-share services. Collin was the first person we knew to take an Uber. He described the experience (compared to a traditional taxi) as revolutionary.
Although the way he said it was more like “this Uber shit is going to take off. I can’t believe how fuckin’ easy that was.”
He predicted (totally accurately) that it was only a matter of time before college students everywhere would be using rideshare to reach their off-campus destinations.
Our trio started working together when Lyft and Uber created their affiliate marketing programs so that riders could refer friends and earn ride credits for doing so.
Collin had managed to earn a few hundreds bucks in ride credits with just a few messages to friends on Facebook, and that got him stoked.
He enjoyed the ride credits, but wondered if he could earn cash for referring users instead. So he asked.
He found the emails of some higher-ups at Lyft and sent them a proposal. He’d refer them new customers for $20 a pop, and sold them on the fact he had access to potentially hundreds of thousands of students at colleges all over California.
They agreed, but included some stipulations, like that we couldn’t run online ads.
After getting warmed up with some quick wins and early success, Collin recruited first Kam, and then myself, to come in on this affiliate marketing thing.
Since we couldn’t pursue typical paid ad channels, we got creative.
Over the next year, we:
-- Worked 14 hours a day, in room 5 of our fraternity house, amidst 80 college dudes and too many solo cups
-- Partnered with local businesses to leave Lyft flyers out for customers
-- Partnered with school clubs, sports teams, & even professors to spread our message
-- Recruited over 1,000 college students to work under us and earn part of our commission
-- Hired a team of rockstar Bangladeshis to post ads in every public Facebook event page, every day, in every city Lyft was present. Our shenanigans made us infamous online and forced Facebook to introduce an army of new spam filters and restrictions against account creation (oops)
-- Helped create Lyft’s ambassador program, which is still thriving today
-- Were offered six-figure salaries to come work for Lyft as growth-hackers and user-acquisition experts
When all was said and done, the three of us were responsible for bringing over 4 0,000 new users to Lyft in the span of nine months.
We learned a lot.
Perhaps most importantly, we learned that we were just scraping the surface of our potential.
The more you learn, the more you realize how much is still behind the curtain. But pulling back the drapes one fold at a time is half the fun, and it’s cool and rewarding to discover what you’re capable of. (real talk)
After paying out our army of student marketers, we were left with just over two-hundred grand.
As seniors in college. Damn that felt good.
We proved to ourselves that we could solve problems, big problems for big companies, with hardly any resources.
It just took guts, and focus, both of which we had in abundance.
So what’d we do with the money?
At first, nothing. But we knew this was our chance to start our own thing, and we weren’t going to blow it.
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Or maybe we would, we really didn’t know, but what we did know was it was time to take a goliath, yacht-sized risk, because that’s how we’d challenge ourselves most.
We needed a problem to fix.
B-school had taught us that much -- to look at real problems that needed solving, and to deliver 10x value to people’s lives with a solution.
We dug into our own lives. We put our routines and habits under a microscope.
We talked about things in life that needed to be better, from the pet peeves to the that-needs-to-change-right-fucking-nows.
We wanted to know what made us tick, and what ticked us off.
Most of our brainstorming happened atop the back stairs of our fraternity house. The California sun beating down on our necks, sounds of kids skating past on their way to class, and the feeling of our feet sticking to spilled alcohol from nights before made for an abundantly creative environment.
It took some time to land on the idea that would eventually become Nugg, but we agreed on criteria for our first venture early on.
-- Something that solved a problem we had personally
-- The problem had to affect a significant number of people
-- The industry our problem was found in needed to be growing, not slowing
-- Our solution to the problem had to improve people’s lives in dramatic fashion
-- Something we could make a nice chunk of change from, and have fun doing it
Our first idea we called Greekbase. It was to be a technology solution for Greek life on college campuses, allowing students to seamlessly connect, organize events, and manage their organization’s members and payments, among other things.
We liked it, but we didn’t love it.
We realized it would at best be a “nice to have” for college students, but not a “must have,” and that didn’t sit well with us.
How we decided to start Nugg
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^ Kidding, obviously.
As we continued dissecting our lives for things that frustrated us and made life harder, there was something we missed time and time again.
It had been staring us in the face for years!
Back then, Kam and I were making weekly trips to LA Wonderland, our favorite downtown cannabis dispensary. We were like kids in a candy store.
