*By Brian Henry*
The founder and CEO of Vangst, a cannabis recruiting platform, wants to help budding cannabis companies staff up ーand she has Snoop Dogg's support to make that happen.
Founder and CEO, Karson Humiston, told Cheddar she was inspired to create the company back in college after a trip to Colorado.
She said cannabis companies “were hiring for every type of position under the sun and they listed hiring as their number one pain point.”
And with just 10 ten states having legalized recreational marijuana, those looking to get a start in the cannabis industry might not know where to begin.
“We saw an opportunity to connect all the people looking for jobs in the industry with the employers looking to hire," she added.
Now one of the leading cannabis recruiting platforms, Vangst recently secured $10 million in Series A Financing. The round was led by Snoop Dogg’s cannabis-focused VC fund Casa Verde Capital.
“I actually haven’t met Snoop Dogg himself yet,” Humiston told Cheddar, but she had high praise for Casa Verde.
“Casa Verde led our round and participated in our seed round and we worked incredibly well together over the last year.
Humiston says she the funding will go to implementing new technology as the industry continues to grow.
“There’s right now around 160,000 people employed in the space and this number is expected to grow to 350,000. Obviously, we have a lot of work to do to connect hundreds of thousands of people with jobs. We know with technology we can do this more easily with our clients.”
Humiston, who is just 26 years old, said the cannabis business benefits from being a relatively new industry.
“I definitely think that this industry is really unique in the sense that we’re starting from nothing. We have the opportunity to build what hopefully will be one of the most inclusive industries in the world and for companies to be able to prioritize diversity and inclusion programs really into their hiring early on is something we’ve seen companies do really well.”
Humiston added that cannabis offers opportunities to people with all different backgrounds.
“What I really believe is that all these businesses have jobs that are very transferable. Finance, marketing HR, tech. You can pretty much continue whatever you’re doing and apply those skills to the cannabis industry.”
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/vangst-raises-10-million-series-a-fundraising).
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