AI in Cannabis Commerce Is Here — But Jane’s Doing It Their Way with Socrates Rosenfeld

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Bryan Fields: What's up, guys? Welcome back to another episode of The Dime. I'm Bryan Fields, and with me as always is Kellan Finney. This week we've got a very special guest returning to the podcast, Socrates Rosenfeld of Jane. Sock, thanks for taking the time — how are you doing today? Socrates Rosenfeld: Doing great, man. Bryan and Kellan, it's great to be back on with you guys. It's been three years — we were just talking about that. It's crazy how fast time flies, especially in this industry and this world. It's crazy. Yeah, dog years. Bryan Fields: It's like twenty-one years in the cannabis industry — it's crazy. Tell them what's going on with you, Kellan. Kellan Finney: Not a whole lot, just excited to talk to Sock again. Three years has been a while — I think we were talking about some of the predictions we were making back in 2022, and it's pretty interesting to see that none of us were really close to the mark. Bryan Fields: I think it's humbling, right? I think that's the part of this game that's fun but also super humbling — we sat here with a prediction or a perspective on how we thought the industry would evolve, and today we're going to talk about some things that maybe I didn't think in 2021 or 2022 would be as big as they've become. And that's the AI stuff. But before we get into the fun aspects of that, for our listeners who might be slightly unfamiliar, can you give a quick background on Jane? Socrates Rosenfeld: Sure. Jane is one of the largest digital providers in the space. We cover everything from e-commerce, which is our core product — and we've extended that beyond e-commerce to get into the store with self-service kiosks and point of sale. We have a very valuable and powerful media business around things like on-menu and off-menu advertising. And then we have the largest industry catalog, with over two and a half million SKUs, that powers and informs all of our other businesses like e-commerce and ads. Bryan Fields: I guess my first question would be — going back to the origin story of Jane, and then how things have played out since — how do you think about prioritizing your different resources and revenue streams to stay true to the mission and support your customers, but also know that you need to push the envelope, innovate, and experiment, knowing that some of those investments might not pay off for two or three years? Socrates Rosenfeld: Yeah, it really is a balance between executing on your near-term goals and not taking your eye off the ball of where you want to push the company and the industry. With limited resources, on one hand it's challenging — with unlimited resources you'd think, "Oh man, if I just had a little more money or headcount, we could do all these things." I haven't actually seen that come true in reality. In fact, you can look at history and point to very large, well-funded, fast-growing businesses that collapsed for exactly that reason — when you can do everything, you actually accomplish nothing, versus designing within constraints and saying, "We have to force prioritization onto these top two or three things, and we have to be the best at those things." It's hard, but it's something we've embraced, and I think other companies that want to survive in this space have to embrace it too, given the new market conditions. The good news is that we have alignment with our brand and retail partners — we're marching on the same side. We actually like to partner, and we've selected ourselves out of some deals and partnerships because of a lack of alignment, where a certain retailer doesn't want to continue to innovate or push the envelope. That's completely fine within their purview, but for us, we like to align with visionary retailers and brands that understand the potential here. The good news is that what they're asking for most of the time is really in alignment with where we want to go, and that's beautiful. When that doesn't happen, that's when things get tricky. I'm not saying we turn our back on the needs of the industry — in fact, it's the opposite — but we have to make sure that everything we're building is in alignment with the future of this industry. We're not going backwards, we're not taking shortcuts, we're building things for the long term, and that's boded well for us up until this point. Bryan Fields: That's such an interesting perspective, because it felt like for a while it was growth at all costs. And now what you're doing is looking at a relationship and saying, "I don't know if this is good for us." That's a hard conversation to have, right? Because on one side you're like, "Cool, we can book that revenue, that'll look good, our investors will be happy, that'll feel good on the deck." But on the other side you're like, "This just doesn't feel right." And at this stage, when everything is so crucial, those relationships are the most paramount, because if you're force-feeding customers the tools and they're not ready — Socrates Rosenfeld: Yeah. Bryan Fields: — it's just not going to work. Socrates Rosenfeld: That's it, man. Partnership is what builds resiliency, and you must be resilient in this market. There are too many unknowns, too much volatility, too many variables at play — if you're not working in partnership with your customer base, and you're working against each other, it's almost impossible for both parties to be successful. We've learned from other companies where maybe the tech company wins but the customer loses