Eric Drymer’s last startup failed in 2024. He says the stress of “grind type shit” to keep it afloat led him to pick up bad habits, especially vaping. He largely credits hypnosis with helping him quit, but the experience also sparked a business obsession: nicotine pouches looked like a “product form factor” people were suddenly using everywhere.

Drymer’s thesis was simple and pointed. Nicotine is highly addictive and harmful to cardiovascular health, so what if the industry built a focus and sleep tool that was not addictive and could be “better as a focus tool”? With that, Ultra Pouches was born, designed around two stated use cases: sleep and focus. Ultra Pouches come in flavors like cool mint, watermelon, and tropical, and Drymer says they do not contain nicotine or tobacco. Instead, the pouches are marketed as supplements with ingredients such as vitamins B12 and B6, ginseng extract, and paraxanthine, a metabolite of caffeine.

If you have never seen these things, here’s the plain picture. Most pouches are little white sachets filled with powder that people stick in their lip next to their gums. Ultra Pouches follow that same format. Drymer and the product’s positioning live in a specific regulatory and marketing gap: since they are classified as supplements, Ultra says they do not need FDA approval for safety or effectiveness. Ultra’s marketing claims its pouches are as if nicotine and adderall “had a baby.” That’s the kind of line that tells you exactly what the company is trying to win: the “focus” shopper who likes the pouch routine but does not want nicotine’s drawbacks.

Zoom out and the timing makes sense, because Zyn already proved the pouch works as a consumer behavior. The product is owned by Philip Morris International. The source notes that Philip Morris shipped 880 million cans of nicotine pouches in 2025, up 37% from the year before. Usage is not universal, but it is not tiny either: 5.9% of US adults reported using nicotine pouches in 2024. And, importantly for any operator watching this space, usage patterns skew intense. The source says people who use pouches tend to use them a lot, and most are current or former smokers, vapers, or users of other tobacco products.

That’s where the “copycats” start to matter. The pouch delivery system is spreading well beyond nicotine. The source describes a growing number of entrepreneurs launching Zyn copycats or stuffing pouches with caffeine, CBD, THC, melatonin, and even teeth-whitening ingredients. The reason boards should care is not just product novelty. It is that companies are betting consumers are attached to the pouch itself, not merely the buzz. In practice, that creates a new category logic: a small sachet that is discreet (no smoke or vapor), low smell, shareable, and designed for use in everyday places like the office, the gym, or a bar.

There is also a cultural distribution engine behind the category. The source points to memes and “Zynfluencers” on Instagram and TikTok, plus examples like news stories about tech companies stocking Zyn in office refrigerators. Researchers cited in the source, including Dr. Pamela Ling at UCSF’s Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education, say humor and small-network sharing can have a “normalizing effect.” Another scientist quoted, Pallav Pokhrel of the University of Hawaii Cancer Center, says users report stimulation, fun, and stress relief, and that flavors help the pouch appeal.

But “normalizing” is not the same thing as “safe.” The FDA has authorized only a handful of nicotine pouches for particular marketing claims, and the source notes the FDA recently cleared Zyn to market as a healthier alternative to smoking or vaping. Even so, concerns remain. Richard Holliday, a senior lecturer at Newcastle University’s School of Dental Sciences, tells the source that pouches may be “potentially quite an insult to the lining of the mouth,” especially when people keep them in for 12-18 hours a day.

Now bring this back to Ultra Pouches and the broader non-nicotine pivot. The source includes a key regulatory advantage that encourages this mini boom: if you have a caffeine pouch, then the regulatory oversight is different, and companies do not face the same FDA scrutiny as nicotine products. That leads to a crowded landscape of products chasing the same small-format attention with different ingredient stacks.

You can see the strategy even in the more aggressively nicotine-adjacent players. Lorenzo De Plano, CEO of ALP Pouch, launched by conservative commentator Tucker Carlson in 2024, has spent over a decade in the nicotine space and tells the source that businesses constantly look for “more efficient nicotine delivery systems.” He argues nicotine gum is not as convenient in the morning and mentions stomach issues. ALP sells nearly a dozen flavors in varying strengths and has a line of caffeine pouches. The source says ALP has partnerships with athletes and “manosphere” types, including Conor McGregor and golfer Carter Smith, and of course Carlson. De Plano is not hiding the downside either; he tells the source, “We openly state that our products are addictive.”

For boards and investors, the second-order implication is that the category is splitting into two different compliance stories: nicotine products with FDA authorization lanes, and non-nicotine supplements where companies may not need FDA approval for safety or effectiveness. That doesn’t eliminate risk. It relocates it. It shifts scrutiny toward labeling, ingredient substantiation, and potential future regulatory catching-up as usage grows and regulators try to keep pace with a product category that moved faster than policy.

And that is the strategic stake. Ultra Pouches is not competing only with other pouches. It is competing with consumers’ learned routines from Zyn, with the cultural distribution of “pouch life,” and with a market that rewards speed and packaging. The winning team will likely be the one that builds stickiness while staying on the right side of evolving oversight. If you are an executive watching adjacent consumer health, tobacco alternatives, or performance supplements, you should treat this as a category platform play, not a niche gimmick: once a delivery format catches on, everyone rushes in, and the regulatory timeline becomes part of the business model.