Roger Volodarsky and the trouble with being satisfied

The name cost $1,300. Roger Volodarsky borrowed the money from his mother, bought Puffco.com and gave his new business something to put on the box. It was 2013, and the operation was taking shape in the basement of her New Jersey apartment. Before there was a product line, there was a bill to pay and a mother willing to help pay it.

That detail suits him. The founder and CEO of Puffco has become a familiar figure in cannabis hardware, but his starting point was the ordinary indignation of a customer whose purchases kept letting him down. The pens were interesting. The pens were also breaking. Eventually, a friend suggested he make his own. A great many businesses probably remain unstarted because nobody has such an inconvenient friend.

The price of a name

Volodarsky grew up in Brooklyn and New Jersey. His route into hardware went through mortgage finance, where he learned to sell, opened a business and enjoyed the rewards of a rising market. The 2008 crash ended that run. He later studied business management, then left college. The conventional route to a career had begun to look rather circuitous.

His working life also included translation services and systems administration. Those jobs supplied experience without supplying the occupation he wanted to keep. Looking back, he described the problem as having entrepreneurial energy without a subject that could hold it. Cannabis concentrates gave that energy somewhere specific to go.

He had encountered devices that made concentrates easier to approach, yet their construction irritated him. Early products often adapted technology intended for electronic cigarettes. Something could be available, portable and popular while still being poorly suited to the job. For Volodarsky, repeated disappointment became an informal education in product requirements.

Puffco’s own origin account starts with that practical concern: bringing design, engineering and technology together around concentrates. The company began in 2013. Its purpose was narrow enough to describe to a friend and difficult enough to occupy a team for years. Make the thing work better. Then decide what better actually means.

The sales department had a trunk

Every founder’s story acquires a solitary hero if you leave enough people out. Chelsea Kossower makes that difficult here. She became Puffco’s first employee, helped build its sales operation and remembers selling pens with Volodarsky from the back of her car. A company can begin with a vision and still need somewhere to keep the stock.

Kossower has described being drawn to his enthusiasm before Puffco was an established business. He spoke about hash with the conviction of someone who had already spent considerable time thinking about its future. She recognized the idea and trusted the person proposing it. Their early partnership supplied an essential ingredient: somebody willing to take the proposition outside and explain it.

The Classic arrived in January 2014, followed by the Pro that October. In 2015, High Times recognition gave the young company an audience it had previously struggled to reach. Selling hardware means getting past the reasonable suspicion that your new object resembles the other objects on the shelf. An award could open a conversation that another sales pitch could not.

The successful mistake

By 2016, he was describing Puffco as a business made by “fans first and entrepreneurs second.” It is an appealing principle until the fans disagree with one another. Even a devoted customer base contains people who want different things from the same company.

After Puffco developed the Plus, users continued to ask for a successor to its older coil-based Pro. Volodarsky obliged with the Pro 2. It was commercially well received. He considered the decision a mistake because the experience no longer matched what he wanted the company to pursue. A sale could confirm demand without resolving his dissatisfaction.

There is a revealing awkwardness in that admission. Businesses routinely ask customers what they want. Here was a founder who had listened, delivered and disliked the result. His account makes clear that revenue and conviction had become separate tests. Passing one had left him preoccupied with the other.

That distinction also explains why a product line alone tells an incomplete story about him. He wants to be persuaded by the object himself. That can give a business coherence; it can also make its founder difficult to satisfy. The interesting part is how that preference gets negotiated with everyone else who has to make the product happen.

“Creating products we wish existed”

Roger Volodarsky, on Puffco’s approach to development

A room with a view, and no booth

The company also had problems that personal taste could not solve. A manufacturing failure left its early Plus launch with 2,000 defective units. Its factory subsequently closed. For much of 2016, replacement parts helped keep the business operating while Volodarsky worked to rebuild production. An elegant idea still requires somebody to make it consistently.