a little bit — I won't name names, though some come to mind. For us, it's never been about whether we can grow Jane to be huge — it's always been about how we do that. There are a million different ways to grow a business. We're a mission-first company: if Jane gets big, but it's at the expense of the industry, and retailers aren't growing, and brands aren't growing, and customers don't get the best experience, but Jane makes a bunch of money — that's not a success to us. So we've inverted that logic to say, "Let's make our customers really successful," and the hypothesis is that if they're successful, Jane becomes big and valuable too. That's always the litmus test we come back to when we run into tension. Most of the time we can find common ground. There are times, though, when it doesn't work out — just like any relationship — and it's hard, especially, as you know from your own businesses, to transition from "let's close every deal we possibly can at every cost" to "maybe it's time we start saying no." And the power you get from saying no — you don't want to misuse it by saying no to everything — but where it makes sense, that's often the difference between being successful and not getting to your vision. Kellan Finney: A lot of that is balancing your culture from an innovation standpoint too, right? I imagine your team is seeing all these cool new tech innovations — AI, all that stuff is very hot right now — and they want to push forward and integrate it into your platform. But maybe some customers just aren't ready. So talk through that balancing act — the fast innovation that is tech versus the slow drudgery that is cannabis in a highly regulated environment. Socrates Rosenfeld: Yeah, that's a great question, Kellan. There are some really innovative, visionary thinkers on the retail side, and we love those partners — brands too. There's a desire, but there's also a lack of knowledge. It would be like asking the employees at Jane to go start their own retail shop — that's probably not the best call. The way we look at this is: it's not the what, it's the why. Is this a great piece of technology that we're just trying to insert because it's cool, or are we trying to insert it for a reason? That's rarely where the rubber meets the road in terms of what makes it onto our roadmap. The beautiful part is, if we can justify it to ourselves — and the why is always, how does this create more value, not for Jane, but for our customers — and if we can't answer that, it doesn't make it onto the roadmap. So when we do go and present something — and I'd love to talk about e-commerce Premium — the customization we're doing with our e-commerce platform is a great example of that. We're not building things because we think we can get a better multiple from private equity, or because Forbes is going to write an article about us, or because we'll get invited to TechCrunch. The why is always: how does this help the cannabis industry? If we can align on that and say, "This helps stores get more customers, or helps brands reach their customers better" — okay, if we can sell ourselves on it, it's easy to sell the market. If we can't do that — and we've said no to a few things where I thought, "Man, this would be really cool," and I was thinking, "Oh, this is the greatest thing, we have a patent on it, we should roll it out" — and we go to market and they say, "No, this doesn't bring us any value," we've had to sunset products like that. That's where the alignment happens, and that's where you get product-market fit. It always comes back not to the what, but the why behind the what — that's the most important thing. Bryan Fields: Who plays devil's advocate during those conversations? Socrates Rosenfeld: Oh man, it depends. It's a really cool team we have. I'll speak for myself, but I think this carries through to every member of the team — you asked about the creative culture we've formed here at Jane. First of all, you leave your ego at the door. It's not about being right — let me rephrase that: at Jane, it's not about being right, it's about doing the right thing for the industry. So it's not an argument about "I'm right, you're wrong" — we have this beautiful philosophical debate sometimes about what's right for the industry, and really, the why behind it. So if someone comes in and pitches something, we have a responsibility, almost an obligation, to look at it from every angle. Sometimes I'm playing devil's advocate, sometimes I'm the champion and people are pushing back — and when you can do that together as a team, without creating sides where "I'm right" means "you're wrong," that's how you get to the right answer efficiently. You see the opposite in big, bureaucratic organizations, and we've been very mindful not to get big and bloated with multiple layers of checkers and decision-makers and middle managers. It's more like: we have an idea, let's run it through this process, let's look at it from every angle, and what comes out of that shouldn't be Sock's idea — it should be the right idea. If we can stay true to that, we're going to build the right things at the right time. And if we don't — if someone wants to do something just because their boss said so, or because it gets them paid more — that's when we start getting into trouble, and we've been very disciplined about not going down that path. Bryan Fields: To go back to what you said — the balance is so difficult, right? Especially in the age of AI, these tools are coming fast, really fast. I'm sure there are ideas from your creative team where it's like, "Let's try this, let's