Tiny little Calyx Bio-Ventures (CYX.V), the beaten down, forgotten, stigma-attached several time conversion that nobody believed in any more and that barely made it into our marijuana company round-up because ‘who knew what the hell was going on there’ play… is officially back.
On Monday, the company released news that clarified what it’s big software move was that had seemingly been in the works for months but only now was coming to light.
LEAFHub will be Canada’s first real-time, mass communication consumer cloud that provides the Canadian Medical Marijuana user a safe and secure forum to discuss, compare, evaluate, or otherwise locate and comment on the various products available in the market today. “We are confident that over time, the LEAFHub Cloud will become a very popular destination with both consumers and licensed producers,” states President and CEO, Roger Forde.
Okay, so they’re doing a community weed chat space? Just as Leafly and Lift and CanvasRX and any number of other entities are already doing?
Well, not so much. Forde gave me a look at the site, which didn’t give me much more to go on since he wouldn’t give me a password, which I’m sure he thought was hilarious given my release a few weeks back of the secret location of his staging server. I guess we’re even now.
I’ve registered, so I’ll let folks know when and if I actually get into the thing.
But in the meantime, here’s what I know, scraped from conversations with Forde and others.
His system, for which he owns the source code, is a direct, multi-user, real-time exchange environment for industry professionals, and adapts to multiple business environments fairly simply.
Think an install of the gargantuan tech success Slack (which we use at Equity.Guru happily and productively) for everyone in your industry, rather than just the people in your office. A place where growers, dispensaries, patients, lawyers, etc etc, can chat in real time, share documents, and perhaps even do business.
What is Slack? I’m glad you asked. It’s a replacement for about 200 other communication tools your people use.
If I could invest in Slack, I would, because it’s genuinely a killer app. In chatting briefly with Forde last week, he referred to his software as ‘Slack for industries’, then quickly talked about baseball as if he’d said too much. Sure, go Jays, but what was that you just said about…?
So if that’s true, Forde has developed a tool that will allow people to do business with other people in a secure place, where you can upload files, connect to email, the whole thing is searchable, categorizable (not a word), instant, public when necessary, private when not, and then there’s the option to actually allow businesses and professionals to handle commerce online, between themselves.
I’m not saying Forde has done any of this, because he won’t tell me, but what he has said looks like this a bunch.
Calyx has not released too much info because it’s still in pre-alpha, and also because what’s allowed in such a forum changes from place to place, depending on the local law, which is also rapidly changing from place to place. But that’s not a terrible thing as Calyx’s software is, the company says, truly customizable.
For example, in Canada, if Aphria (APH.V) and Supreme (SL.C) had people in the chat talking to patients, there’s only so much promoting of their own brand they can do, so you might restrict that sort of thing. On CanvasRX, a weed review portal which has been bought by Aurora (ACB.C), the site has to include every LP, not just Aurora’s products, to stay in a healthy place with Health Canda rules, so LeafHub may also need to limit company promotion.
In Washington State, where there are no marketing rules like Canada’s, it could be open season – but sales between folks who weren’t licensed would be forbidden and considered an illicit drug deal. In California, if things go fully recreational, that’ll be the center of the pot universe and weed will be hanging from the ceiling in Wal-Mart.
Calyx is starting LeafHub in Canada, which is where the company is based, and personally, I’m not so sure that’s the best plan as the California vote looms and considering the restrictions on business up here, but it’s one Forde defends as a good proving ground for his product.
Here’s what I do know: I thought Calyx was going to soft slide back from it’s $0.10 price to $0.08 and beyond once the general weed rush calmed, but it instead blew through $0.12, which is close to 10x what it was two weeks ago.
I also know Forde has been talking about his ‘killer app’ for a year now, and tested early elements in the commercial real estate field with pilot clients.
And I know Forde has long said, though he had permission to run a rollback, that he’d prefer to nut it out for his long time shareholders to benefit. They’ve done that now, so it’s probably time, with the stock finding a base, for him to raise some money proper.
I missed most of the CYX run from $0.015. I was talking about it, I was telling others about it, but I kept thinking it couldn’t go much higher. Now, I feel like it’s going to form a nice base around $0.15 for a while with another run likely before the California vote.
But it might also just take off again, right out from under me. Again.
— Chris Parry
FULL DISCLOSURE: Not a client, don’t own the stock (more’s the pity), but I have been a consultant to Calyx previously through Stockhouse.