Juul: The Business and the Blueprint

Like a lot of great businesses, Juul succeeds because it combines two qualities that are generally at odds: it has a missionary management team, and mercenary margins.

Juul’s missionary managers can make a pretty strong case that if you want to save lives, you shouldn’t invest in biotech; you should work for Juul. Cigarettes are a huge health problem, reducing life expectancy by about ten years and often leading to a pretty horrible death.

We’re used to conflating nicotine, tobacco, and cigarettes, but they have very different risk profiles…