Hilary Dubin realized his addiction to Juul, the nicotine vapeman who went viral and to which the addiction of adolescents is attributed throughout the country, while he was in a California ski center in 2017. He was 22 years old at that time and Dubin and his boyfriend found a juul on the ground. They picked him up, gave him a draft and found that he was still working.
“We think: ‘Well, we don’t buy it, we simply find it, and now it’s ours,” says Dubin, 30. “(In retrospect), now I am very embarrassed.”
A few years later, Dubin’s childhood friend, Caroline Vasquez Huber, realized that she had an addiction to Juul after returning home during the Covid Pandemia in 2020. She vapeated all day and knew she had to leave it.
“In a few days I felt miserable,” says Huber, who is also 30 years old.
Huber’s mother, a doctor, estimated that she was vaping about 40 nicotine cigarettes a day. They went to the pharmacy and she changed her juul for mint pills with nicotine. But the King blue nicotine pills, with a medical appearance, embarrassed it.
“You get a Nicorette and it seems that you have a disease,” says Huber. “It seemed like a shameful product.”
After Huber explained to Dubin how to quit smoking, they had an idea: to create a nicotine replacement therapy company, but with an innovative approach. In the summer of 2022, the duo requested to participate in an acceleration program from the University of New York and received a scholarship of $ 10,000. They won a proposals contest at the end of the course, obtaining $ 1.1 million in initial financing of investors such as Good Friends (founded by the founders of Warby Parker, Allbirds and the Harry’s shaving machinilla company) and began to develop an application that uses cognitive-behavioral therapy and positive motivation to help people leave the cigarettes, vapers and bags They use together with nicotine pills. After a year of development, Jones, as his new company was called, was launched in November 2023 and raised 3.9 million in an initial round of Founder Collective, Next View and others.
This week, Jones announced the closure of a series A financing of 10 million dollars, which Forbes He estimates that he values the company in about 45 million dollars. The company will use capital to develop new nicotine products, hire more employees and promote the company. Jones generated 5 million dollars in revenues last year and its objective is to reach 10 million dollars in sales by the end of 2025.
Jones, the most recent startup in the market of nicotine replacement therapies, a complex and highly regulated market with global annual sales of $ 3 billion, does not manufacture its TRN pills, but buy them from an external manufacturer approved by the FDA. And yes, they come in those bright blue bottles, the same in which the generic trn pills are sold in Walgreens and CVS. But Jones includes an elegant can where users can put their mints so that the experience is more elegant. The company, which claims to have 60% of women women and 40% men, is also collaborating with the Los Angeles jewelry brand, Monbouquette, to create a small silver box sterling for pills, which will be sold for 295 and can also be used as a necklace. During New York Fashion Week, Jones distributed cans from his pills to the models between racks during Jonathan Cohen, Kallmeyer and Tanner Fletcher parades.
The brand is also trying to modernize the marketing and approach to existing nicotine replacement therapies (TRN). Jones use the same approach as Warby Parker for glasses and the one HIMS uses for the treatments against hair loss and medications for erectile dysfunction. Make nicotine, generic viagra and glasses attractive, easy and without shame. However, there is a big difference between Jones and Hims: nicotine replacement therapy is a free sale medication, so customers do not need a medical recipe.
The TRN market is currently dominated by large multimillion -dollar pharmaceutical companies, such as Johnson & Johnson, manufacturer of the Nicorette brand, Haleon Group, a Glaxosmithkline subsidiary, and Perrigo. There are also innovative solutions: Qnovia, based in Virginia, is developing a nicotine nebulizer that hopes to obtain the approval of the FDA. However, there are enough people looking to quit smoking. With 28 million smokers in the United States, tobacco remains the main cause of death and preventable disease, with 480,000 deaths a year. This means that Jones operates in a considerable market that needs more solutions.
Jaclyn Freeman Hester, Foundry’s partner, who led the Jones Series A round, says they convinced her to invest in the company because she believes that Jones has altered the current market offers and is reaching a customer base to which generic brands do not attend.
“Is this a serious and important problem? Yes, it is a huge problem,” he says, explaining that most people who smoke or vain want to leave it, but they don’t get it. “The idea is that smoking has modernized, and leave it not (until now).”
Jones has also created a culture defined by grace, according to the founders, something that people addicted to nicotine, and other drugs and substances, do not get enough while trying to leave it. (Studies have shown that a typical tobacco addicted person tries to leave it without success between 8 and 10 times). The application of Jones allows customers to choose specific objectives: leave it completely or gradually reduce consumption.
“We don’t judge,” says Huber. “Reduce, give up, do what you want. For Jones, if you make a mistake, nothing happens. We celebrate progress above perfection.”
And how has the founders of Jones gone in their attempts to quit? Well, they don’t vapee, but they still use their own product. “I love nicotine,” says Huber. “I use TRN every day.”
This article was originally published by Forbes Us.
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