the health issue
CANNASTAMP CEO & FOUNDER | TOM HELLER Tom Heller is the passionate CEO behind Cannabinder and Cannastamp. avisual guideforinterpreting cannabistestresults. Heller’s passion for Cannabis has combined with skills in coding and engineering to create a visual way of translating the terpenes inside a Cannabis product. A self-labeled Midwestern escapee, he moved to Seattle in 2016 and fell in love with the city and legal Cannabis. Cannastamp was born out of a personal experience with strain variability, and today the company has big goals for their stamp as an educational tool for consumers and businesses alike. We sat down to talk about how Cannabinder started, how to understand the Cannastamp, and what the future of terpene education looks like.
What inspired you to start thinking about terpene profiles and how they cause strain effects and variability?
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It has a connection to the first few months of legalization. That first holiday season after legalization we visited Seattle for Thanksgiving. My partner and I thought, Oh pot’s legal, let’s go buy some! This was really eye-opening and shocking from a midwestern mindset. We went and bought a product called Dirty Girl, and really really loved it! So when we moved out here later I went to find Dirty Girl, and this is when the saga began of not being able to find the same strain. I found myself driving large distances to try and find it, and realized that there had to be a way to solve this with data.
So, you were frustrated that the strain didn’t have the same results you were looking for? How did you translate this into a positive motivation? And how do you view Cannabis in your world?
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From the perspective of an engineering background, I knew that the problem had to be fixed with data. I had to be able to find out what’s in the Cannabis, so it evolved from this simple idea that this issue was fixable. Thinking of the plant as a whole, I came up with the concept and data, did the math and it worked! I want Dirty Girl but I can’t find it, but I can find whatever is on the market that has the same terpene profile! As far as how I view Cannabis personally, I see it as a plant that can have a lot of really powerful impacts in different ways, and so it presents the opportunity to really improve things in a wellness fashion.
you found a way to translate the science and data into a simple way for consumers and budtenders to translate experiences without overwhelming them with science? I would say it’s the visual representation of the experience you’ll have with the product. It’s hard to interpret the visualization of chemistry or to think about the percent of humulene in
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Showcasing a product with the Cannastamp. a strain, and you don’t necessarily know what it means. But if you’ve seen something like a Cannastamp, you can remember the shapes and colors. The problem with Cannabis is that once it’s in a bag it’s abstract. You can’t experience it or even smell it! So Cannastamp can be the visual nose.
As a visual nose and real life tool, how do you see the Cannastamp helping with Cannabis as a health and wellness tool? I’ve come to view this as there are certain chemovars and phenotypes that make me feel a certain way. There’s a time and place where I like to smoke pot and code, but some strains send me to space camp. I don’t want to have to deal with inconsistency, and once you’ve found what really works for you we can repeat that. Once that data is in place, we can look at what other Cannabis products can help with different aspects of life. It comes back to the origin story, and what happened when I wrote the data and needed to visualize it. The idea that resonated was the concept of playing cards or stamp collecting. To look at things side-by-side, the visual terpene data translates into experiences that become repeatable.
What problems do you see with how people buy pot currently, and how does Cannastamp help the budtender and consumer at the same time? The consumer experience right now is walking into a dispensary and asking for indica, sativa or hybrid strains, but what does that mean? Everybody is reaching for terms that aren’t defined, and many stores are interested in volume and speed. The Cannstamp tools give them an easy way to
INTERVIEW BY WES ABNEY @BEARDEDLORAX | PHOTO BY DANIEL BERMAN @BERMANPHOTOS