consider this," and it's probably enticing and intoxicating to think about how cool it would be. But you're right, someone has to push back a little bit, because I think we've all done the idea-to-inception thing and it never really iterates the way you want — there are always off-ramps or on-ramps where you're like, "I didn't see that one coming," or "I thought it would work differently." That's the hard balance, because you have to keep the mission the same and make sure the resources and checkpoints are in place before it takes that next step. Socrates Rosenfeld: Oh man, I'd say prior to 2022 this was a game of speed and size — how fast can you go, how big can you go. That was a fun time. Now, because market conditions have shifted significantly, it's not a game of speed, it's a game of endurance. Now it's: how can we ensure that Jane and the industry sustain for as long as possible? That's the common denominator we measure everything against — does this help us sustain? Because if you're not around, you can't achieve your mission. It's the old Aesop's fable of the tortoise and the hare — it's not how you start, it's how you finish, and in order to finish first, you must first finish. For us, it always comes back to: yeah, this is cool, this is exciting, but intentionally we build a process where — and it's a balance — can we efficiently move this idea through the phases to get it to market, while intentionally slowing it down enough to be judicious and mindful of every perspective, so we're making the best call we can with the information we have at the time? Bryan Fields: You make it sound easier than it is, right? On the flip side, the industry is pushing for certain things — customers want tools and they want them immediately. They read a headline about an AI agent and it's, "Sock, I needed this yesterday." And you're thinking, "You don't even know what you're really asking for — we've got to make sure it works." But they're like, "I need this yesterday." Then some competitor comes out with a product, maybe half-baked, and now you're in this weird triangle dilemma where expectations don't match what actually works. And then maybe the industry takes a step back and says, "We don't want AI agents, this doesn't work the way we want" — but that's not really the problem. It's that it just didn't integrate correctly, and because that person had an off-putting experience, they're turned off, when in actuality AI agents are really what's going to take the industry to the next level. Socrates Rosenfeld: Oh man. Right. We are — man. It's almost as though you have a very specific example in mind, because it's happened many, many times. It takes years to build a reputation and an instant to lose it — an instant. And we've seen other providers overpromise, throw out some half-baked ideas, and that becomes their reputation. We've formed a different one. We have a partner success team, and we meet with every one of our thousands of dispensary partners every quarter to build relationships and communicate our why. It's not, "Hey, take this now," or "I heard you wanted this, here you go." We invite them into our process: what problem are you trying to solve? Why is this important to you? Here's why this is going to take a while — if you can stay patient, we'll give you updates along the way. We can't guarantee everything, but we can guarantee we're going to do everything we can to give you the best solution, one that sustains you rather than just putting out a fire for tomorrow. There are instances where we have to sprint, and that's fine, we can find creative solutions — but that's maybe one or two percent of the time. We have a reputation at Jane that, though we might not be the fastest mover, what we create unlocks a ton of value and sustains your business for years to come. That's the reputation we've built. Bryan Fields: Those conversations have to be so multifaceted, because everyone runs things slightly differently — they internalize data differently in their own workflows. So you kind of have to say, "We've talked to our thousand customers, and we think this general approach fits the industry, so meet us where we are," versus what a lot of customers want, which is, "Sock, we want this customized to fit exactly where we want to go." Socrates Rosenfeld: Yes. And the beautiful part — there's a well-known hip-hop line about how people can say whatever they want, but the numbers don't lie. We stand by our numbers, and we prove it. An example of that is our on-menu advertising offering — some retailers are really excited about it, and some are not so excited about it, for various reasons. Bryan Fields: Why aren't they excited about it? What am I missing? Hearing about it, it seems like a pretty obvious win. Socrates Rosenfeld: Fear. They assume it's going to hurt their business. And we say, we hear you, we wouldn't give you anything that hurts your business — let us prove this to you. That's been a huge lesson for me on the selling side of Jane, and now, as a customer myself evaluating purchases, I ask the same thing: is there a way we can test this out and let the data prove it right or wrong? That's how we earn trust. Kellan Finney: How much concern do your customers have about their data? Is that a huge fear point, where they're like, "I don't know what's happening to this information I'm sharing with you"? Socrates Rosenfeld: We're very tight with that, and — Kellan Finney: How do you handle that conversation when they bring it up? Socrates Rosenfeld: We handle it honestly. We call them out directly. Early on it was, "Hey, you're going