Kurt Rossner and the Business of Being Found

Kurt Rossner’s early version of Leafbuyer had a pleasantly unglamorous feature: you could print the coupon. Find a dispensary, find an offer, take something useful to the counter. For an entrepreneur entering Colorado’s new cannabis economy, the humble bargain offered a way into a market attracting considerably grander predictions.

The attraction was understandable. A consumer needed help finding a shop. A shop needed help finding a consumer. Rossner had spent years around the technology that connects businesses with people. Colorado gave that familiar problem a new address, a new vocabulary and a fresh supply of merchants willing to pay for an introduction.

Over the following decade, Leafbuyer would add loyalty services, messaging and ordering technology. It would enter public markets, expand through partnerships and acquisition, and eventually separate its operating business from its public parent. Rossner’s story runs through those changes, with a sales question quietly following him: once someone has found you, how do you get them back?

A salesman before a sector

Rossner began his career in 1993 as a business sales manager at MCI Telecommunications Corporation. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Florida State University. The combination gives his later career a useful starting point: the practical work of selling a service to a business, with an education concerned with how markets behave.

He went on to found technology companies, including a web-hosting platform sold to Micron Electronics in 2000. He later became a vice president at Micron Technology. By the time cannabis entered the picture, he had already worked through a previous period in which companies were learning how to conduct business online.

Hosting has a certain backstage quality. The customer wants a website that works; the machinery supporting it is somebody else’s concern. Years later, Leafbuyer would occupy a similarly practical position around dispensaries, supplying technology and marketing rather than relying on the appeal of a retail counter of its own.

Colorado, a search box and a coupon

The opening came as Colorado’s adult-use cannabis market took shape. Rossner co-founded LB Media Group in May 2013 with Mark Breen and Michael Goerner. Leafbuyer.com launched in December that year. A website could organize something that was becoming newly valuable: local commercial information in a young market.

In its early form, Leafbuyer let visitors search by location and product, find nearby offers and print coupons. Dispensaries paid to advertise. Rossner discussed plans to gather a broader range of cannabis-related businesses and activities in one place, including events and tours. His ambition extended beyond a list of addresses to the experience of navigating an unfamiliar market.

That early business had a concrete customer in view: someone who knew what they wanted to find but needed help deciding where to go. The coupon made the website’s promise tangible. A search result could become an errand, and an errand could become a sale. The technology had a destination outside the browser.

The founding team brought different kinds of experience. Breen’s background included broadcast-media sales. Goerner’s included software development and work on the original MapQuest.com website. Rossner’s brief covered operations and strategic direction. There was a useful division of labor here: someone had to build the product, someone had to sell it, and someone had to keep the enterprise pointed toward its next market.

Borrowing the audience

In March 2017, Leafbuyer moved into public markets through a reverse merger with AP Event, Inc. The structure put the operating business inside a publicly traded company that took the Leafbuyer Technologies name. Rossner became its chairman and chief executive. For him, the transaction was tied to the prospect of financing expansion beyond the company’s Colorado base.

“With access to the capital markets, we hope our expansion plans can now become reality.”

Kurt Rossner · March 2017

Reaching a national audience also required finding places where potential customers already spent their time. Leafbuyer’s expanded Voice Media Group partnership in September 2017 placed offers within a network that included Westword, LA Weekly, Phoenix New Times and Toke of the Town. The relationship had begun with an advertising arrangement in late 2016.

A reader could encounter a deal inside a publication rather than making a separate trip to Leafbuyer’s website. Local journalism had gathered the audience; Leafbuyer supplied searchable offers. The arrangement connected the company’s commercial information to readers who already had a reason to be on the page. Distribution did some of the work that advertising otherwise had to do.

Rossner spoke about attracting customers outside Colorado. That aspiration helps explain the partnership’s place in his story. A locally useful directory could expand by joining other people’s established routes to readers. The larger business was being assembled through relationships as well as software.

