Then: people.
Rishi has augmented cannabis teams with trained people on the street for years. More doors, more markets, more demos, without the headcount to hire and manage.
Live growth partnerDo bigger things with less.
Do bigger things with less.
In the field. In your systems.
Rishi has spent years helping cannabis companies scale output without scaling headcount — more doors, more markets, more coverage from the same team. That is what our field operation does. Now the same promise applies inside your business: AI takes on the manual work, so your people can run bigger programs with what they already have.
15,000+ in-store demos · 100+ brand partnerships · 3 states
Last updated September 29, 2026
Door velocity report
Oakland market · demo cycle, week 8
BaselineDemo weeks
+38%
weekly unit velocity
vs. 5-week baseline
42
doors reporting
96
proof photos
12
staff trainings
Sample report — this is the deliverable, not a mockup of one.
One promise, two places to apply it
Do bigger things with less — on the floor, and behind it.
Rishi is one partner with two ways to augment your team. Start in the field, where we put more doors and more markets in reach without adding headcount. Or start inside, where AI and agents take the manual work off your team's plate. Most clients end up doing both.
Door one
The field operation
Budtender advocacy, retail sell-through, and search/DTC — a trained field force covering more doors, more markets, and more geographies than your own headcount allows. Proven with door-level velocity data.
Explore brand supportDoor two
Software & AI consulting
The same job inside your business. The paperwork, the reporting, the follow-up, the ordering: handled by AI that connects to the systems you already run, so the same team can take on more without more people.
Explore software & AI consultingThe through line
Same industry. Same promise. Different layer.
Rishi's field operation exists for one reason: cannabis brands have to cover more ground than their headcount allows. We put trained people in more doors across more markets, and made every hour countable. That worked. The next version of the same problem is not in the field — it is inside the business: orders, compliance paperwork, reporting, sourcing, the workflows somebody on your team still does by hand every week. AI and agents are how that gets done now, and it is the same job as it has always been: more coverage, bigger programs, fewer people-hours.
Now: agents.
The same industry is putting AI to work on everything that never leaves the building: orders, paperwork, records, reporting. The AI carries the volume and your people make the calls.
Either way: the same result.
More coverage, bigger programs, less overhead. Whether we are augmenting the team on the floor or the systems behind it, the measure is identical: what can you now do that you could not do before?
The market
Growth here plays by different rules.
01
You can't buy your way in
Meta and Google won’t take your money. Growth in cannabis and hemp is earned — at retail, in search, and in the conversations that happen at the counter.
02
The shelf is brutal
Thousands of SKUs, price compression, pay-to-play menus. Placement without advocacy dies quietly. Nobody tells you it happened.
03
Generic agencies don't survive here
Standard playbooks break on compliance, dispensary reality, and hemp’s patchwork rules. This industry needs operators, not account managers.
Field programs run for the industry's best
420 Kingdom818Alive-N-WellBangCaminoCiencia LabsDime BagDreamtDrippyFlavFuzziesGlass House FarmsHenry's OriginalKikokoKingpenKiva ConfectionsThe Legion of BloomLost FarmLuchadorPacific StonePapa & BarkleySelectSeven LeavesSmokiezSOGStone RoadTonikWoodstockYummi Karma
The system
Why run field, retail, and search as one system?
Most brands rent these in pieces from vendors who never talk to each other. Rishi runs them as one system, pointed at one number: your sell-through.
ENGINE 1
Field
Win the counter.
The budtender is the last voice your customer hears before the purchase. We train retail staff, run demo days that convert, and keep a network of vetted ambassadors on the floor — so your brand is the one that gets recommended, not just stocked.
Budtender educationDemo daysAmbassador networkKit logistics
ENGINE 2
Retail
Win the shelf.
A decade of dispensary relationships across three states, put to work: the right doors, better menu position, retail-media placement that pays back, and sell-through tracked door by door so weak accounts get fixed instead of forgotten.
Door strategyMenu & retail mediaVelocity trackingAccount playbooks
ENGINE 3
Search & DTC
Win the intent.