to take our customers and market against them, move them over to someone else." And we say, no, man, that's the other company — we don't do that, and we're explicit about it. Again, that's our reputation, and that trust has to be earned over years and years. I think we've done that. But ultimately, how we prove it out is: we've talked to thousands of retailers, we hear you, here's the best solution we think fits you, and let us test and prove that out for you. We've had instances where we tested things behind closed doors and realized, no, this actually doesn't unlock more value, this makes things worse — and we killed the project. But everything you see us launch has gone through rigorous testing, and the data has proven, time and time again, that we can unlock more value. The reason people are so apprehensive, and it's understandable, is that if you don't know something, you're instantly skeptical, as you should be — but not so skeptical that you stop investigating until the data can prove it out one way or the other. That's my opinion. Bryan Fields: What about shifting behaviors and workflows? Does that ever become a challenge, where they're like, "Sock, we think we can benefit from this, but I don't know if I can get so-and-so to adjust what they do — they're pretty set in their ways"? Socrates Rosenfeld: Oh man, are you in our company meetings? Change is hard, man. Change is hard. You can walk around the country and ask, "Why do we still have to fill out our taxes manually?" Because switching everything to digital is a major change. Why do I still have to take my shoes off at TSA? Because change is hard — we're humans. That's been a major variable in our equation for rolling things out. Point of sale is a great example — to change out your point of sale, no matter how much better it is, when we go to our retail partners and say, "Hey, we have a better point of sale, this is going to unlock more value for you," they say, "Cool, Sock, but you know what this means for me? I've got X number of stores, I have to get all my team members trained up, there's turnover, I train one team and they turn over the next day, I've got to rip everything out." We have to listen to that and address it. So we've created a separate onboarding team that goes in and is with our partners every step of the way, and we're constantly refining our process to bring dispensary partners into that change-management process — we're in partnership with them. It's not, "Here's a piece of software, go figure it out yourself." We're literally there every step of the way. And again, that comes back to speed versus endurance — what are you building the company for? If we were all about speed, "get as many stores onboarded as possible," that might work for a few months, until churn starts happening, and then you don't have a long-enduring, sustainable business. So we've opted to recognize that change management is hard — not for everything, but for some things it really is — and we intentionally account for that in our forecasting. I tell the board all the time: as much as we love to go fast, we have to go slow here, for these reasons. And if you do that early on and do it right, it builds momentum, and you get more efficient as you move forward, and the market gets more and more comfortable with your product. Bryan Fields: It's such an underappreciated, critical part of the process, right? Because if you sell something to somebody and they don't use it correctly, and it doesn't work, the first thing they'll do is swap it out. But if you integrate with them every step of the way — which is hard, it's costly, it takes time, and it's probably not something you originally budgeted for — but if you do all of that, and it becomes an ecosystem they can hit the ground running with, why would they ever switch? Because it helps them, it makes a difference, and you're there for them. You didn't just drop it in their lap and put them on the express train, saying, "Good luck, guys, figure it out as you go." Socrates Rosenfeld: Yeah, man. I'll take it one step further — we've learned things along the way, like, "Oh man, putting in this kiosk takes some time," or, "We have to account for the Wi-Fi over here" — and that helps inform our future product development. So it's not wasted effort. It's really important, number one, to solidify that relationship with our retail partners, but number two, it helps inform us on how we can make our product and process much better. Bryan Fields: All right, let's get into the AI stuff. Talk to us — I know you've been working on this for a while, and I'm itching for it. Give us the high-level picture, and then we'll dive into some of the nerdy stuff. Socrates Rosenfeld: AI — the four-letter word. The way we see it is, just like with any piece of technology, it's not necessarily the what, it's the why and the how. Why are you using this, and how are you using it? That's what defines whether something is quote-unquote good or bad. We're big fans of AI at the company — I think if you're in technology and you ignore this step-change, this generational moment, that would be ignorant and unwise, in our opinion. So we're leaning in heavily, and we've bifurcated it into two tracks: what can we do, and how can we leverage artificial intelligence internally for our own processes? How can we use AI to do more with less, to become more efficient, to offload some of these seemingly menial, repetitive tasks so we can free up our team to go deeper and do the things AI can't do — like sit down with partners and discuss change management. That seems really