The Peak’s introduction during CES week in January 2018 carried that history into a very different setting. Volodarsky said the trade show had denied Puffco a booth. He booked a suite at the Mirage, presented the device during a media event and brought reporters upstairs for a demonstration. The meeting he wanted happened beyond the exhibition floor.

The design made its argument through use. Electronic heating replaced the torch; a button began the process. Those choices reduced the amount of explanation required before a newcomer could understand the object. A hotel demonstration offered something a photograph could not: the chance to watch an unfamiliar ritual become a manageable sequence.

Seen alongside the earlier factory trouble, the suite is a useful corrective to the polished launch story. Public attention arrives on a particular night. The ability to put a functioning device in somebody’s hand has been accumulating, less photogenically, for years.

Leave room for other people

Volodarsky’s Peak brief included some disarmingly domestic requirements. It should fit a cup holder. It should signal when it was ready. Its glass should come off so artists could make their own attachments. The imagined setting included everyday convenience and individual taste. He was thinking about where the thing would live, and who might change it.

That last requirement gave glass artists a continuing role. The technology could become a base for work Puffco did not design itself. A recognizable device could acquire somebody else’s visual language. For collectors, this made room for existing interests; for makers, it provided another form to explore.

Avi Bajpai became a central partner in turning Volodarsky’s preferences into products. Volodarsky has explicitly said that he is neither an engineer nor a designer. His account of hiring Bajpai describes the difference between explaining an idea and finally seeing it reflected in the work. Expertise supplied the connection.

His reflections on leadership are similarly candid. Early on, he says, he resisted employees’ input and assumed his own judgment should prevail. Later, he learned to take pride in being surrounded by people whose abilities exceeded his own. His advice to his earlier self begins simply: “Trust yourself.” In practice, that confidence also had to make space for trusting colleagues.

The customer becomes a guest

By 2023, Puffco could assemble a different kind of demonstration. Its third Puffcon brought more than 6,000 people to downtown Los Angeles, with 40 exhibitors and 50 glass artists. The program included 2 Chainz, Action Bronson and Curren$y. Hardware rarely gets such a musical accompaniment.

The gathering puts faces to the word community. There are artists showing objects, makers explaining their craft and people meeting outside a comment thread. Glassblower Ryan Fitt demonstrated his work. Familiarity with a device becomes one reason to enter a much larger conversation.

Volodarsky is a hip-hop fan, and the music belongs naturally in his account of the event. He called Puffcon “a love letter dedicated to our scene.” He also credited events director Kevin Chapman. The affection may begin with the founder; arranging for thousands of people to enjoy it takes another set of skills entirely.

The same impulse extends into his public work as Jolly Roger. Through video, interviews and writing, he spends time explaining the culture surrounding the products. His 2023 Salon essay placed contemporary concentrates within a longer history of makers and experimentation. It gives a reader a sense of the subject that keeps his attention after the business discussion ends.

“I am proud of the community we created”

Roger Volodarsky, reflecting on a decade at Puffco

Still making room

His ambitions reach beyond the next transaction. In 2023, he discussed interest in places with established hash cultures, including Barcelona and Uruguay, and described a willingness to invest attention before an immediate commercial return was apparent. That is his stated horizon: helping people understand an experience before asking what the market might become.

The product work continues alongside it. Puffco announced an updated Proxy in September 2025 with app control, compatibility with existing attachments and an Action Bronson campaign. The pairing linked a familiar supporter to a device designed to accommodate different preferences. More settings and more recognizable faces are both ways of widening the invitation.

In 2026, the Peak Pro Link extended that invitation to people’s existing glass rigs. It is a small but telling continuation of the early removable-glass idea. A company can develop another accessory while preserving a place for objects its customers already care about.

Volodarsky remains caught in the productive inconvenience that started the company: he knows what he wants to use, and the available answer can always improve. The difference is that he now has colleagues, artists and an audience contributing their own answers. His mother helped him buy a name. He has spent the years since giving other people reasons to make it their own.