Dr. Isaac Balbin, Founder & CEO of Parsl – Interview Series

Dr. Isaac Balbin is a technologist, entrepreneur, advocate, speaker and visionary. He believes in changing the cannabis industry with new ideas enabled with technology and grounded in common sense.

Dr. Isaac Balbin is the Founder and CEO of Parsl, a platform that combines blockchain, NFC and IoT to create a track and trace technology that not only automates compliance efficiently and accurately but offers a range of tangible business benefits for every stage of the cannabis supply chain. Parsl can be used to enhance the operation of a state-mandated system or it can be used as a stand alone cannabis ecosystem of its own. It provides value whether it is being used by a single cannabis business or an entire supply chain.

Could you share the story of how you initially discovered blockchain?

I used to spend time with a very good friend of mine who was a very early adopter of Bitcoin, and who would tell me week-by-week how amazing and fantastic it was and how much money he was making and how I should really invest in this thing. It seemed almost unreal, and with my anti-gambling instinct, I very much felt that investing money into Bitcoin was a poor idea.

So, I instead decided to look at it with a mathematical perspective. After investigating how Bitcoin works, which is through the use of Blockchain technology, I fell in love with its potential. I saw how we could remove all sorts of wasted inefficient time that people spend doing things that can instead be automated through the use of blockchain.

When did you realize that blockchain would be the perfect solution for supply chain management for cannabis?

A few years ago, I learnt about the issues in the supply chain in cannabis and the details of how the various ways that it was implemented were very unusual in a supply chain context, as well as there being great complexity in the supply chain itself. It became immediately apparent to me that the significant trust and communication issues existing between various different cannabis businesses and cannabis jurisdictions could be simultaneously solved through the use of blockchain technology. And so I went ahead and tried to figure out a system that did exactly that.

Could you share the genesis story behind launching Parsl?

At 17 years old, I was diagnosed with Chronic Myeloid Leukemia.

My cancer treatment lasted several years and was debilitating. Through self-medication, I was able to attend university, get married and have 3 great kids. I earned a PhD in electrical engineering and developed expertise in a range of technologies including RFID, NFC, and blockchain.

A few years ago, I attended an event on medicinal cannabis at the Peter Maccallum Cancer Centre that opened my eyes to cannabis as medicine. I finally saw real science and data showing why cannabis is effective as a medicine.

I looked into the many cannabis industries around the world. Even in places with the most open cannabis laws, major obstacles still restrict one's access to legal cannabis and make business operations unduly arduous and costly.

I had a moment of clarity that merged my personal and professional lives. I saw how I could use my knowledge of cutting-edge technologies to create an ideal ecosystem for the cannabis industry, making it efficient, safe, transparent, and economically optimised. That ecosystem is Parsl.

What are some of the biggest issues that Parsl solves for the cannabis industry?

Parsl acts as a middle ground between various different parties in the cannabis industry. We have very uncompromising regulators who demand things to be done their way, as well as very stubborn and strong business operators that tend to have a background in cannabis, but who also generally mistrust those very same regulators. We also consumers that were used to using cannabis in a way where they felt the authorities were coming to get them.

What Parsl is able to do very uniquely is to bridge the gap that exists between all these very different types of people in a way that is simple, inoffensive, and clear.

How does the system operate for inventory audits?

Parsl enables people to audit their inventory in the way that they actually want to be able to do it. If they want to audit their whole inventory, they can do it. If they want to audit only part of their inventory, in a specified way broken down, they can do it.

Parsl allows every inventory audit to be done in a specific way according to the business's needs. It allows the data that is collected during the inventory audit to be processed in a way where issues that have been discovered during the audit can be dealt with in a very precise manner, allowing easy follow up and enabling anyone to go back and see what was done with each and every individual product item.

Parsl even allows multiple people to perform an inventory audit collaboratively through our group inventory function, without them having to coordinate very tightly between each other. They can just all go out there and keep scanning inventory until they're done and everybody's actions are collated in a way that the manager can easily see what needs to be done and what hasn't been done.

On the website it states that Parsl integrates directly with state compliance platforms, is this unique to states in Australia, or can it also integrate with other jurisdictions?

Parsl operates in multiple jurisdictions and integrates directly with various compliance platforms. For example, Parsl integrates directly with Metrc in California, Oklahoma, etc and is rapidly expanding to other states and into other countries.

If you'd like to check if Parsl is able to integrate directly with your mandated state compliance platform, please reach out to us.

What is your vision for the future of Parsl?

Parsl in the future is going to help unify and standardise the industry so that the operators that are working can focus on what they do best, and not have to fill their time by dealing with compliance, but rather allow us to do the heavy lifting for them. That will ultimately create a future where patients in cannabis are able to source the most appropriate product for their needs in the most economically optimal fashion, so that they can get what they need, where they need it, when they need it.

Is there anything else that you would like to share about Parsl?

Parsl is a different type of technology company. We practice what we preach and inside our company, we have a group of wonderful, talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds. We don't focus on a person's intrinsic features which we find irrelevant, but we do focus strongly on what a person does while they work for the company and their performance is evaluated on that basis only.

Everyone at the company is encouraged to bring forth ideas on how we can improve any and all parts of what we do, and we sometimes compare those ideas to be like rocks. Everyone can bring their rock to the table, but when they do so, they need to be aware that everyone else in the company will bring out their hammers and start smashing the rock and try to find what's wrong with the idea. Oftentimes, at the end of this process, the rock has been smashed into dust because at its core it wasn't a great idea. However, sometimes, after all the smashing, we are left with a diamond, and we build our platform out of those diamonds. This process of sourcing ideas and insights from all our experts and the rigorous review each idea goes through is what sets Parsl apart and why we're ahead of our competition.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more should visit Parsl.