powerful. We have a massive product catalog, and if I say we've been maniacal about structuring our data set, that's probably an understatement at this point — and now that data is extremely valuable. Can we leverage AI to take that catalog to the next level and use it to inform and enhance our advertising business, our e-commerce business, point of sale, our consumer program? That's how we leverage it internally, which is extremely important, especially — as we talked about earlier — for staying efficient with minimal resources. It's been so instrumental and valuable for us, and we'll continue doing that. Externally is where it gets really exciting. One of the predictions we made three years ago, Kellan, was that personalization for cannabis was going to be a massive need-to-have, not just a nice-to-have, as we move forward — and we've seen that come to fruition. One of the ways we leverage AI is: when you go on a Jane menu, and I love flower and you guys love extracts or edibles, our experiences are going to be completely different — we can manipulate the merchandising on that menu similarly to how YouTube manipulates content depending on the specific viewer. Same for our advertising business — brands don't have to waste money trying to speak to everyone. If I've never bought a vape cartridge, why would a vape company advertise to me? We can curate our advertising business for the brand, which is a win, because we can ensure the brand is only spending money on people who have a high propensity to purchase those products. It's a win for the retailer, because they get higher conversion and bigger basket sizes, and ultimately, most importantly, it's a win for the consumer, because we can personalize cannabis, and cannabis is a really personal experience. That's another component we're using AI for. What I'm really excited about is how we take retail data and brand information, and by leveraging AI, transform raw data into actionable insights that make life a lot easier for our brands and retailers. That's really exciting for us, and it's part of why we created our point-of-sale and in-store business — we think that's going to be a very valuable place to put that offering. Honestly, the potential is unlimited, and we're very excited. And I'll say — because I know some Jane teammates are listening — a year ago, if you'd talked to me about AI, I was in the camp of, "Oh my god, the robots are coming." I'm not saying that is or isn't true, but I had this doomsday reaction of, "We should absolutely not do this." And the reason was, I wasn't educating myself on it — it was this unknown, scary thing, and my knee-jerk reaction was, "No, this is bad." The more research I did, the more I realized, this is like any other technology — we can decide how we use it and how we leverage it. Software is neutral, in my opinion; how you use it determines whether it's good or bad. So now I've completely flipped, like I usually do, and I'm all in on AI — let's continue to invest in this. I think the companies that are able to be the best operators and integrators of artificial intelligence into their existing businesses will be the winners, and those that can't, unfortunately, will be left behind. Kellan Finney: Do you get any pushback from your current clientele about AI — the same fears you had a year ago? Socrates Rosenfeld: That's it. Yeah — I was trying to run a retail business, and here's a tech company coming in saying, "Hey dude, we'll just tell you exactly what to sell." And they're like, "Whoa, how are you doing this? Are you in my data?" So similar conversations, Kellan. We say, let us tell you exactly how we're doing this — let's be completely transparent. When tech companies aren't transparent, that's when things get real weird. Bryan Fields: But how do you communicate that information and distill it in a way that's normal, that makes sense to everyone? Because we could hop into some of the nerdy aspects of building an LLM and people would be like, "What are you talking about? Is this guy part robot? I don't know if I even trust him." But then you have to communicate, on a basic level, how it actually works — you're becoming a teacher and a guide, which is also challenging. Socrates Rosenfeld: Right, right. Yeah, we see ourselves as digital consultants first, probably. We had to go through this back in 2017 — probably one out of every two dispensaries we went to were like, "Why the hell would I sell cannabis online? Why would I want to put my products out there? Are you guys crazy?" So we've had to have those conversations, and it's a lot of things. Bryan Fields: Like a shepherd. Socrates Rosenfeld: In simple, plain talk, Bryan — not talking about large language models or small language models or agentic AI, because people don't care about that — it's, "Hey, what does this look like for my business? What does this look like for my budtenders? What does this look like for the customer who walks through the door — what's the experience they're going to have?" That's number one. Number two: let's address all your concerns — are you selling my information, are you exposing my data? Let's address those honestly, openly, and with great care, because if we weren't doing those things, we wouldn't be around. And then, ultimately, let's take this marathon — the future of AI — and break it down into small, incremental races we can run together. Get to a checkpoint, agree on the checkpoint, look at the data, and say, "Do we want to keep going with this?" We're on the same team — we're not trying to get one over on a retailer. We're also interested in how this