Daniel Lubetzky, Founder of KIND, on Reaching a $7 Billion Valuation, Why Builders Beat Destroyers, and How Many Nickels It Costs to Stick to Values

0:00You sold Kind and they went on Shark Tank. Why? How many investments have you made? Through Shark Tank? Probably 15, 20. Has anyone made money? There's one investment I'm telling you, Michael, I think this might be a multi-billion dollar company. Okay, so tell us. The amount of things that I did wrong is so much greater than the amount of things that I did right. We grew a company from basically nothing to a multi-billion dollar company with no needed investment. I don't want to start getting so emotional out the gate.

0:42Welcome back for another episode of Invested. This is not Shark Tank. It's Invested. And I'm here with Daniel Lubecki. How are you, Daniel? I'm so pleased to be with you. Most of you probably know Daniel. from Shark Tank, but he actually also invented the Kind Bar. Now, the Kind Bar is very dear to my heart. You know why? Because it matches your shirt? That too, I guess. I remember walking around San Francisco after they shut down the kosher restaurant in San Francisco, I was starving. And I walked into, like, what do you call it in New York, a bodega there? I guess it's just a convenience store.

1:14I said, what can I have? It's got a little bit of protein in it, at least. It'll fill me up. And I took three Kind Bars. The first time I had a Kind Bar was in San Francisco. The kosher market, the gluten-free celiac market, they were the most loyal to us, and we were loyal back. So every product we made, we made sure that we could keep our promise to our consumers. You know, like, what's the most important thing in a brand is that you be consistent. The brand is a promise, and a great brand is a promise well-kept. So you have to just always be consistent and know who your audience is and just deliver what you promised.

1:47I want to start with why you called it Kind Bars. Why did you call it Kind Bars? And interestingly, the year that we founded Kind was one of the hardest years of my life. My dad had just passed away. He was like my hero. He was a survivor of the Holocaust. And we were, first of all, we almost didn't launch the company because I was like struggling with my prior business. And as we were trying to decide whether or not to go forward, we were looking to come up with a brand. The value proposition we already knew. We wanted something that was going to be healthy, tasty, and socially responsible. And we wanted to find a human adjective that would describe those three anchors.

2:31And we started thinking of my father, my team member, Sasha, at the time, and I were brainstorming. Some of the other names were the funniest, stupidest names you could imagine. So funny. I need to find that piece of paper. We had like 70, 80, 80 years. Give me some of them. It was like really obvious stuff, like healthy nutty, nutty healthy, not so locious, not so special, special nutty, like all sorts of variations of nuts and fruits. And then I think it was Sasha's idea, and she and I were riffing, and we wanted to honor my father. He was very front of mind, and we named it kind after my dad.

3:10And the reason we named it kind is not just because it's kind to your body, to your taste buds, and to your world. and so it fits with that value proposition. But also my father, in spite of what he went through in the Holocaust, he was just always seeing the world as a place where he could bring in some love, some kindness, some smiles. He made anybody that he met smile. And if the flight attendant or the waiter was having a bad day, he'd start throwing one joke after another after another. And you know that campaign progressive can stop you from becoming your parent but it can save you 15 % of your insurance.

3:48Like my kids joke that I became my father and now they're becoming us. But like, my mission, when I see somebody having a bad day, is to try to put a laugh in, to make them smile. And that was from my father, that he always saw his role after surviving the Holocaust to bring light and kindness. What was your father's name? Roman. Roman. Just tell us about him, because it seems to be very present. he uh very rare person you and our fathers you two eight me to four uh my dad also had four kids my mom and dad and what's special about him is he achieved so much in his life from nothing and he had almost no ego it was very hard like i think ego can be a positive force if you know how to manage it ego is not your amigo if you let it become a dark force to just wanting it for the own ways but it can also be a force of giving you a sense of desire to prove yourself to build like to build something constructive my dad for some reason the way i saw him i don't remember him like when i'm having lunch with my kids and they're talking to each other sometimes i get very frustrated that i'm not part of the conversation like i want to be a protagonist He never had that.

5:10He was always, he put the spotlight on us. We were the protagonists. He was a great coach. Like anytime I went to him with, believe it or not, Michael, every one of my siblings can tell you, friends of ours would go to my dad to ask him for advice. Like the community would come to him to ask him for advice. And the way he coached people was like a coach. He would listen. He would ask you questions and then you'd come up with the answers yourself. For me, it's very hard to do so. Like, I'm very good at telling you what to do. I'm much better. I'm working on being a better listener. And then I'm helping you figure out what to do.