You’d see rows of glass jars packed with sticky buds, shelves jammed with edibles of every kind you could imagine, and ceiling-tall murals of Bob Marley, Snoop Dogg, and other marijuana mavens plastered across the walls. It blew our minds, it was awesome.
But it wasn’t all awesome.
The place itself and the pot products housed within were inspiring, but the process leading up to your face-to-face with a budtender was an absolute mess.
If you’ve been to a popular LA dispensary, you know.
Even for middle of the day visits, we’d find the parking lot packed, the lobby packed, and once past the security guards and through two separate doors, the first thing we’d see were the backs of 30-40 people’s heads.
By the time we got to the front of the line, our legs ached, our excitement for the smoke sesh to come was gone, and we’d feel obligated to choose what we wanted as fast as possible out of courtesy for the 40 people now behind us waiting their turn.
There were obvious issues with the whole thing.
We had gone through the motions probably a hundred times, yet somehow we never thought to consider cannabis an option for our business venture.
We still don’t know why. Maybe it was too rebellious, too against-the-grain, too risky. Too stupid?
Maybe we secretly saw our own cannabis use as something not right, something temporary to be looked down on; certainly not deserving of any professional pursuits.
Or maybe we just enjoyed it so much we couldn’t ever think anything bad of it.
It may have been all of those things, or one, or none. The bottom line is, we finally put it under the microscope.
Hey man, what's your problem?
Over the next few months, we could have made visiting dispensaries an olympic sport.
We visited hundreds, maybe thousands, and paid attention to the experiences they offered.
Some were so-so, but most were wretched, so we turned our attention to cannabis delivery options.
Turns out, marijuana delivery was even more hit-or-miss than walking into a storefront.
At the time, anyone who delivered weed took orders strictly over the phone, which sucked.
If you were lucky enough for a delivery service to pick up the phone the first time, you’d learn that their online menu was out of date, that their prices had changed, and that the person on the line had no idea what the hell they were talking about when it came to recommending products.
We quickly learned just how screwed up access to cannabis really was.
Here we were, college kids with hardly a care in the world, and even we hated the cannabis buying experience. We knew people who had day-jobs, kids to care for, and other grown-up things to tend to must hate it even more.
Ain’t nobody got time for dat.
We took this revelation -- the understanding of a problem -- back to our group brainstorming sessions, and the pieces started fitting together.
Here was a problem that we had ourselves, that we knew affected a ton of people, that would only become an even bigger problem for more people (states like Colorado, Alaska, and Washington were then passing recreational cannabis laws), and was something we knew we could make a fun living from if executed well.
Our criteria were met, and we gave birth to the idea that would become Nugg. (we were in like our 6th trimester, about time this baby popped)
Our original goal was to make access to cannabis easy, enjoyable, and reliable for more people by bringing an “on-demand” experience to the cannabis shopping process.
We saw ourselves as the future “GrubHub for marijuana,” an online marketplace that would connect cannabis consumers and sellers and facilitate a streamlined experience.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Remember those failures I referenced early on? Here’s one of them, and it almost killed our business before it ever got off the ground.
Partnering with dispensaries = a complete shit-show
We were three dudes, now with a vision (sort of). But that didn’t mean other people shared our vision.
After all, as hoomans we all see the world a little (or a lot) differently. It’s in our nature.
We tell ourselves stories and narratives that make it easier to make sense of the world and our place in it. And we usually spend our time with people who share similar worldviews. But in business, you don’t always have that luxury.
We thought it would be a piece of cake to get dispensaries to list their menus on our site.
After all, we were promising them new customers and ways to streamline their operations, right?
Well, technically we didn’t have a website yet. We didn’t even have an engineer who could build a website, but that wasn’t going to stop us from selling the crap out of our idea.
The beginning was a shit-show.
Why? Because we learned exactly how most dispensaries operate behind the scenes.
Here’s what we uncovered:
-- Most dispensaries didn’t know what the f@#k they’re doing
-- Most dispensaries didn’t know what the f@#k they’re doing
-- Most dispensaries didn’t know what the f@#k they’re doing
Pretty deep, right?
Now, it’s not like we expected everyone in a 20-year black-market industry to be dressed in white linen sporting a monocle, but man were things bad.
Finding our first partners was a dreadful process.
