I'm often asked why an ex-Google machine learning engineer would leave Silicon Valley's most prestigious AI projects to build a hemp delivery platform in Texas. The honest answer? Because the most interesting problems aren't always the sexiest ones.
The Moment That Changed Everything
In 2023, I was watching the Texas hemp market explode. Seven thousand dispensaries. Growing at 47% per year. A $5.5 billion market right in my backyard. But something didn't add up.
Despite this massive growth, there was zero compliant delivery infrastructure. Vendors were using DoorDash and Uber drivers who couldn't verify age. Forty percent of deliveries were failing. Vendors were hemorrhaging over $3,000 per week just from compliance failures alone.
Then Texas Senate Bill 3 dropped—threatening criminal penalties for age verification violations. I realized this wasn't a "move fast and break things" market. This was a market that needed bulletproof infrastructure from day one.
That's when I knew: someone needed to build the hard infrastructure first. Someone needed to apply Silicon Valley-caliber technical thinking to an industry desperately lacking it. And as an ML engineer with twelve years of software engineering experience and a Mathematics degree from UNT, I had the exact skillset this problem demanded.
The Contrarian Decision: Build Before Launch
Most startup advisors would tell you to launch an MVP in two weeks, get users, iterate fast. I did the opposite.
I spent ten months building before taking a single order. Ten months writing code, architecting systems, and building what I call the "SB3 Fortress"—a regulatory compliance infrastructure designed to survive the most hostile regulatory environment in the country.
People thought I was crazy. Why spend ten months building when you could be acquiring customers?
Here's why: In regulated industries, you don't get second chances. One compliance failure can shut you down permanently. One age verification miss can result in criminal penalties. One vendor with expired licenses can destroy your credibility overnight.
I wasn't building a food delivery app. I was building the trusted infrastructure for a $28 billion industry operating in a legal gray zone. The stakes were too high to get wrong.
What I Built: Series A Platform at Seed Stage
During those ten months, I built what most startups would need a twenty-person engineering team and $5 million in funding to create:
Five Production Applications
- Vendor Portal: Order fulfillment, shipping labels, inventory management, analytics
- Courier Portal: Route optimization, proof of delivery, earnings tracking
- Customer App: Product browsing, ordering, real-time delivery tracking
- Operations Dashboard: Real-time monitoring, compliance enforcement
- ETA Microservice: Google Maps integration for delivery predictions
The Backend Infrastructure
- FastAPI Python backend with PostgreSQL and read replicas
- Multi-tenant architecture with vendor isolation at the database level
- Auth0 JWT authentication with role-based access control
- Celery + Redis for background task processing
- Alembic for zero-downtime database migrations
- Comprehensive API documentation and 100% test coverage goals
The Compliance Fortress
This is where my background really mattered. I didn't just add compliance as a feature—I built the entire platform around it:
- Automated Certificate of Analysis (COA) management with QR code tracking
- Mandatory 21+ age verification at every delivery with photo documentation
- Middesk Know Your Business (KYB) integration for vendor verification
- License validation and automated expiration tracking
- Multi-state regulatory rules engine that adapts to different state laws
- Tamper-evident packaging verification with photo proof
- Audit trails for every transaction, every delivery, every compliance checkpoint
AI-Driven Operational Efficiency
Here's where my Google ML background became a force multiplier. I automated what traditionally requires massive teams:
- AWS Personalize for product recommendations
- Claude Code for content generation: six blog posts per day, twenty-two social posts per day
- Gemini for customer persona targeting
- n8n for workflow orchestration
- Total infrastructure cost: under $5,000 per month
A traditional marketing team producing that content volume would cost $450,000 annually. That's 73% cost reduction through AI automation.
Why Hemp? Why Logistics?
This question comes up in every investor conversation. The answer is multifaceted.
First, it's the perfect application of my skillset. Last-mile logistics involves route optimization, ETA prediction, inventory management, demand forecasting—all problems tailor-made for machine learning. Add regulatory compliance, and you've got a technical challenge that requires serious engineering depth.
Second, the market timing is perfect. The hemp market is growing at 47% annually, but it's operating with 1990s infrastructure. No one has built the delivery backbone this industry needs to go mainstream. That's a massive opportunity.
Third, the regulatory moat is real. The harder the regulatory environment, the stronger my competitive advantage. I built for Texas—arguably the most challenging state. When competitors see what we've built, they're looking at 12-18 months and $500,000 to $1 million to replicate. By then, we'll own the Texas market and be expanding to Florida and Georgia.
Finally, it aligns with my values. I'm not building this just for financial returns. Hemp and CBD products offer real wellness benefits to real people. But those benefits are meaningless if the products aren't safe, verified, and legally compliant. I'm building the infrastructure that makes safe access possible at scale.
The Mission: Delivering Wellness, Legally and Fast
That's HempDash's mission statement, and every word matters.
"Delivering Wellness" — We're in the wellness industry, not just cannabis-adjacent delivery. Our customers are seeking better sleep, pain relief, stress management. We're facilitating access to products that improve quality of life.
"Legally" — This isn't optional. Legal compliance isn't a checkbox; it's the foundation. Every vendor is verified. Every product has a Certificate of Analysis. Every delivery requires age verification. No exceptions.
"Fast" — Convenience matters. If compliance makes delivery slow and painful, people won't use it. That's where the AI-powered operations come in: we're faster than traditional delivery while being more compliant.
What's Next: The Path to Profitability
We're launching in Dallas-Fort Worth in Q1 2026 with ten committed vendors and a growing courier network. Our projections are conservative but compelling:
- 50,000 orders in Year One
- $3.24 million in Gross Merchandise Value
- Cash-flow positive by Q2 2026 (six months post-launch)
- EBITDA positive by Q3 2026 (nine months post-launch)
- 82% contribution margins
Then we expand to Austin and Houston in Q2-Q3 2026, leveraging the exact same infrastructure. Because we built multi-state compliance from day one, expansion is primarily a go-to-market challenge, not a technical one.
Long-term? We're not just a delivery app. We're building the compliance infrastructure and operational intelligence layer for the entire hemp supply chain. Think Shopify for compliant cannabis commerce. Think Stripe for hemp payments. Think the AWS of regulated wellness delivery.
Why This Matters: Beyond the Business
I could have stayed in Silicon Valley building the next AI chatbot or working on autonomous vehicles. Those are important problems. But they're crowded problems with hundreds of well-funded teams attacking them.
The hemp industry needs technical sophistication. It needs someone who can navigate regulatory complexity with the same rigor we apply to distributed systems architecture. It needs infrastructure that can scale from Texas to fifty states without breaking.
Most importantly, it needs someone who understands that compliance isn't a burden—it's the enabling technology that makes everything else possible.
I'm building HempDash because I believe that regulated industries deserve the same technical excellence that unregulated industries take for granted. I'm building it because vendors deserve infrastructure that protects them instead of exposing them to risk. I'm building it because couriers deserve tools that help them operate profitably. And I'm building it because consumers deserve safe, verified access to products that improve their lives.
That's why I left Google. That's why I spent ten months building before launching. And that's why I'm raising $750,000 to $1.2 million in seed funding—not to prove product-market fit, but to scale a proven platform through tested distribution channels.