When Conrad Kurth explains why he started a vape company, he doesn't cite a market study. He points to his friends.
"Honestly? My friends. Around 2018 everyone I knew was on Juul," said Kurth, a former software engineer who studied at USC and spent more than 10 years writing code before founding Cyclone Pods.
Vaping, Kurth had assumed, was supposed to help people quit smoking. He came to believe it did the opposite.
"I figured the point was to help people quit smoking for good. It wasn't. It just traded cigarettes for a Juul habit," he said.
So he went looking for a nicotine-free alternative. Finding none, he built one himself — tracking down manufacturing and liquid facilities, putting up a website and posting in online forums until orders started to arrive.
"It was niche, but niche is a good place to get your foot in the door," he said. "There have been ups and downs, but we've grown every year since."
That was the start of Cyclone Pods, the Santa Monica company Kurth founded in 2018 and still leads. Eight years on, the brand sells nicotine-free vapes and caffeine-based "Focus" pouches in a market long dominated by nicotine products.
Kurth frames the business less as a hardware company than as a single idea in several forms.
"One idea, several formats," he said. "The through-line was never the hardware. It's giving adults the habit without the addictive substance."
The product line has widened from a single nicotine-free pod to rechargeable pod systems, disposable vapes, nootropic lip pouches and wellness supplements. Kurth describes the growth as a coherent vision shaped by customer demand rather than a scramble to chase trends. The Focus Pouches, which the company says contain caffeine and adaptogens, were added, he said, "because customers wanted function, not only a substitute."
"So it's a coherent vision, shaped by where our customers pulled us," Kurth said. "Supplements are just another avenue to help people along their journey."
Bold flavors are central to the brand — and flavored vapes are precisely the products regulators have targeted over concerns about youth appeal. Asked how a flavor-forward product avoids becoming a gateway for teenagers, Kurth argued the concern is misdirected in his company's case.
"A gateway to nicotine is the allure of using nicotine," he said. "Ours has none. ... There's nothing addictive to graduate to."
He said the company's packaging is deliberately restrained. "Our packaging is deliberately clean and mature, not the bright, cereal-box look a lot of nicotine brands use," he said, adding that the marketing targets adults who already vape rather than new users. "We built this as an off-ramp from nicotine, not an on-ramp to it."
To back its central claim, Cyclone Pods says it has its products tested by independent, accredited laboratories and publishes the results. The company's vapes are tested by Legend Technical Services Inc., an ISO 17025-accredited lab in St. Paul, Minnesota, using a mass-spectrometry method the company says can detect nicotine down to 0.063 micrograms per gram. Of 16 products analyzed under one recent work order, the company says, 15 returned non-detect results for nicotine, and all tested at 0% for diacetyl.
The Focus Pouches are tested separately by Certified Laboratories, an A2LA-accredited facility in Burbank, California, that screens for pesticides, solvents and heavy metals. The company says caffeine content was verified at 113% of its 50-milligram label claim.
For all the growth, Kurth said the company remains rooted in Santa Monica, where he has lived since 2015 and where Cyclone Pods began.
"Because it's home," he said. "Santa Monica is where Cyclone started and where I still live. Might as well keep it here where life is great."
Cyclone Pods products are sold at cyclonepods.com and in retail stores nationwide.