5:49Where did he come from? He was born in Riga, Latvia. But it's kind of... Riga was not far away from Kovno, Lithuania. And it was a very nice weather. So people would go to have their children there. But he was really raised in Kovno, Lithuania. And what year was he taking away? Was he taken away to the concentration camps? Yeah. He was nine years old when the war started, around 10 and a half when he was sent to the Kovno ghetto, and around 12 when he was taking on these cattle trains to Dachau. To Dachau. 12 and a half when he arrived to Dachau. But if you look at his paperwork in Dachau, you know the Germans kept very clear details.

6:32The entry says that he was born in 1927 instead of in 1930, giving him an age of 15 because his father, my grandfather, lied and said that he was 15 years old so they would let him work in the concentration camp. Wow. And what year did he arrive in the concentration camp? Probably 1942, 1943, yeah. And then he was liberated with Dachau in 1945. Correct. Straight from there. And then where did he go? I have like so many stories I can tell you when you're asking me these questions. I don't want to start getting so emotional out the gate. But he was 15 and a half when he was liberated. He went to a sanatorium where they helped him recuperate in San Tothilium for six months.

7:25Then he was in a refugee camp for six months. And then he went to Mexico. How did he get to Mexico? A generation before my aunt and uncle, I'm sorry, his aunt and uncle had immigrated to Mexico. I think mainly because they couldn't get to the United States. So they ended up in Mexico. And then when my father and my grandfather survived, and my uncle survived too, but he ended up getting assigned to the U.S. military and became a translator to them for six months. So when my dad and my grandfather started trying to go somewhere, they connected with my grandfather's siblings and they agreed to sponsor them.

8:09And that's how they ended up. And what did he do when he got to Mexico? When he got to Mexico, first of all, he didn't speak Spanish. He didn't speak English. And he had a third grade education. And the way he educated himself was by reading used encyclopedias. So cover to cover, volume A, volume B, volume C, read thousands of books, learned Hebrew, English. By the time he passed away, he spoke nine languages and read over 5 ,000 books. And he started working double shifts in a factory and worked a lot of menial jobs. Eventually, he and his father saved enough money to buy a little jewelry shop or to build a little jewelry shop.

8:51And eventually, they kept working really hard. Eventually, he and his father, my grandfather, went to Switzerland and got the rights for a lot of watch companies from Rolex, Audemars Piguet, Piaget, Cartier, to represent them in the duty-free business. They had an exclusive to sell these watches in duty-free stores, which was very valuable. Is that where you got your sense of branding and style? I don't think I have a sense of style still. Yeah, but this is pretty good. Yeah, that actually is very interesting. If you look at my, because I did 10 years of branding mistakes before I figured out with Kind.

9:32And it's just pattern recognition that you develop over many years. So I still don't think I would have this style, but a visual style for packaging. I'm really good at that now because of all the mistakes I've made. And I launched my first brand before Kind was a company called PeaceWorks that was using business to bring Israelis, Palestinians, Jordanians, Egyptians, and Turks to trade with one another, to give neighbors an incentive to work together, to shatter stereotypes, to cement relations. And the first brand we launched was this line of sundried tomato spreads, olive spreads. It was called Moshe Pupik and Ali Mishmumkan's World Famous All-Natural Gourmet Foods.

10:13I still don't know why it didn't work out.

10:19but that's what taught me to the next time just call it kind and just keep it simple Moshe Pupik Moshe Pupik for those who don't know Moshe is Moses in Hebrew and Pupik is actually a Yiddish word for belly button yeah right Moshe Pupik is a name that people use for jokes right like in Mexico use Pepito is the guy I don't know if there's such a thing in English but in Mexico Pepito is the protagonist in all the Mexican jokes Moshe Pupik was the guy in the Yiddish jokes. And Ali Mishmunken, in my mind, Moshe Pupik was his great chef and Ali Mishmunken was a magician. And together, the legend told that there was an impending war in the Middle East and the rival armies were fast approaching one another.

11:02And Moshe Pupik and Ali Mishmunken got together and concocted the sundried tomato spread whose aroma was so magical that it spread across the horizons and put the rival armies in a friendly trance. And they were so rejuvenated, they used the strength of the sun to melt their weapons into spoons and used the spoons to partake the sundry tomatoes per day and became friends and then have hundreds of years of peace. That was the legend of Moshe Pupik and Alimish Munker. Quite a story. Did you come up with that story? I came up with that story and many other stories. Oh, yeah? Yeah, each one of our products had a different legend.