Kam would go door-to-door to dispensary storefronts, while I manned the phones, cold-calling every delivery service with a pulse.
It soon became obvious that the issue wasn’t that dispensaries didn’t agree with our vision, it was that they had no vision themselves.
They operated at a level that would make little Sally selling lemonade at the end of your street look like the next freaking Elon Musk.
No inventory management. No order & fulfillment processes. No website (much less an online storefront).
Customer service? Never heard of it.
And seriously, the last thing we want to do is bash folks that took a sizeable risk just by choosing to operate in this industry.
But the truth of the matter is that many of these folks were precisely the problem.
They were in it for a quick buck, not for helping people access a potentially life-changing plant, and it showed.
For all the righteous people fighting to eliminate the negative stigma associated with cannabis, there were ten lining up to sling weed from their basements, pay $10 for a stonerific log, buy a listing on one of the popular cannabis sites and call it a day.
No, just no.
We weren’t going to let Nugg customers settle for the bottom of the barrel “operators,” because there’s no way we’d settle for those dispensaries ourselves.
Treat others like you’d want to be treated, am I right? My mum taught me that, thanks mum!
We were downtrodden and defeated, our energy sapped from months of meetings and calls. Honestly, we started to lose hope this would work at all.
We asked ourselves how we were going to create a revolutionary cannabis experience if the suppliers we worked with couldn’t hold up their end of the deal?
Then we met Mike.
Mike is a monster of a man. He stands 6’10”, weighs at least 250 lbs, and commands a presence that would make a sumo wrestler think twice about slapping titties with him.
Mike is also the owner of Fast and Friendly, now one of the largest cannabis delivery services in California, with a presence that stretches from Central California all the way down to the Mexican border.
Mike knows what’s up.
He understands good business and treating customers right. He knows his brand isn’t just what people see on the outside, but how authentic and reliable his operations are on the inside.
From his guts to his skin, he’s the real deal.
Mike gave us hope. Hope that amongst the 1,500+ dispensaries and delivery services in Los Angeles, there were more like him.
As it turns out, Mike gave us more than just hope.
He handed over to us on a silver platter what would become our greatest asset, our core competency, our competitive advantage, our mojo baby yeaaahhhh!!!
He made us realize that the fact that so many dispensaries had no f@#king idea what they were doing was actually a blessing.
As a marketplace, it meant all we had to do was weed out the bad apples, the bottom-shelf buds, and focus all our energy on sourcing reliable dispensary partners that “got it.”
We’d become a curated marketplace, instead of a free-for-all.
We’d become the place where anyone could purchase cannabis with the utmost confidence that their order would be accepted, accurately filled, and delivered (or pre-packaged for pickup) in a timely and professional manner.
Finding those operators wouldn’t be easy, but we knew it would set us apart and deliver more value to you, the customer, than anyone else could.
We set out with renewed energy to find dispensaries and delivery services that held themselves to higher standards.
Keep in mind, this was still pre-launch, pre-beta, pre-anything. Were were nowhere, nobodies, with nothing to show (yet).
Flusshhhhh, garble garble, anddddd it’s gone!
That’s $35,000 being flushed down the toilet.
Want to talk about failure, like real failure?
Take yourself back (throwback, yo!) to your most gut-wrenching failure. Picture yourself wherever you were, and let the emotions you felt come flooding back.
Then ask yourself -- “did it make me stronger?”
That’s the funny thing about failure. It tears you down, then builds you up, often without you knowing it.
It’s how you react to failure that defines you and your future. But in the moment, recognizing that isn’t easy, it never is.
Our first gut-wrenching failure almost killed us. Figuratively, and in an alternate Rick-and-Morty-like dimension, probably literally too.
Here’s what went down.
As marketing-savvy, first-time entrepreneurs, we knew nothing about creating a web application.
We ended up wasting a nice chunk of change by outsourcing development of our v1 product to a gentleman in India who had perfected his craft at stringing novice business owners along with grand promises of a final product to come.
By March, 2015, we had contracted with 5 premium Los Angeles dispensaries and 6 or 7 delivery services to begin taking online orders on our official launch date, which was set for April 20th (obviously).
Hell, we had even promised a free pizza with every delivery order.
Launch day: t-minus 48 hours
Leading up to the date, we got some incredible mentions in the press.
