How Juul made vaping viral to become worth a dirty $38 billion

Om avsnittet

A Juul is not a cigarette. It’s much easier than that. Through devilishly slick product design I’ll discuss here, the startup has massively lowered the barrier to getting hooked on nicotine. Juul has dismantled every deterrent to taking a puff. The result is both a new $38 billion valuation thanks to a $12.8 billion investment from Marlboro Cigarettes-maker Altria this week, and an explosion in popularity of vaping amongst teenagers and the rest of the population.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Om avsnittet

Fler avsnitt

Silicon Valley’s AI wunderkind launches Underdog, the most private Instinct/Muse competitor yet; plus, name Ex-Ramp engineers raise $20M for platform Melius

Hot Girl Hotline is like ‘Dear Abby’ for the AI era; plus, after Factory’s public spat with Khosla, Menlo proudly invests

Photon held a funeral for mobile apps; plus, Kevin Mandia’s new ‘agent swarm’ security startup

World’s first enhanced geothermal power plant completed in just 23 months; plus, turning idle car inventory into rental revenue

Factory CEO just accused his VC board adviser of spying for Cognition

Ex-Tesla team raises $12.5M to put supply chains on autopilot; plus, EliseAI raises $350M, doubles valuation to $4B

AMD will acquire Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs for $8.2 billion; Physical AI chip developer SiMa AI hits $1.45B valuation

Ocean surveillance startup Quartermaster raises another $140M

Nexterity wants to automate the hard, dangerous part of pipefitting; plus, Feather is building the ‘Android of robotics’ for developers

Modal Motors is trying to cut China out of electric motors entirely; plus, PitPro’s first tire-changing robot goes live in Canada