From code
to category.
Most founders find a market. Chris built one — then built the standards, the certification, and the policy framework around it.
He started as a builder. A self-taught programmer turned software architect and CTO, Chris spent over a decade designing systems for businesses — PCI-compliant payment infrastructure, NIST-grade security, cloud migrations. He learned how to turn ambiguity into architecture.
In 2018, he brought that skillset to an industry that had none of it. The newly legalized hemp market was a messy, trust-starved supply chain — so he built Hemp Exchange, a marketplace connecting verified producers with buyers, and Project Hemp Flower, bringing transparency to a market that badly needed it.
Then he read the 2018 Farm Bill more carefully than almost anyone else.
The law's definition of hemp left a fully legal pathway for hemp-derived Delta-9 THC. Chris procured the industry's first legal opinion, formulated the first intentionally dosed hemp-derived Δ9 products, and sold to the first distributor and first retailer — launching Trojan Horse Cannabis and creating the category outright.
That category went mainstream as High Spirits: clean, consistently dosed THC beverages built for people who want the social ritual of drinking without the alcohol. What began as a legal theory is now one of the fastest-moving segments in beverage.
"Policy decisions being made right now in Congress will determine whether this momentum continues or gets rolled back."— Chris Fontes
Which is why he now spends as much time in Washington as in the warehouse — leading the U.S. Hemp Authority and serving on the board of the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, writing the standards for the industry he started.