The LA Times did a story on us, USA Today picked it up, and we were mentioned on a bunch of cannabis media sites. Wins all around.
We were stoked to finally have our shot at helping people buy cannabis better.
There was just one problem. One, goliath, yacht-sized problem...
Come April 18th, we still had no finished product, no website, nowhere for people to see what we had promised would be ready in less than 48 hours.
We began to sweat.
We didn’t sleep a wink those next two days, and things got heated.
One of us threw a 200 pound speaker down two flights of stairs. I won’t say who, it’s not important, the thing still worked, but that’s how crazy things got.
Our developer promised we’d have a ready-product, but from their back and forths, Collin wasn’t so confident.
4/20 rolled around, launch day.
1am, 2am, 4am, then 7am, and still no working website.
We were, to put it bluntly, totally fucked.
We saw streams of traffic hitting our domain, emails came flooding in asking how to place an order, and we were sitting in Room 5 with our thumbs up our asses, speechless.
After a few hours that felt more like days, Kam, Collin, and I emerged from our stupefied daze. We had damage control to do.
We threw up an email signup form on the site, and asked everyone to provide us their address.
If we couldn’t help people get their 4/20 fix, we needed to show them we still cared.
After all, these were our first customers, and we were failing them in extravagant fashion.
If you were one of those first eager customers, please accept our sincerest apologies for letting you down.
We hope you gave us another shot, and if you’re here now, I imagine you did <3
We still ordered over 400 pizzas that day.
Any size, any toppings, whatever the customer wanted, for free. People were delighted, and many said they’d become loyal customers when we did have a product ready for them.
So we saved a little face, but our morale, our resolve, had taken a beating worse than Harry Potter getting pwned by an iron bludger while trying to catch the snitch.
We weren’t dead, but our limbs had been ripped from their sockets and our minds turned to mush.
This was our first big lesson as entrepreneurs, as humans trying to create something remarkable for other humans. The lesson?
There’s a**HUGE**difference between what you say and what you do.
Talk is cheap without action.
Words. Action. Two totally different things. The great equalizer for what you say, is how you will execute.
And even then, even when your execution seems flawless, stuff can (and will) go wrong. That’s just the nature of being human, of doing business, of caring about what you put out in the world.
And if you do fuck up, fess up to it, own it, and make it right however you can. You’d be surprised at how forgiving people can be as long as you’re up-front and honest.
Lessons learned. (ish)
The pivot
Fast forward to July, 2015.
We had fired our outsourced developer, and after plowing through 6 new developers, found a beast of an engineer who cranked out a v1 of our product in a matter of weeks.
So finally, we had a working website.
I never said it was pretty, I said it worked :)
In the meantime, Kam and I had gone full-force doing market research.
We stood in dispensary waiting rooms and interviewed every person we could. We surveyed everyone who had given us their email after our “launch” day. We had hundreds of phone conversations with patients of every demographic imaginable.
We wanted to know who these people were, why they wanted to order cannabis online, and what their deepest problems were.
We did the same thing with dispensary owners and employees. Thank god we did.
Without going into nail-biting detail, we learned that storefront dispensaries weren’t ready to execute on pre-packaging orders for in-store pickup. To our surprise, patients didn’t see it as that big a value add either (they liked being able to scope different strains and products in-store), so we scrapped the order-ahead-for-pickup model before it ever got started.
Another huge lesson there: listen to your customers, let them guide you so you can guide them.
Think about that for a second. What are your deepest frustrations? What keeps you up at night? Has any company ever asked you those questions, much less tried to provide you a solution?
Probably some, and you probably love them for it, but it’s rare, right?
At the time, it was almost impossible to see, but by listening to our customers before we ever had a product, we learned the value of creating real, honest relationships with people, and in letting those relationships steer conversations about what our product/solution should do for them.
It wasn’t about us, it never was, it was about you.
So that left us with a delivery only model, which we liked better anyways.
It would allow us to focus on doing one thing super well instead of doing multiple things not super well. (I guess B-school did teach us a thing or two)
It was time for battle, face paint and all.
Over the next six months, we brought 50 delivery service partners on board.
They were scattered throughout California, but they were solid partners, able to offer decent experiences to customers. Not great, but decent, and enough to get us some initial clout with you, the customer.
Up to this point, Kam, Collin, and I were still a three man show.
