My Story

Like a lot of startup founders, I was a secret smoker. I really didn’t like that fact about myself. I obviously knew that it wasn’t good for me. I didn’t smoke every day, but when I was stressed or busy or feeling tired I would smoke.

It started off on the odd night out: after a few drinks, I’d simply request a few “loosies” from friends or strangers. The funny thing was I didn’t think of myself as a smoker. Overall, I thought I was pretty healthy. I exercised most days. I rarely bought my own packs.

I have to admit that when I was younger, those nights out really started to add up. I know many of my friends got into the same routine. Those couple of people in our social circle who smoked all day every day were the “real” smokers, we thought. In reality, of course, we were all smokers. Like my friends, I’d wake up the morning after another night out feeling uncomfortable — and guilty. The smell. The cough. The headache. For what?

Eventually, my wife sat me down and told me that I needed to take charge of this bad habit. I promised her I would never smoke again. Bold words that were easy to say but harder to stick to. I set about finding whatever I could to ensure that I kept my promise.

My first stop was “nicotine replacement therapies,” or NRTs, as they’re called in the industry. There on a shelf in the pharmacy was box after box of traditional nicotine gum, its clinical verbiage urging me to “quit,” as if I had a medical issue. That didn’t feel like my situation. Still, I had a lot to do that day, so I grabbed a box.

A bewildering array of pharmaceutical NRTs (source)

This was not a great call. The complicated printed directions instructed me to choose 2mg of nicotine per piece because I didn’t smoke cigarettes within 30 minutes of waking up. But with 2mg, I barely felt any effect at all. I moved on to the 4mg version and hoped for the best.

That night I went out with my friends, enjoyed my favorite drink, and got the urge to smoke. Pulling out the product, I struggled to pull a piece of 4mg gum from its sharp individual packaging. When I finally got it in my mouth, it tasted terrible, with a hard, chalky texture. It did deliver some nicotine, though, so I forced myself to endure the experience. But once I ran out, it was so much easier to pick up a pack of cigarettes than make an out-of-the-way trip to the pharmacy. I couldn’t re-up at the convenience stores stocked full of cigarette and smokeless tobacco brands. I couldn’t easily replenish my supply in bulk online. I was back to square one.

Traditional nicotine gum: terrible taste, terrible packaging.

Maybe if my friends were in the same boat, I thought, the process wouldn’t feel so bothersome. I tried including them in my gum plans. Unfortunately, their responses ranged from “I’ll just quit cold turkey one day” to “I don’t want to quit forever, so I shouldn’t use this.” Some friends complained they’d tried it before and the packaging was frustrating or even painful to open, or that the product just made them nauseous. Others doubted it actually worked. One even said, “I might as well just smoke cigarettes. At least I know I like those.”

I pointed out that nicotine gum avoided the huge health risks posed by cigarettes, but I realized my friends were mostly right to complain. Old-style nicotine gums were designed as medicines. They weren’t supposed to be pleasant to use — or even to taste! They were originally meant to be suffered through for 12 weeks and then ceased altogether, at which point the patient–I mean, customer–was done with nicotine forever. That just wasn’t a realistic use case for me or my friends. No wonder we were left looking for a better way.

That’s when I got together with my co-founders and decided to create an alternative path. John, a Soylent co-founder who served as Chief Technology Officer, shared my background in consumer goods, pairing it with deep experience in building out e-commerce platforms. Samy, a Biophysics and Biochemistry PhD from Caltech, served as head of research at Soylent, where he applied his background in Biotech to everything from formulation and clinical trial management to regulatory compliance and manufacturing. Thanks to our experience at Soylent, our team had extensive experience in formulating, manufacturing, and distributing new physical products.

Together, we opted to create a completely new product — one that leveraged innovations in food science for a better taste, better texture, and improved nicotine release. Our product would deliver a nicotine experience sufficiently close to the satisfaction traditional tobacco products to actually make smokers want to switch. Soon, Lucy was born.

And the more we learned about the science of nicotine, the more we wanted to share.