When buyers search your category, you show up — local SEO, authority content, and reviews for cannabis retail; full e-commerce, lifecycle email, and SMS for hemp brands that can sell direct. The always-on engine the ad platforms can’t take away.
Local SEOContent authorityReviews & reputationHemp DTC + lifecycle
Velocity command center
Weekly unit velocity per door · rolling 12 weeks
Oakland
San Francisco
San Jose
Sacramento
Los Angeles
San Diego
Las Vegas
Phoenix
1.6M+
field observations collected
Every demo, shift, shelf check, and conversation captured at the door — not reconstructed at month-end.
Proof, not promises
If it isn't measured,
it didn't happen.
Marketing in this industry has a trust problem, and it earned it. So we instrument everything. You see what ran, where it ran, who ran it, and what it did to your number.
- Every shift GPS-verified at the door
- Photo proof-of-work from every activation
- Velocity tracked per SKU, per door, per week
- One dashboard — not a spreadsheet at month-end
15,000+
in-store demos and staff trainings
40,000+
hours worked on retail floors
300,000+
direct customer conversations
1.6M+
field observations collected
Why Rishi
Built by operators,
not account managers.
Rishi isn't an agency that added cannabis to its pitch deck. We built and ran one of California's largest brand-activation operations — hiring, training, and deploying more than a hundred field professionals across three states, sustaining multi-million-dollar brand portfolios for years, inside one of the most regulated retail environments in the country.
That operation produced something no agency can fake: 1.6 million field observations of how cannabis and hemp actually sell. Every program we run today is built on it.
- 0 → 100+
- field team built and managed from scratch
- 3 states
- of licensed, compliant operations
- $2M+
- in brand programs sustained for 2.5+ years
- 100+
- brand and dispensary relationships
The founders
Who will I actually work with?
Rishi has no bench of juniors and no account layer. When you engage us, the founders are in the room — and both are operating inside the industry right now, on both coasts. What we learn in-market this week goes to work on your brand the next.
MW
Mike Waxman
Co-founder · Product & Systems
Built Rishi’s original operating stack — hiring, scheduling, kit logistics, proof-of-work — and scaled the field operation from zero to 100+ people across three states. Today he works as a professional product manager, and brings that discipline to every client program: instrument everything, ship fast, let the data decide.
MG
Matt Gill
Co-founder · Markets & Retail
Runs market operations for Coast Cannabis in Maryland — building and deploying a large-scale sales, marketing, and ops team for one of the East Coast’s leading brands. The playbooks he refines in-market every week are the playbooks Rishi clients get.
Engagement
How does a Rishi engagement work?
You've been pitched big retainers with vague deliverables before. We work the opposite way.
1Week 1
The audit
We baseline your business: door-level velocity, menu position, search visibility, review health. You get the findings whether you hire us or not.
290 days
The pilot
One market, a defined door set, KPIs agreed before a dollar moves. Field, retail, and search working the same accounts at once.
3Ongoing
Scale what works
The data decides. Doors and markets that move get more; what doesn’t move gets cut. Your budget follows velocity, not habit.
FAQ
Pricing & engagement, answered.
Is Rishi Lite really $99/mo?
Yes. $99/mo flat, up to 10 agents, all features. No per-seat surprises, no auto-renewal traps, no training sessions. Start with a 14-day free trial — no credit card required to try.
What’s the difference between Lite and Full?
Lite is software: you run your own field team with Rishi’s tools. Full is the done-for-you operation: we run field, retail, and search for you with a hybrid human + AI team.
Do I have to commit to a big retainer?
No. We start with a Week 1 audit (you get the findings whether you hire us or not), then a 90-day pilot in one market with KPIs agreed before a dollar moves. Scale only happens on evidence.
How do you price Rishi Full?
Custom, scoped to your market count, door set, and program scope. The audit defines the program; the pilot proves it; the scale phase follows velocity.
What happens after my 14-day trial?
You’re on the $99/mo plan. No auto-renewal escalator, no surprise fees. Cancel anytime — your data is yours.
Get started
Get your growth audit
Tell us who you are and we'll come back with door-level findings on your brand — velocity, visibility, and where the quick wins are. Not a pitch deck.
No newsletters. No spam. A real conversation about your number.