We handled every customer inquiry, made every sales call, wrote every email, sent every invoice, you get the picture… It was a mountain of fun, and that made us want to move faster, to deliver more value to more people in more places.
But then we hit a roadblock. And it was all thanks to that no good motha truckin’ chicken from our childhood.
The chicken and the egg
So a chicken crossed the road, and the sucker stopped dead in our path, feathers furled and eyes squinted down low as if to tell us “YOU SHALL NOT PASS.”
We had plowed right into the classic “chicken and the egg” problem. Most marketplace startups do. The issue comes down to supply and demand.
We didn’t have enough dispensaries for patients to order from, and we didn’t have enough customers to keep dispensaries interested in staying on our platform.
You guys were pissed that you couldn’t order, and dispensaries were pissed they had wasted time setting up their account and uploading their menu.
We hadn’t DONE what we SAID we would.
Defeat, again. Dispensaries started dropping off like flies.
The ones who stayed on hardly updated their menu, which meant customers who ordered from them didn’t come back. We had hoped to create a seamless buying experience, but all we had created thus far was inconvenience.
For months, a lot of our customers left us, and never came back…
But a lot of you stayed as well. And those who did stay defied much of what a formal business education told us was possible.
Our product was shit, and so was our service.
But instead of our email reply rates going down, they went up. Instead of the number of orders going down, they went up.
And you started reaching out to us.
You called the phone number on our Yelp page (because we didn’t have it anywhere else) just to chat and offer feedback. You started texting us, and hitting us up on our barren wasteland of a Twitter account.
Many of you put us in touch with dispensary owners that you knew.
Like whaaattt?!?! We hadn’t done anything to deserve your love and help. That’s what we thought. But as more and more conversations happened, you started making something clear to us.
We were providing you value.
We had somehow improved the way you got cannabis delivered.
Even when many of you only had one or two dispensaries to order from in your area. Even when our site bugged out and made you waste a bunch of time. Even when we were 20 or 30 minutes late to answer your support requests. And much, much more...
Even after all that bad, you still thought we were good, and had a hunch we could be great.
You believed in us and what what we were doing, but you went a step further and involved yourselves in fighting for our success.
And sure enough, after thousands of conversations, you, our beaming friends and fans, came through and helped us create something great.
How you created the most badass doctor evaluation platform ever
Here’s how it happened.
More and more of you started telling family and friends about Nugg, and more and more feedback rolled in about the services we were, and weren’t, providing.
Amidst a tumultuous sea of advice and “please for the love of god do this” requests that seemed to involve every aspect of our business, down to the very last email, one thing stood out in particular.
We’d never have guessed it.
People were having issue with getting their doctor’s recommendation to use medical cannabis. We thought - “How could this be? There’s a freaking 420 doctor on every street corner in Los Angeles, it’s so easy to get a rec!”
Turns out, it wasn’t all that easy.
The process for getting a medical marijuana card was at best inconvenient and at worst, a whole lot of bad. People had real issue with it.
We’d get emails weekly, then daily, then multiple times a day from customers asking if we could help them locate a reliable and professional doctor.
After hearing horror story after horror story of patients wasting time, energy, and money visiting unreliable doctors in sketchy neighborhoods, we knew there had to be a better way to help serve them.
The vast majority of these terrible experiences were being delivered by self-proclaimed “weed doctors,” so we dug into California’s laws to find what made such loose practices possible.
What we found was incredibly ambiguous language related to how and when doctors could issue recommendations for medical cannabis.
We learned that the majority of primary care physicians didn’t have the experience or courage to issue recommendations as long as cannabis was federally classified as a schedule I drug, and that insurance wouldn’t cover cannabis-related medical costs.
But we learned something else too.
We discovered that California’s telehealth laws, which allow doctors and patients to consult over the internet, had no limitations for cannabis.
What surprised us was why nobody was taking advantage of such an incredible convenience.
We put on our research caps and eventually found a couple one-off doctors trying to do telemedicine evaluations, but they had no visibility online or in public media, so accessing them was next to impossible.
With that, we knew what we had to do. Can you see where I’m going with this?
We immediately set out to solve all the problems customers had already communicated to us -- long wait times, overpriced evaluations, uncomfortable offices in sketchy parts of town, and an utter lack of personalized care and attention.
