The budding pot industry is creating a tech boomlet.
Entrepreneurs David Bernstein and Vlad Stelmak are two of the growing number of businesspeople to get a whiff of the possible profits as more than 20 states have now passed pot-friendly laws.
Their brainstorm? A website and app — WeedHire.com — devoted to helping people find jobs in the expanding marijuana industry.
The Fair Lawn, NJ, duo launched the site in May after seeing news footage of people waiting for hours to get into a marijuana job fair in Colorado.
“We were sitting together and we saw this story come up and we were just like, wow,” said Bernstein, who likes to call the dot-com boom surrounding the pot industry the “pot-com boom.”
The pair are hoping their site, which lists more than 250 jobs — including a photographer for WeedMaps and a lawyer for the Arizona Medical Marijuana Certification Center — will save their struggling business AnythingIT, a penny stock company that lost $1.3 million last year.
They aim to charge employers to post jobs, as well as to access users’ résumés and to conduct background checks on potential job candidates.
If WeedHire succeeds, the Garden State will benefit from added income tax revenue. That would be a bit ironic since Gov. Chris Christie stands as a vocal critic of legalizing pot and has even blasted the state’s medical marijuana program for its low enrollment, calling it a “front for legalization.”
The pot industry in the US is estimated to grow by 68 percent this year, to $2.57 billion. The industry could grow by another 700 percent over the next five years, to $10.2 billion, according to ArcView Group, which also connects investors to pot startups.
Taylor West, of the National Cannabis Industry Association, said business-to-business software makers have also benefited from the growth spurt, which has created demand for tracking software and point-of-service sales software.
“It’s important to keep track of the plants from seed to sale, and there are a couple different businesses that have popped up with products that help with that,” West said.
Hemp American Media Group, of Scottsdale, Ariz., started as a hobby with just one site in 2009, but now boasts 12 sites as the industry grows, co-founder Colby Ayres told The Post.
Hemp American launched a job-search site late last year called 420Careers.com, as well as a business for consulting on weed-related Web sites. This year the company launched MJbizwire, a press-release service devoted specifically to the pot industry.
Business is going so well that Hemp American is looking to raise $150,000 to hire some full-time developers to help them create “marijuana-related games” and mobile apps for their job site, Ayres said.
As more states legalized the drug, “we realized we can turn this into an actual company instead of a side gig,” Ayres added.