Nicotine Replacement Therapy Brand Jones Gets Underway With $1.1M From Warby Parker Founders’ VC Firm And Others

Fueled by $1.1 million in pre-seed funding, Jones has launched to ease people off of vaping, a challenge its creators know full well. 

Striving to put a contemporary spin on the nicotine replacement therapy category, the brand’s pre-seed round was led by Good Friends, an early-stage fund from the founders of Warby Parker, Harry’s and All-Birds. Other participating investors include Rough Draft Ventures, Dorm Room Fund, NYU Innovation Fund, Dan Rosenthal, former CEO of United Healthcare West Region, and Marguerite Mariscal, CEO of Momofuku.  

“Jones is taking an innovative approach to a stale category through digital-first community building and brand,” says Good Friends via email. “We’ve been so impressed with how the founders problem-solve in a highly regulated space, and how deeply they understand the problem and the customers they’re serving. We are excited by the size of the opportunity and the potential for impact.”

Jones co-founders Hilary Dubin and Caroline Huber have been friends since they were 8 years old. Their nearly lifelong connection led the pals to share many rites of passage—good and bad. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, they picked up vaping at a time when Juul was novel and generally considered to be harmless. “It was designed to help people quit smoking, so it couldn’t be that bad, right?” jokes Huber.

While Dubin and Huber’s vaping habit began casually on the weekends, it quickly progressed to a daily practice. Eventually, the pair got sick of little electronic vaping sticks controlling them. Dubin says, “It became exhausting and embarrassing to feel so dependent on something that’s objectively bad for you, so we both independently decided to quit.”

Unsurprisingly, quitting cold turkey didn’t go well. After countless failed attempts to stop vaping, Huber’s mother, a doctor, introduced her to the benefits of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) products like lozenges, gum and transdermal patches. 

Thankfully, NRT products did the trick for Huber and Dubin, but they thought the experience of buying and using them could improve. Up until a few years ago, the NRT arena typically consisted of grabbing Nicorette off the shelf at a local pharmacy. Dated products didn’t speak to Huber and Dubin’s aesthetic sensibilities, and they fretted about the lack of an accompanying support system to assist them during the toughest moments of quitting vaping. 

Jones is starting with United States Food and Drug Administration-approved nicotine mints in two strengths, two milligrams and four milligrams. The mints, which are an over-the-counter medication and available on subscription, come in 81-count packs encased in a chic tin and priced at $62. The amount of nicotine in a cigarette or vape varies, but a 2019 study discovered that, on average, 1 to 1.5 milligrams of nicotine are absorbed per cigarette smoked. 

A key element of Jones’ offering is a sleek app. App users enter information pertaining to their personal quitting journeys such as how much they vape or smoke in a day and receive targeted support. They can create a “pod” group of fellow users out of the wider community where communication isn’t seen publicly. 

The app features a social media-like feed for posting accomplishments and sharing challenges on the road to quitting. There’s even a game intended to assist users in pushing through cravings. Dubin says, “Cravings usually last 90 seconds, so the idea is you play the game until it passes.” 

Since Jones premiered in November, it’s amassed a digital community of 4,000 encompassing its app and text program. Among the app users, 17% have purchased NRT products from Jones, and 40% of its NRT customers use the app. On TikTok, Jones has nearly 30,000 followers and 8.2 million likes. Currently, Jones’ products are sold in direct-to-consumer distribution via its e-commerce website. 

The brand is busy pursuing a seven-figure seed funding round to finance future retail expansion. Huber says, “[We’ll be] targeting customers at a mix where they shop: convenience stores, bodegas and wellness stores and grocers as we establish ourselves as a wellness brand.” 

Jones isn’t Huber and Dubin’s first joint entrepreneurial venture. They previously founded inclusive leisurewear brand Cozier together. Jones joins recent startups like Blip and Lucy looking to energize the staid NRT space. According to Grand View Research, the global nicotine replacement therapy market size was valued at $59.4 billion in 2022 and is anticipated to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 16.3% over the next four years.

But the industry is not without its headwinds. Nicotine pouches, like those made by wildly popular brand Zyn, have recently come under fire from politicians like senate majority leader Chuck Shumer, who called for the United State Federal Trade Commission and Food and Drug Administration to investigate Zyn’s marketing practices and the product’s possible health effects, respectively. Schumer’s move was then criticized by republican lawmakers like Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene who called democrats “idiots.”