A couple months and many sleepless nights later, NuggMD was born, a telemedicine platform that lets people be evaluated for medical marijuana online.
So, what is NuggMD, and who's behind it? on Vimeo
We set our price at $39, still one of the industry’s cheapest prices for a doctor’s recommendation.
We made the process simple to understand, and ridiculously easy for anyone to get real-time answers if they had questions or concerns.
And we hunted down professional, friendly doctors who could deliver reliable information to patients about their potential cannabis use.
It wasn’t perfect, but we tested the service first with those of you who who had hinted it was something you needed.
You loved it!
We got emails, phone calls, text messages, snail mail, you name it, all thanking us for making life easy and comfortable.
It’s hard to describe the feelz our team got in those early days of NuggMD.
The Nugg marketplace was chugging along, but this was something else.
For the first time, our customers were shouting from the rooftops that we had improved their lives 10x.
It felt like a home-run, and reminded us why we had started out on this journey in the first place -- to solve a big problem that affected a ton of people in a growing industry.
You see how this isn’t just our journey anymore? It’s all of ours. We couldn’t have come up with NuggMD if you didn’t care enough to get involved.
When we were stumbling like drunken idiots, you hoisted us up and got us home safe and sound.
And then we uncovered NuggMD to the world, and have since helped over 100,000 people in California and New York get access to a better life.
It starts with easy, affordable access to cannabis, and that’s something we’ll never compromise on.
All the credit for that goes to you. Nearly 1 of every 2 people who use NuggMD end up referring a friend (or several) to do the same, and that created rocket-ship growth for us.
At least that’s what it felt like for entrepreneurial noobs like us.
And now we realize, what WE do should come from what YOU say.
It’s better that way. We learn from you, and (hopefully) you learn from us.
By the way, we’re not even sure we like that word. Entrepreneur. It’s a bit restrictive.
We’re creators, and our creations come from a collaborative effort with you, our customers.
Maybe that makes us all entrepreneurs?
Bring in the cavalry
Let’s jump to August, 2016 in our quest to guide people through a new way to experience cannabis.
The explosive growth we had with NuggMD solved the chicken part of our chicken and egg problem.
Or are customers the egg in this story? We’ll say you’re the egg, in case we have any vegans in the house that don’t wanna be a chicken. (respect)
In any case, we now had a steady stream of customers wanting to get delivery from top-notch dispensaries, but still not enough dispensaries to order from. And we struggled to keep up the quality of our customer service with all the new customers we were seeing.
It was time to grow our team. We needed human capital.
If we didn’t move fast, the entire operation could fall apart, and we’d fail to deliver on our promises.
Fack that, not gonna happen mate.
We knew who we needed.
A beastly sales rep (or two) that could close deals even if they were deaf and blind. And a few killer customer support reps so filled with kindness and compassion that they could fart rainbows.
Job posts were up, and candidates started rolling in.
Countless incredible folks wanted to join our cause, and for great reasons. To help move legalization forward, to change the stigma, to educate people about cannabis, to stick it to the man, to give more people access to a better life.
Even that, just the sheer number of people excited to get involved in cannabis and with our company, was validation that what we were doing was important.
Alas, we could only hire a few. For now at least.
So we had our team, and it was time to double-down on the two things we knew people needed.
Dispensaries to order from, and freaking phenomenal customer service.
On the service side, we introduced (again, by recommendations from you) a live-chat feature for NuggMD, so customers could have their questions answered and concerns addressed in real-time.
Then we started making personal phone calls to people the day after they got their recommendation, just to make sure they knew what to do with it, and to say hi.
It’s all about the relationship, you know?
And to top it off, we recently convinced a couple of our doctors to take the night shift, which has helped people who have jobs with odd-hours get a recommendation when they couldn’t otherwise.
Great customer service, check. (always a work in progress though, we’ve recently introduced the live-chat feature for the Nugg marketplace too)
On the sales side, Kevin and Charlie took total ownership of their new roles and have absolutely killed it.
These geniuses took us from 50 partner dispensaries to over 200, TWO HUNDRED, in less than seven months.
Nugg is now the largest cannabis delivery marketplace in the world.
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People trust us to help get them cannabis in over 150 cities, with over 40,000 products to choose from at over 300 different dispensaries.
Enough dispensaries for customers to order from, check.
