The Ledger
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Soylent hit $60M revenue before bad hires ruined the company
“Grew to, like, sixty million dollars in, like, a few years in revenue and then just, like, over-raised and, you know, brought in bad team, and it was just, like, a disaster, and then everyone just laughed, and then the company sold for, like, not a great outco…”
EVALI lung injuries were caused by illicit cannabis vapes, not Juul
“There was this thing called EVALI, the e-cigarette and vapor acute lung injury, like fiasco. It was identified by the CDC. And I mean, people died, like there were multiple people that, that, that actually died. And everyone thought it was because of Juul. It …”
Nicotine itself does not cause lung cancer despite common public perception
“The biggest, you know, cognitive dissonance publicly still remains just the idea that like nicotine is what gives you lung cancer, which is just not true. And the government's, you know, acknowledged this, everyone's acknowledged this, but it just, Hasn't, it …”
Coogan: FDA nicotine regulatory pathway takes five years and millions
“Creating new products that would go through the regulatory pathway and we wouldn't start selling them to from for five years or something. But we haven't really moved the needle on that. Cause it's a big investment. It's like millions and millions of dollars. …”
Altria bought 30 percent of Juul for $13B at a $60B valuation
“At their peak, I think they were valued in like 60 ish billion dollars and Altria bought 30% of the company for like thirteen billion dollars. And so the majority of that went to pay a dividend to the investors and employees.”
Coogan: FDA Authorized Swedish Match to Label Snus as Less Harmful
“And so since then the FDA has actually approved one of those moist snuff products, which was actual tobacco leaves that has carcinogens in it and nitrosamines in it. They approved it as what's called a modified risk tobacco product, which allows The company th…”
Coogan: Smoking caused more US deaths than COVID during peak pandemic
“More people died of cigarettes and smoking related, you know, diseases during COVID than from COVID. Like, I think the peak COVID deaths were 430 430,000 that year and smoking killed 460 that year.”
Coogan: All direct market competitors above Lucy are owned by Big Tobacco
“Literally all of our, all of the competitors that are directly above us are owned by big tobacco.”
Coogan: Online backlash over Apple's iPad ad will not affect sales
“Like the stock didn't move, you know, it's like, it's not, it is, isn't like a real thing. Like, I don't think it'll affect sales.”
Coogan: Coinbase gave users a full Bitcoin for signing up during YC
“Actually Coinbase was in our batch. At YC and was giving anyone who signed up a full Bitcoin, which is insane. It was like five dollars back then. So it was like their signup reward.”
Coogan: Nicotine Replacement Therapy Category Generates Under $1B in Revenue
“And it wasn't really like a growing category, like the overall NRT spaces is called nicotine replacement therapy. That whole space, Is, you know, under a billion dollars revenue.”
US states securitized Big Tobacco settlement payments into tradable bonds
“Like states have actually, like every state got a payment because they have the local hospital systems. And so these states were able to take these revenue streams and then create derivatives against them and like sell those as bonds and then like pull all tha…”