Hashatron president John Digertt (right) with vice president Brian Parcon.
John Digertt
Age: 31
Title: President
Company: Hashatron
John Digertt wasn’t planning on joining the cannabis industry until he got to talking with a friend who was working in cannabis and realized they were doing solventless extraction by hand. Out of curiosity, he reached out to a handful of other operators only to find that none of them were using an automated process, but would be interested in getting one.
“With my background in automated equipment fabrication and sales, and seeing the process performed firsthand, I had an idea of what could be done to refine the process and streamline things,” Digertt says. “I built a rough prototype with some repurposed tanks from the original site and delivered a working unit a few weeks later.”
Digertt says the prototype he built “loosely resembled a robot from the ’50s” and was jokingly dubbed the “Hashatron.” When the same company asked for a second Hashatron, Digertt used his family-owned equipment fabrication facility to work out the kinks of his initial prototype. He opted to keep the name for his new side business, which he launched with his close friend and Hashatron vice president Brian Parcon in 2018.
Digertt and Parcon spent their free time after work creating a second generation Hashatron. After the duo completed the project, Digertt posted the 2.0 version on Instagram and found the market was much larger than they originally envisioned.
No longer just a passion project, Hashatron is now Digertt’s full-time gig with its own full staff that has fabricated more than 26 systems for both craft and commercial operators across 12 states.
“I am very excited to see this company grow from a joke of a side project to where it is today,” Digertt says. “We grow and grow every year and the projects keep getting larger.”