Josh Israel

Post-pitch story

Josh Israel came to the show with a product that sounded like a contradiction: a vape designed to help people quit smoking. Hava Health's connected vaporizer and companion app work together to automatically and gradually reduce a user's nicotine intake, weaning them off without asking them to quit cold turkey. The company has since rebranded as Hale Therapeutics, and its approach has stayed serious. Rather than sell a consumer vape, it pursued FDA approval as a medical device for smoking cessation, the slower and harder road. That choice has helped it win grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. On the investment side, the company raised a $2 million seed round in December 2021, and total funding has reached about $3.9 million. Its backers include Village Global, The Venture Collective and Backstage Capital. Israel remains co-founder and CEO. Medical device approval takes years and plenty of patience, so Hale hasn't had a flashy exit or blockbuster launch. But with government research money behind it and a clear path it has stuck to, the company is still pushing toward its original goal: turning the device that hooks people into the tool that helps them quit.