The second visit

Discovery solved the first part of a merchant’s problem. Retention supplied another set of services to sell. In July 2017, Leafbuyer announced a collaboration with SpringBIG that paired customer acquisition with loyalty tools. Rossner’s explanation centered on dispensaries recognizing the value of giving existing customers reasons to return.

The commercial logic was plain. A retailer that has paid to attract someone wants the relationship to survive the first transaction. Leafbuyer could help bring a shopper to the door; loyalty tools could support the next visit. The business was beginning to occupy more of the customer’s journey, giving its sales team more to discuss than placement in a directory.

In November 2018, Leafbuyer acquired Greenlight Technologies. Its application connected real-time mobile ordering and loyalty rewards with dispensary point-of-sale systems. The acquisition extended the company’s reach in California and added technology that could sit closer to the purchase itself. Searching, ordering and returning were becoming parts of the same product conversation.

That required more than putting a new label on the old website. An order had to connect with a shop’s systems. A loyalty service had to remain useful after the opening discount. Rossner’s stated intention was to expand Greenlight’s platform in California and bring it into other legal markets, including Colorado. A local deals business had acquired a more involved daily job.

By June 2020, the company was pointing to rising usage of its texting and loyalty platform as an indicator of recurring revenue. The distinction mattered to the business model. A directory introduces buyers and sellers. A service used repeatedly by a merchant becomes part of the routine of running that shop.

Rossner and Breen appeared together on the State of Cannabis podcast in May 2018, discussing the deals business during this period of expansion. The pairing is a small reminder that Leafbuyer’s public face included more than its chief executive. Its growth depended on a founding group whose work crossed technology, selling and operations.

Industry recognition arrived along the way. Cannabis Business Executive included Leafbuyer on its 2017 Ancillary Business List. Rossner described the need for professional marketing that could reach and retain customers. The word “ancillary” suited the company’s position: it sold services around the cannabis trade. Its own customer was the business trying to win a shopper’s attention and, eventually, another visit.

The numbers change direction

Fiscal 2025 brought revenue of $6,471,573, compared with $5,601,357 the previous year. Leafbuyer reported net profit of $260,672. Upgrades from existing contracts and channel-partner agreements contributed to revenue growth. Partnerships with point-of-sale companies offered another way to reach merchants through providers already serving them.

The next comparison was less comfortable. For the six months ended December 31, 2025, revenue fell to about $1.94 million from $3.33 million in the comparable period. In February 2026, the company attributed the decline primarily to changes affecting cannabis SMS and MMS messaging practices. Rossner discussed a reworked platform, lower costs and rebuilding growth through channel partnerships.

Those results put friction back into the expansion story. More services meant more ways to serve a merchant, along with greater exposure to the systems carrying those services. A message has commercial value when it reaches its intended recipient. For a company selling communication, the route itself can become a business problem.

A company and its wrapper part ways

A further change was already taking shape. In November 2025, the public company entered a merger agreement involving RagingBull.com. The proposed structure included separating the Leafbuyer operating business from the public parent. It was another reminder that the website, the people running it and the corporation above them could follow different paths.

The transaction closed on June 8, 2026. The public parent became DATZ World Holdings, and Rossner resigned as its CEO, chairman and director. LB Media Group, the Leafbuyer operating subsidiary, was sold separately to Foundation AI LLC for $750,000 in cash. Leafbuyer’s investor page now describes the business as private. The familiar brand survived a substantial change in ownership structure.

Rossner’s public-company chapter had lasted roughly nine years. Its ambitions had included national expansion, a wider range of services and a place in the everyday work of dispensary marketing. It also contained revenue reversals and a departure. The dates give the story its shape; they keep an entrepreneur’s earlier promises attached to the business conditions in which he made them.

Across that span, the most revealing object may still be the printable coupon. It made a small, testable promise: here is something you want, somewhere you can buy it, on terms worth a visit. Rossner spent the Leafbuyer years adding more technology around that moment. The customer still had to decide to walk through the door.