works: does this convert the customer better? Does the customer get a better experience? Are the brands happier? Are you making more money? Let's look at all of that. With those three things — education, information, and data, and just being good, honest partners who go at the retailer's pace — that's how you can take something from the unknown, with a lot of fear around it, and start transforming the industry. That's something we've done with e-commerce, and with advertising, and I think it's something we're about to do here with artificial intelligence. Kellan Finney: And you have a case study, because you're doing it internally, right? You're monitoring how it's moving your bottom line and top line, so it's easy to explain — this is how it's helping us. Socrates Rosenfeld: All day. Yeah, man. It's funny you bring this up — I have a really old car, and I don't have any Bluetooth in it, so I can't listen to Spotify when I'm driving. I listen to the radio — I love the local university radio stations for hip-hop, actually. Bryan Fields: How do you even listen to that? Socrates Rosenfeld: But there are some really bad songs out there, and I think to myself, how were they in the studio cranking this out, and the producers listening to this, and the artists listening to this, and the record label — and they're like, "Yeah, dude, let's ship this"? That doesn't happen at Jane. We very rarely miss on what we put out to the market. Again, we're not always first, we're not always the fastest, but we go through our own internal process, and we make sure that if we're bringing something to market, it's going to go big and create a lot of value. There have been instances where, as much as I want to squint my eyes and say, "Oh, that's really good," my team says, "No, man, I can't sell this, this isn't working." And that's been the difference, in my opinion. Bryan Fields: It's hard. Those are hard calls, because there's the sunk cost of somebody shepherding it, there's the long-term investment, there's the time horizon, and then there's the opportunity cost of knowing that if you don't ship it and have to start over, there's a whole period where the timing might have actually been right. But sometimes your gut instinct is right. And the interesting part about the AI conversation, here at the end of June, is that maybe right now AI feels a little scary, but six months from now it's going to be — Socrates Rosenfeld: Yeah. Bryan Fields: — how could you not have this? Socrates Rosenfeld: Yeah, exactly. Social media was scary — now everybody's on it. Smartphones — "Oh my god, what is this?" — now everybody's on it. It has to prove it's valuable, that it actually helps people. I do want to take one minute, though, Bryan, to talk about — I went to West Point, the military academy, and I used to get in a lot of trouble. I'd get brought in by the disciplinarians, and they'd say, "Hey man, do you have something to tell us?" And there was a saying I'll never forget: bad news doesn't get better with time — it gets worse with time. So we've learned, and it's freaking hard, that when something doesn't work, you go tell the truth about it. Companies that are able to do that early and often are successful. Companies that try to bury it, or cover it up with more money, more headcount, or more sizzling marketing — at some point, that house of cards is going to crumble. I've learned that too many times in my life and career, and now it's, let's operate with absolute radical transparency and honesty. That's why I sleep like a baby at night, because I know at Jane we're operating with an obsession around what is true, versus, "Hey, this was my idea," or "I really like this, let me cover it up to keep this thing going." We don't have that anywhere in our culture, and I'm really grateful for it. Bryan Fields: Is there somebody on the team whose role is to play with all these new toys? Because every day there's a new model, a new tool, and if you're not constantly staying on top of the changes, it's nearly impossible to keep your foot on the gas. So is there somebody whose job is just to play with all the fun tools? Socrates Rosenfeld: Aw, man — I want to shout out Matt. He'll know which Matt I'm talking about. He's our VP of Engineering. Abe, our CTO, didn't even tell him, "Dude, you've got to learn this" — he just said, "I'm an engineer, this is really exciting," and it's his responsibility to get in there, learn it, come to the company with the what, and then the why and the how. And we're going through that now — we're getting all of our leads trained up, and through that, the leads will train the rest of the team. And we're not just doing that on the engineering side, we're doing it across every function at the company. Everything is bottoms-up here at Jane. If I'm calling all the shots, we're in big trouble — it's a lot smarter, more knowledgeable folks seeing where the proverbial puck is going and skating there. So shout-out to Matt — and that's just one example of many others, where people at the company have said, "Hey, I'm really interested in this, I think this is my responsibility, I'm going to take this on and become the subject matter expert and inform the rest of the company." I'm so grateful to be part of a team like that. Bryan Fields: Yeah, that's so important, right? Because you didn't tell him to go learn AI — he just jumped in the deep end, probably drowned for a while, probably thought, "This is terrible, this is so hard," and then once he started making some footing, he could report back and say, "Look, this we shouldn't use, it's way too