Born to a Jewish family,[3] Hartfield founded WeedMaps in 2008 while working at a search engine optimization (SEO) consultation business.[4][5][6][7][8] WeedMaps allows medical marijuana collectives to rate their own marijuana dispensaries.[9][10][11] Under Hartfield, WeedMaps grew to nearly two million monthly visitors with a monthly revenue of $1.5 million.[12] Hartfield served as the first CEO of the company until 2016 when he stepped down but remained board chairman of the company.[13][9][14]
Hartfield founded the privately held Ghost Group in 2012 and serves as the company’s CEO.[4][15] Through Ghost Group, Hartfield and his business partner Doug Francis launched Emerald Ocean Capital, a venture capital firm in the legal marijuana industry.[4][7][15]
In addition to Hartfield’s work in the legal cannabis industry, he has also filled roles as a marketing and search engine optimization expert. From 2010 to 2012, he was the Chief web officer at the publicly traded SearchCore, Inc.[15][16]
