Emerald Insights Podcast featuring Ed Keating, Chief Economist of Emerald Intel, and Shahbaaz Kara-Virani, VP of Growth at Blaze
Cannabis operators have no shortage of decisions to make.
Which markets are worth entering? Which licenses are active? Which retailers are growing? Which regulatory changes are about to shift the ground under everyone’s feet?
For cannabis technology companies like Blaze, those questions shape sales strategy, market expansion, customer success, and product priorities every day.
In this episode of the Emerald Insights Podcast, Ed Keating, Chief Economist of Emerald Intel, sits down with Shahbaaz Kara-Virani, VP of Growth at Blaze, for a wide-ranging conversation on cannabis data, cannabis market intelligence, cannabis license data, compliance, retail technology, New York, Canada, rescheduling, and what it really takes to sell into the regulated cannabis industry.
Below are the highlights. Watch or listen to the full podcast here.
Shahbaaz Kara-Virani is the VP of Growth at Blaze, a cannabis retail technology company serving operators across multiple markets. He is also the co-founder of the New York Cannabis Collective, executive producer at Polaris Perspective, and principal of SK Ventures.
His background spans Salesforce, Lift & Co., Dutchie, Kind Magazine, Blaze, and multiple cannabis leadership communities. In other words, he has seen the industry from just about every angle.
As Shahbaaz puts it: “Cannabis the Plant is a magical, magical plant, but the business of cannabis is so starkly different from any other industry because of the compliance, the regulations, and the pace at which it has to move.”
That pace is the thread running through the full conversation.
What should people know before entering cannabis?
According to Shahbaaz, anyone trying to enter cannabis today needs to start with curiosity and business acumen.
Not hype. Not assumptions. Not “I like weed, so I should work in cannabis.” Real understanding.
“Be curious about how things move across the supply chain.”
Cannabis is full of touchpoints: cultivation, processing, distribution, retail, compliance, technology, marketing, finance, and regulation. To succeed, new entrants need to understand how those pieces connect.
His advice is direct:
“Showcase that you understand the business of cannabis by your research.”
And while cannabis experience helps, it is not the only path in. Transferable skills matter. Sales skills matter. Communication matters. The ability to create value matters.
“If you are a good seller and you can drive value and you can create relationships… you’re forever going to have a job.”
Cannabis vendors cannot simply sell products anymore.
Retailers are overwhelmed. Operators are managing compliance, staffing, inventory, margins, payments, taxes, competition, and customer education — usually all at once.
That means vendors need to show up differently.
“If you’re a vendor, if you’re a brand, if you’re someone who’s selling into the retail environment, your job doesn’t become only, ‘Hey, take my thing.’”
Instead, vendors need to help operators understand how to use products, tools, and data to improve the business.
“Vendors need to be educators, leaders, advisors, consigliere’s to their retailers.”
In cannabis, operators do not need more noise. They need partners who can help them make better decisions.
Shahbaaz explains that Blaze uses Emerald Intel to understand markets, identify opportunities, build lists, and prioritize where to focus.
“Emerald is one of the best platforms that any scaling company should and can use, whether in this industry or not.”
For Blaze, Emerald Intel functions as a market intelligence layer.
“Emerald is like our eyes and ears.”
When Blaze enters or evaluates a market, the team uses Emerald Intel to understand the license landscape, identify contacts, and get a clearer picture of the opportunity.
“When we’re going into a new market, the first thing that we do is run a search in Emerald, start to see what licenses are there, start to see contacts, start to understand really the lay of the land.”
For a lean growth team, this is critical. Cannabis markets move quickly. Regulatory changes create new opportunities. License activity can signal market momentum. New operators can become future customers.
That is the value of cannabis data: helping teams decide where to spend time, where to build relationships, and where to move next.
“The pace of this industry is so fast… Emerald gives us that speed that we need to stay on top of trends, especially as a lean team.”
Better data does not eliminate complexity. But it does make the complexity easier to navigate.
Shahbaaz offers a practical answer: operators do not resist technology because they dislike innovation.
They resist because change is hard: “No one wants to change technology unless there’s a significant impact associated with changing that technology.”
Cannabis retailers are busy. They are dealing with compliance, customers, inventory, staff, vendors, regulators, and cash flow. A new technology platform has to justify the disruption.
That means vendors need to understand the customer’s pain deeply.
“Our job becomes to really understand the customer’s problems at the retail level better than they might even understand them.”
A shiny demo is not enough. A feature checklist is not enough. The problem has to be big enough, the ROI has to be clear enough, and the implementation has to be smooth enough.
Operators are not buying software. They are buying outcomes.
Shahbaaz’s overhyped trend is clear: the THC arms race.
“The overhyped trend in cannabis is your classic: I just want to smoke the highest THC possible.”
He argues that the industry needs to move beyond potency as the dominant selling point and toward better education around dosing, form factor, environment, and consumer goals.
His underhyped trend? "Cannabis wellness, sports recovery, and longevity."
That shift matters because the cannabis consumer is far more diverse than outdated stereotypes suggest.
For operators, that means education and segmentation will matter more. For brands, it means positioning needs to mature. For data providers, it means tracking the market requires more than surface-level assumptions.
This conversation connects the dots between cannabis data, cannabis market intelligence, cannabis license data, retail technology, compliance, and real-world growth strategy.
It is not theoretical. It is a practical look at how one cannabis technology company evaluates markets, supports operators, thinks about regulation, and uses data to move faster.
If you are a cannabis operator, CRB, technology provider, investor, consultant, or service provider selling into the regulated industry, this episode is worth your time.
In an industry where the ground shifts constantly, better intelligence is not optional—it is the edge.
Watch or listen to the full Emerald Insights Podcast episode with Ed Keating and Shahbaaz Kara-Virani.