Pot Property Planning Proptech Company Starts Investing in Others

Zoned Properties, a “real estate development firm for emerging and highly regulated industries including legalized cannabis,” announced an investment in Anami Technologies. It invested $50,000 in Series A convertible preferred stock.

The latter had announced its new product, Greenspace, which Anami describes as “easy-to-use collaboration and work management tool designed specifically for cannabis operators by cannabis operators.” It offers project management as well as industry-related dropdown menus and templates. The company says the cloud-hosted software can help in such areas as construction, licensing, and compliance. Reportedly, Anami is “already interacting with users across 15+ cannabis operators and growers with over 100 locations across various state markets.” 

The description is vague enough to muddy to what degree Anami’s software is actually involved. The release states that the “platform [is currently] utilized by major cannabis brands, including Cookies, Embarc, and Stiiizy.” Again, whether that is in regular use or in an evaluation form is unclear.

Anami was started by Mike Wilson, CEO and founder of Temeka Group, an interior design and construction company that has expanded into serving cannabis companies through software offerings.

Zoned Properties says that it wants to pinpoint “critical needs in regulated real estate markets to address how the consumer and the community as a whole interact with the built retail environment.”

The two companies are “evaluating” an “alignment” between their products.

Zoned Properties announced in April that it was partnering with zoning and land use data firm Zoneomics “to streamline GIS mapping and data solutions in commercial real estate for the regulated cannabis market.” Such information could be critical. Cannabis businesses aren’t legal everywhere and the products are still on the US Schedule 1 list of controlled drugs, along with heroin and quaaludes.

In fact, the IRS National Taxpayer Advocate Service recently indicated that there is a significant tax problem for cannabis companies:

“While businesses can generally deduct from their gross income ‘all the ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred during the taxable year in carrying on [the] trade or business’ pursuant to section 162(a), there are exceptions. Section 280E, enacted in 1982, forbids businesses from deducting expenses from their gross income if the business consists of illegally ‘trafficking’ in Schedule I or II controlled substances. Because marijuana is still classified as a Schedule I controlled substance under federal law, all cannabis businesses fall into the category of drug trafficking and remain prohibited from writing off otherwise legitimate business expenses. (Similarly, because marijuana is not a federally recognized course of medical treatment, individual taxpayers are prohibited from claiming associated expenses as itemized deductions on Schedule A of their Form 1040 tax return.)”

Being unable to deduct from federal taxes ordinary business expenses could make it extremely difficult for such companies to reach a level of profitability.

What Zoned Properties seems to be doing is amassing the parts for a marijuana business operating system to cover as many needs for such businesses as realistically possible. The type of breadth could create a single solution and keep clients within its ecosystem. But it’s unclear what parts would come next in such a plan.