Chicken and the egg problem, gone. Thank the lordy lord, I’m so over this metaphor.
Which brings us to today, and more importantly, the future.
Sure, I left out some minor details -- like how our payment processor dropped us without notice and we were forced to jimmy-rig a temporary payment system with bitcoin, or how we forgot the address listed on our Yelp business page pointed people to our fraternity house (and believe me, people showed up, cash in-hand, ready to make a purchase at good ol’ Room 5). Or the time we got not one, not two, but three cease and desist letters all in the same week. Pffftt.
And the reality is, the unsexy stuff -- all the failures and obstacles along the way -- matter.
They help you grow, they keep you humble, they remind us we’re only human.
Do you think life would be much fun if everything came easy? Fuck no. A good challenge, a mission, a purpose, surrounded by people you love, makes life worth living.
But some things should come easy, like getting access to cannabis. Inhale the good shit, exhale the bullshit, that should come easy.
What we want Nugg to become
So let’s talk future.
As a company, as a community, as a guide to people who deserve better access to cannabis, we doing ‘iigghhhttt.
But we can be better, we can always be better for our customers. Plus, we’ve been listening, and you’ve told us what we need to be better at.
For one, we implemented a process for removing dispensaries from our site who don’t deliver great experiences, but it’s admittedly not good enough. There’s still too many times dispensaries are unreliable, and that’s unacceptable.
If I was a customer (which I am, I order from Nugg all the time, that shit is so convenient), there’s fat chance I’d be coming back for more after having a poor experience with a dispensary.
Can you blame me, or you? Of course not.
We live in a day in age where you can push a button and get toilet paper to your doorstep in an hour, so why should cannabis be any different?
Just because this industry has been in the stone age for the last twenty years, doesn’t mean it has to stay that way for another twenty. Or even two.
Today, we’re creating systems that will give only the best delivery services the honor of serving you through Nugg, so that there’s never even an opportunity to choose wrong.
But, as all good things do, it’ll take time.
Second, we’re working to overhaul the experience you have on our site.
Maybe we’ve just gotten exhausted staring at our fossil of a site, but it’s time for a makeover. One that not only makes it look better, but makes you feel smarter using it.
No more long loading screens, no more issues with scrolling, no more address bugs, and no more errors trying to apply a promo code.
That’s what we’re saying, and that’s what we’re going to do. Just. You. Wait.
Third, information & education.
We’ve had content trickling onto our blog (mostly reviews of products you can find on Nugg) with no real direction, but thanks to your input, we now know what you want to know. And we shalllll deliver!
From first-time patient guides to expert tips about refining your cannabis use, you’ll get access to industry-leading knowledge that is fact-checked until our fingers fall off. It’s already begun.
Fourth, well fourth’s a secret. You’re gonna love it.
But probably most importantly, we need to be better with communication and appreciation.
We’ve been so busy (and admittedly, spread too thin) trying to make our product something people love to use and that makes getting cannabis easier, enjoyable, and more reliable that we’ve completely ignored the beating HEART that’s at the center of all this.
It’s this, it’s you, taking the time to read what we have to say.
It’s the relationships we’ve cultivated with each and every customer over the past two years.
It’s the shared journey we’ve embarked on together; something that’s fluid and constantly changing for the better.
Of course, it’s easy for us to know where Nugg is headed, but you, our customers -- who’ve become irreplaceable in creating our success -- have been left in the dark.
You chat with us daily, you use our site weekly, and we respond with our heart and soul, but we hardly ever thank you for all you’ve done for us or inform you of what’s next to come.
We don’t tell you nearly enough, but from now on, we will. Here, in emails, on social media, over the phone, everywhere. We want to connect with you in a way that breeds love, authenticity, and purpose for all of us.
So -- THANK YOU.
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And it doesn’t stop at appreciation. What also interests our team moving forward is collaboration .
You’ve taught us more than you could imagine, and it’s time we stop taking your genius for granted. It’s time we bring you onto the team.
Moving forward, we’re officially promoting YOU -- our fans, our customers, our friends -- to the role of CEO.
We’re putting you in charge because it’s not about what we want, it’s about what you want.
Value isn’t created through a linear process, it happens through experimentation, iteration, and innovation.
It’s about discovering shared value through authentic, consistent, and intentional relationships between us and you, and between you and other members of our community.