complicated, this makes sense, we should consider this." And now he can teach the others. And it makes me wonder if other teams are missing someone like Matt — someone willing to jump in and figure it out without being told — and that's probably why some teams are so hesitant to take on these new tools and adapt. Socrates Rosenfeld: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Kellan Finney: It speaks to culture, though, right? You have to have the right culture that allows people like Matt to be creative and take chances, you know what I mean? Bryan Fields: Yeah, one hundred percent. Socrates Rosenfeld: That's it. As much as I love the Army, and as much as we thought we were the most innovative — "Oh man, we're Apache pilots, we're so innovative" — you couldn't really deviate from a plan, and if you did and made a mistake, that was bad news, and understandably so. But when you're not dealing with life-or-death situations, why wouldn't you create a safe space for ideation and what we'd call mistakes, but really define as learnings? Because if you want to push the envelope and be innovative, you're going to make mistakes — you're going to say, "Ah, shit, we've got to go backwards," and that's completely okay. Bryan Fields: My dog, who only visits when we record — it's just incredible timing. He only comes when we're recording. It's amazing. Otis only comes then. Socrates Rosenfeld: That's awesome, he's a star. Shout out to Bryan's dog. To your point, Kellan — can you create the space for creators to create? When people ask me what my job is as CEO, I say it's really just: make sure you don't run out of money, make sure everybody feels like you're taking care of your people, and then, are you creating a space for those people to create things? If you can do those three simple — not easy — things, you're probably doing an okay job as CEO. Bryan Fields: Yeah, that's a great point, because you're right, culture is such an important aspect, and if teams aren't doing things like this, they fall way behind. Then they have an emergency meeting four months later — "All right, we've got to do AI, we need an LLM, I read this on the internet, how do we do this? Should we just call up ChatGPT, find a freelancer, hire a consultant, let's get it done?" And that's not how this works. There has to be a vision, you have to plan, you've got to work through the tools, you've got to feel it out — it's a hard subject, and now with the speed of iteration — Kellan Finney: Reactive. I need it now. Socrates Rosenfeld: Shortcuts. Yep. Bryan Fields: — that's the truth, right? If you're not working through it, you fall so far behind that there's almost no way to catch up. Socrates Rosenfeld: I'd say that's been true even before the onset of AI. I remember when native apps came out — could you imagine being a popular website when native apps came out and saying, "You know what, we don't have to look at this, let's just let it ride"? That would've been a bad idea if you weren't building for mobile. Bryan Fields: Those guys are probably looking for new jobs. Socrates Rosenfeld: It's our job — I used to be a helicopter pilot, and there were new regulations and new technologies coming out all the time. We had to stay on top of it, not for any other reason than wanting to keep flying that aircraft as best and as safely as I possibly could, and to push the envelope of that airframe. It's the same if you're a technologist — you should be looking at technology, seeing where the future is, and positioning your business or your team as best as possible to get there. Bryan Fields: Talk to us about what's coming out this summer — Premium e-commerce. Socrates Rosenfeld: Yeah, Premium — we're stoked on this. When we launched our e-commerce business back in 2017, it was a basic menu offering, one line of HTML code, and it was just called Jane at the time. We got it into thousands of stores, and that was great for 2017. Then 2021 happened, and everything got more digital — retailers were saying, "Yo, my online menu is now responsible for over fifty percent of all orders at my store, and I don't want to look like everybody else. I don't want a Jane menu at this store and a Jane menu at that store." Not that we were pushing our own branding, but retailers put so much time and effort into the look and feel of their physical environment, and they wanted, rightly so, consistency in the online environment too. So headless e-commerce came out, and we came out with what's known as Jane Roots, where the good side was you could customize anything you wanted and differentiate yourself, but the bad side was you had to hire a web developer, it took a long time, and you had to learn how to code — that's a lot to ask of a retail business. So we drew inspiration from Squarespace and Shopify and asked: could there be a middle solution — not a templated menu, and not a full two-year project costing hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a fully customized e-commerce platform — but something in the middle, that's easy to install, modular, and gives retailers the ability to customize the look and feel so they can differentiate themselves from the competition and align with their in-store experience? So after two years, we came out with this, and we think it sets a new paradigm for what e-commerce will look like in cannabis — where a retailer can install it as easily as our old menus, customize it as well as they could with the headless option, but now it's a lot easier to install, easier to manage, and quite frankly a lot more cost-efficient. This is rolling out now — we have a