Roger Volodarsky wasn't looking for a business idea. He was just looking to get clean.

“I started smoking at the age of 13, much earlier than I should have,” says Volodarsky. His parents, who were Russian immigrants, didn't want their son to touch drugs – so they started testing him for cannabis. In turn, he became hooked on painkillers in his mid-20s. Then one day, while living in New York and riding the subway to meet a sketchy opioid dealer, he saw an ad that said, “Are you addicted? Call this number.”

He called her. Counselors put him on a treatment program that began with a suboxone injection to help him cope with withdrawal and encouraged him to blunt further symptoms with cannabis concentrates. So he began inhaling — inhaling vaporized cannabis concentrates — his way back to health.

And that's when he made the business discovery of a lifetime: cannabis therapy worked, but vaporizers were terrible.

Volodarsky would bring this knowledge back to the company Puffcofamous in cannabis circles for its innovative, clean and thoughtful designs – now bringing in annual sales of $200 million, handling a Forbes assessment. (The company would not confirm or deny the number.) Since Puffco launched in 2014, it has sold 2.33 million vaporizers and grown from six employees to 141.

But at that time, he could not imagine any of this. He just loved creating better vaporizers.

“All my friends were asking me to fix their broken vamps,” says Volodarsky. “Then one of them said 'Duke, you're really into this. Why don't you try to start your own company?'

Business begins

When Volodarsky decided to launch Puffco, he already had a business education. Despite his opioid addiction, he had attended Pace University in Manhattan and managed his own mortgage business. However, the work did not inspire him. He thought of business as a dull means to an end. But the heat challenge excited him. If he built a better heat, he reasoned, he could be cured AND create a better future for himself.

But how to achieve this?

He started with product research. He made a trip to a vape business near Atlantic City, and then to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood to try out the technology. He compiled a list of features he wanted in a vaporizer: a large-capacity ceramic bowl, variable temperatures, and no plastic or glue in the chamber. (All would later become industry standards.)

Although his knowledge was world class, he had no idea how to start a business. “I was thinking, 'Why not try this?'” he says. “It's the kind of question that ignorant people ask, because there were actually a lot of reasons not to. But I didn't know them at the time. Lucky for me.”

A hard lesson in manufacturing

After he designed his new vaporizer, he had to figure out where to make them. It's a question that attracts many young entrepreneurs.

Volodarsky's mother introduced him to a friend of a friend who had manufacturing experience in China, and that person connected him with a manufacturing fixer—someone who, for a fee, would guide Volodarsky to a manufacturer to fabricate the pen. heat of his dreams.

At first, this deal seemed great. The fixer came in handy, Volodarsky found a manufacturer and the product they made was a hit. Puffco Pro, launched in 2014, received accolades from High Times magazine, and quickly grew into the vaporizer market. But then the hard lessons began.

Volodarsky's producer became too busy and canceled the contract with Puffco. Then other vapa sellers began to copy Volodarsky's design innovations. Puffco was caught flat-footed: It hadn't patented any of its designs, which meant it couldn't challenge copies, and it didn't know anything about the rest of its supply chain—such as where it sourced its producer. its raw materials.

“They didn't give me any insight into what was going on,” he says. “They didn't tell me which factories were making my Puffco vapes. They didn't tell me exactly what they were paying for. So I didn't know which parts of my products were the most expensive, or what my costs were. transport. If I had transparency into what they were doing, I would have known the different building blocks, because that was their whole value, so I would have understood every step of the way.”

Now he offers this advice to young entrepreneurs: “The first step is that you have to protect your investments,” he says. (These days, he owns twenty patents for his proprietary technology.) “The second thing is: You need transparency.”

Finding the next opportunity

Volodarsky needed to make things right – and fast. So he, along with his head of operations and chief engineer, all traveled to China on their own. They built insights into how their supply chain worked, who was doing what and how much everything cost, and then worked to reclaim their business from their imitators.

But Puffco couldn't just relaunch their old product because it would look like they were copying the people who copied them in the first place. What would be their next innovation? That's where another entrepreneurial lesson came in: “It's all based on personal experience,” says Volodarsky. “The community knows best. Listening to them has given us an edge for the last decade. Our ears are in the way and most people don't even know where to listen.”

The company began to invest heavily in community engagement, to understand what its customers needed before anyone else. Puffco launched Puffcon in 2021, attracting 2,500 of their most passionate customers, and the event has grown ever since. This year, they expect to welcome 8,000 puffers to Puffconwho gain entry by registering the serial number of their Puffco device.

Puffco's “big ears” have produced an enviable revenue line: Volodarsky says that, every year since 2021, his business has at least doubled its growth.

However, Puffco knows there are many challenges ahead. The cannabis market is volatile. Consumption patterns have far outpaced legalization around the globe, meaning users still face legal risks when taking a Puffco product across state lines or national borders. That's why Puffco has expanded aggressively. In July of this year, for example, the company opened its first warehouse in Europe, allowing it to ship to twenty-five countries such as legalization spans the continent.

“You can still look at cannabis as a business opportunity if you choose the right part of the business,” he says. The cannabis plant is still highly regulated and its value fluctuates wildly. But accessories are another story. “Evaporators, for better or for worse, are still not regulated, he says.” Puffco wants to use this freedom to its advantage.”

A business like this carries many risks, he says. But if he's learned one thing from being an accidental entrepreneur, it's this: “If you want to change the world,” he says, “it helps to be crazy.”