Together, let’s grab the reigns of this industry and make cannabis something that works for everyone, something that boosts the quality of people’s lives tenfold.
I’m not just talking about creating the most incredible cannabis shopping experience the world has ever seen, we’ll do that no problem.
I’m talking about changing the world. One person, one conversation, one puff at a time.
It starts with letting others know about your cannabis use, and how it helps you be better.
It means publicly showing your support for local cannabis businesses.
It means attending city meetings to help steer industry regulations in a direction that makes sense for all parties involved.
It means recognizing that we all have a role to play in taking cannabis mainstream, and that that role should not be taken lightly.
I want you to imagine a day -- a day very soon -- in which any American has the freedom to utilize cannabis for their own devices, whatever they may be. To heal their emotional distress, to remedy their aching limbs, to spark their appetite, to jump-start their creativity, the list goes on and on...
The use-case matters, but not as much as having unrestricted access to pursue those use cases.
Nugg is here to fight for that access, to reveal cannabis for what it truly is, and to unite individuals and communities in the process.
We’re here to give people a better life.
We hope we’ve done that for you, and we hope you’ll continue helping us do it for more people.
Here’s to us.
<3 Nugg <3
Cannabis Evaluations
Nugg is the easiest way to schedule your cannabis evaluation. Simply provide your availability and some basic contact information, and a patient support specialist will find an appointment for you with a licensed physician in your area.
We’ll send you a confirmation email within 24 hours with a few appointment times to choose from, pricing, and other info. Then confirm your appointment time, and you’re all set!
How does a cannabis evaluation work?
Consultations are private, discreet, and take about 20 minutes. The doctor will administer a basic exam, check vital signs, discuss your medical history and any other information you provide, then determine if a medicinal marijuana recommendation is right for you.
What should I bring to my appointment?
- - Valid California ID/Driver’s license or proof of residency.
- - Any medical records/prescription medications you may have that pertain to your condition.
- - Any prior medical marijuana recommendations.
Is this information accessible to government agencies or my employer?
No. Our partner physicians follow strict HIPAA guidelines to ensure that all patient records are kept in the strictest confidentiality and shared only with dispensaries you order from (for patient verification purposes).
What happens after my evaluation?
Once you complete your evaluation, upload your new doctor’s recommendation in the “Account” tab, and we'll send you a $10 credit toward your first order on Nugg!
How it Works
Browse cannabis products from reliable local dispensaries
- Sativa, indica, and hybrid strains
- Edibles
- Concentrates
- Tinctures, and more.
Get verified instantly
- Safe & Secure
- Secure HIPAA compliant & SSL-encrypted verification system.
- One-time verification
Order
- Get an ETA after placing your order.
Get delivery to your doorstep
- Pay cash or credit upon delivery (all transactions are dealt with the collective)
- Dispensaries who accept credit will have a designation on their dispensary listing and you'll be able to select it upon checkout.
About
Nugg isn’t just an immediate connection to premium delivery collectives in your area, it’s the ultimate convenience in getting the medicine you need. We've got you covered from checkout to inhale, or bite, or whatever else...
Nugg lets medical marijuana patients register with premium, lawfully operated collectives in their area, then place cannabis orders straight from their smartphone. Orders are delivered within an hour, and text notifications keep patients in the loop as their order is processed.
We created Nugg to solve our own problems as mmj patients, but now we’re turning things over to you. If you’re a qualified patient, here’s what joining Nugg gets you:
- Access to Nugg’s network of medical marijuana collectives
- Instant, one-tap registration with any nearby collective (that’s right, no more sending over your information via text/email)
- California’s largest selection of strains, edibles, concentrates, and more
- Convenient ordering in three taps
- Delivery within an hour
- Exclusive deals and giveaways only available to Nugg members
Just as our partner dispensaries would put it, “our patients matter.” At Nugg, we’re putting everything we’ve got into making cannabis purchases fast and easy for patients, anytime, anywhere.
Marijuana Delivery, MMJ Dispensaries Near Me | Nugg
Request sent!
Thanks for using Nugg to request your evaluation.
Keep an eye on your inbox! A patient support specialist will email you shortly with a few appointment times to choose from. Just confirm one that works for you.
Also, check out the "Doctor Request Info" tab in the menu for more information on the appointment.
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