Steve AlbarranWhether they know it or not, roughly half of all licensed cannabis producers have their inventory and test results registered with Confident Cannabis. Steve Albarran, the company’s co-founder and co-CEO, helped lay the groundwork for a national cannabis wholesale platform by building software for the industry’s smallest population of businesses: labs.
“Right now, we have half of all the labs in the country using Confident Cannabis daily,” Albarran says. “Which means that half of the legal cannabis produced in the U.S. and half of all the legal cannabis producers and processors have accounts with Confident Cannabis. All that inventory comes through our platform every month.”
In late 2018, the company also launched a wholesale marketplace that complemented its lab software.
Along with co-founder and co-CEO Tony Lewis, Albarran developed the idea of Confident Cannabis in 2014 while attending grad school at Stanford University.
But as a dual citizen who spent his childhood in Mexico City, Albarran had a darker outlook on cannabis. Like many Americans, he was taught that drugs were bad, but in Mexico, he says, drugs are the root of all evils in the country.
“Really every problem Mexico has with the economy or the politics can be traced back to the drug cartels in some way,” Albarran says. “The illicit market is a horrible, evil thing in Mexico.”
He wanted to put his education toward doing good things for the world. At first cannabis clashed with his preconceived notions, but he saw the potential to help take power away from Mexican drug cartels.
“If I can help this industry thrive and help legal, ethical cannabis businesses take money from bad guys with guns in Mexico, that makes me really happy,” Albarran says. “It’s a very indirect, but direct way for me to feel like I am giving back to my country.”