Pot entrepreneurs vie for seed money in competition

Five Boston University-affiliated teams, including Dope Movez and GrowPro, will vie for $10,000 and free consulting services next month in the Cannabis Startup Competition for Ancillary Businesses.

Dope Movez is focused on a platform for finding and hosting geotagged, cannabis-centric events such as edible tastings, festivals and concerts. GrowPro’s cultivation monitoring platform features a 360-degree camera on a gyroscopic track that’s capable of two- and threedimensional navigation, with software that enables climate control, irrigation and monitoring using an online dashboard.

The competition was open to BU students and alumni involved in startups to support the regulated cannabis industry. It’s sponsored by BU’s BUzz Lab and Green Lion Partners, a Denver business strategy firm that will provide the free consulting.

Other finalists include SmartHarvest, whose “Canntainer” is a modular and stackable sustainable greenhouse in a shipping container. Hyasynth Bio engineers yeast strains that produce cannabinoids, the active compounds of cannabis. Cannabis Center of Excellence designs models to “impact medical, social, and economic outcomes, while addressing the opioid epidemic.”

The teams will make their pitches Nov. 14 at BU’s Questrom School of Business. Judges include Jamie Lewis, vice president of operations for iAnthus Capital, founder and CEO of Mountain Medicine and chief operating officer of Mayflower Medicinals; Charley Lax, managing general partner of GrandBanks Capital; attorney Kim Napoli, co-founder of The Hempest Inc.; and Andrew Thut, chief information officer at 4Front Capital Partners.