few beta clients out there, and honestly, this feels like one of those moments we had early on at Jane, where you can feel this thing taking off. We're really excited to bring this to retailers and help them differentiate themselves and grow their digital business. Bryan Fields: Are the beta clients your deepest relationships, the smallest, most trusted group? And if somebody else hears this and says, "Sock, let me try it" — how does that work? How do you balance the feeling of small, medium, large without just saying, "Okay, let's let it rip"? I know the plan was August, but here we are at the end of June. Socrates Rosenfeld: Oh man, yeah, you've got some inside information — that's me pushing this. Bryan Fields: Well, that's not inside information, that's just me feeling out the conversation and guessing how it would go. Because that's what I'd say if I were listening — "Stop what you're doing, why am I not trying this?" Socrates Rosenfeld: Yeah, it's brilliant, you agree? That's exactly it — that's exactly what happened. People started saying, "What? I want this." And our product team was going back and saying, "I don't know if we're ready, let's let the data speak for itself, let's see." And here I am gently — not so gently — pushing my team, saying, "It's ready, it's ready." But ultimately I trust the guys on the ground. We're now going from beta to beta-plus. We thought we'd get five clients — now it's twenty. Kellan Finney: I love it. Socrates Rosenfeld: We're getting to a full GA release probably a month sooner than we'd planned, and that might be the first time that's ever happened — it's because we're sensing a lot of demand and appetite from the market. We're really excited, especially at a time when some of our competitors have said, "You know what, this headless thing — we're not going to support it anymore, we're getting away from it." We at Jane don't think that's right. We think we should give as much freedom, liberty, and empowerment back to retailers to create a digital experience that fits what they want to do for their customers. Bryan Fields: That's kind of your role, though, right — to feel out the momentum and the pace of play and recognize, "This is starting to take shape, maybe we get the plane in the air a little faster than we anticipated, and everyone can yell at me while we're flying." At the end of the day, that's the job you play, and that's the fun part — maybe some of the engineers don't love it, but maybe this is the fun of turning that timeline around a little faster. Socrates Rosenfeld: Oh man — sorry to keep talking about being a helicopter pilot, it's not usually what I like to bring up, I had a reputation to — Bryan Fields: No, it makes sense, though — the concept of flying a plane. Socrates Rosenfeld: This is why I intentionally didn't know everything about the Apache helicopter, because you can get yourself in trouble a little bit that way. I'm like, all right, I know who to trust, which mechanics I need to trust, and when they look at me and say, "No, dude, do not fly this bird," I say, "Okay." But when they say, "Don't take it above this many knots, or this altitude," I say, "Okay, cool, I trust you." We have a very veteran crew — our average tenure at Jane is almost four years — so we can look at each other, and our product leads and engineering leads know: "This is a line we don't cross." And I get it, I've got you. And then there are times when it's, "Okay, this is going to be a little sooner than we'd have liked, but we can manage this, and it's okay." We have those conversations all the time. Kellan Finney: So you're going to call it beta-plus — don't take it above five thousand feet, beta-plus. Socrates Rosenfeld: A bit of a — Bryan Fields: Beta, beta-plus-plus — two times beta-plus, right? But if the data's saying that, and people are responding that way, you should lean into it. I think that's exciting, because right now everyone in the space is kind of battening down the hatches, playing it slow — but then there are times when new tools come out that make a big difference, and change happens. Socrates Rosenfeld: That's it. That's it. Oh. Bryan Fields: And that's kind of the fortification the industry needs in order to accelerate in the right direction. Socrates Rosenfeld: That's it, man. There's a great Warren Buffett line — I won't try to quote it exactly, but the essence of it is, when everybody around you is in a fervor, saying we've got to move fast, that's probably a good time to slow down and be a little more diligent. And vice versa — when everybody's battening down the hatches, nobody's innovating, and people are just riding it out, fingers crossed for legalization at some point — we see that as a massive opportunity. We say, let's continue to get aggressive, let's continue to innovate. From a business strategy standpoint, I don't think there's a better time to push the envelope and take advantage of a stifled, slowed-down competitive landscape. And we think e-commerce Premium is one of those things — among some others we have in the works — that should launch pretty soon. Bryan Fields: That's perfect, I think that's the perfect way to end it. Sock, for people listening who want to be involved in beta-plus and beta-plus-plus, where can they find you? Socrates Rosenfeld: Hit us up — demo@iheartjane.com, info@iheartjane.com. We have a form on our website at iheartjane.com where you can fill out a quick form, and we'll reach out to you the same day. Bryan Fields: Cool, love it. Thanks for taking the time — this was a lot of fun. Socrates Rosenfeld: Thanks, guys, appreciate it.