A budding new pot company is planting 80 billboards around Greater Boston, launching an app and hiring “student ambassadors” at MIT, Harvard, Northeastern and Boston University to help spread the word about its weed work.

California-based Weedmaps is trying to get ahead of the “green rush” before pot shops are set to open in the summer of 2018, spokesman Carl Fillichio said.

“As states have enacted increasingly varied legal regimes, we continue to expand our product portfolio to enable marijuana businesses to reach more customers,” Fillichio told the Herald yesterday. “Our goal is to build brand awareness in the commonwealth now that marijuana is legal.”

Weedmaps has a smartphone app and a website that functions as a kind of Yelp for marijuana dispensaries where users can rate and review pot shops on service and quality and view a menu.

Comments on the Weedmaps website run the gamut from comments on choices to tips on growing. [Read more at Boston Herald]