Brian Goffenberg, left, and Dan Matlow bought Toronto startup VitalHub and took it public in a reverse takeover of a TSXV-listed shell company in 2016. Now, Mr. Goffenberg is the company’s CFO and Mr. Matlow is the CEO.Cole Burston/The Globe and Mail
When Dan Matlow was trying to raise money for his fledgling company, he jokingly asked his wife if he came home smelling like weed.
It was mid-2017 and the cannabis craze was in full swing on Canada’s public markets. Mr. Matlow was trying to finance something totally different: a digital health startup called VitalHub Corp. VHI-T He had a strategy to buy up other small health care IT companies, cross-sell their products to each other’s clients and offshore software development. He’d even struck deals to buy two companies, including one with a low-cost development shop in Sri Lanka.
But as investors poured into cannabis stocks, Mr. Matlow struggled to raise…