11:38But my favorite one was the one of Moshe Pupik and Alevish Munkan. Why do you speak Yiddish? When I was raised in Mexico, I went to a Jewish school of immigrants. So it was really weird. I didn't realize it was weird until I looked back. But that was the first language they taught us in that school, Yiddish, Hebrew. Only later when you were in high school, they would teach you English. What about Spanish? Spanish was my mother tongue. That's what I learned and what I spoke. And in school, it was Spanish, Yiddish, and Hebrew. Spanish and Yiddish, then Hebrew, and many years later, English. Where's your mom from?

12:17My mom was born in Mexico, in Tampico, Tamaulipas, in the north of Mexico. Her parents immigrated a generation before from Eastern Europe. So before we came on, you told me about a bunch of attempts you made to do business in various parts of the world. Tell us about things. I think they're important. How much time do you have? I mean, I think the amount of things that I did wrong is so much greater than the amount of things that I did right. And one of the things that I notice is that just trying things out teaches you so much. And sometimes making mistakes actually teaches you more than getting it right because you make mistakes.

12:58You have to be introspective to figure it out, what didn't go right, and then you learn from those. so I was trying to represent international brands to because I had this passion for the Middle East I had this company that I started Michael after Stanford Law School called Metic the Middle East Trade and Investment Center and the purpose of Metic was to try to help build joint ventures between Arabs and Israelis but like I had this confused Mexican Jewish lawyer that had a crazy accent and the Israelis and the Arabs were like, why do we want you to teach us what to do? So I didn't get a single client.

13:37For two years, I was running Metic, and I didn't get a single client. I got a total, actually, I got one client who got my work for free and got a lot of free services from me, but I got a total of zero revenues throughout the thing. And that then gave me the idea to start what became PeaceWorks. But I tried to convince big multinational brands, Starbucks, Dell, many others, to give me the rights to represent them and take their place. How did you try to convince Dell to represent them? I think I was just stupid enough to not know what I didn't know. But what's interesting about that naivete is what gives you the fire to eventually get things right.

14:17If you don't know where you should not try things out, then you also sometimes get it right. And so I think the lack of sophistication and knowledge gave me the opportunity to try many things that I didn't get right and many that I did get right. How did you try to convince Dell Computer at the time? Well, specifically with that, I had relaunched PeaceWorks. And while it wasn't a big business, the maximum sales PeaceWorks ever had were$3 million. In most years, it hovered below a million. It was like this. It was two steps forward, two steps back. so many mistakes I'd made. But people love the concept of peace work, so I got a lot of recognition.

15:00And so I was invited to the World Economic Forum to a million other fora. And one day I was so stupid that I went to the Davos Mountains and I didn't realize that it was cold there. So I didn't bring a jacket. I was freezing my ass the first night. There's a snowstorm takes over, and I cannot find a taxi for the life of me. And I'm freezing. I'm wearing this very thin thing, and it's snowing like crazy. So I flag this black car, and I tell these people, could you please give me a ride? They look at each other, this cop, and they're like, okay. They let me into their car, and I start talking like right now, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

15:42And like, let me tell you about Peace Rocks. Let me tell you about the work I'm doing to bring Arabs and Israelis together for the peace. And like, but enough about me. What's your names? and he's like, oh, I'm Michael Dell. I'm like, what? And he was the most modest. He and Susan were just the kindest, most wonderful people. Then I was deluded enough to write him an email. But I wrote to Jeff Bezos. I wrote to Michael. I wrote to everybody that would, poor guys. I think they were like, who's this guy? But, you know, eventually. Were you living in Mexico at the time or in Texas? No, at the time I was living in New York.

16:15In New York? Yeah, we immigrated. My family immigrated from Mexico in 1984 to the cradle of civilization, San Antonio, Texas. And I went to two years of high school there, college at Trinity University. One year abroad here, well, six months abroad in Jerusalem, six months abroad here at Hebrew University, where I first met Palestinians, where I made a lot of friendships with Israelis. And I had the idea for using economics as a force for bringing people together. And then I took that back to college and wrote a thesis that became actually very, very famous among doctors. Because if you were having insomnia and you couldn't fall asleep, they would give you my 268-page treatise and you'd fall asleep right away.

17:02It was the most boring theoretical thing in the world. And everybody thought, this guy's deluded. Because in 1989, there was no breakthrough. All of a sudden, in 1993, there is the breakthrough between Israelis and Palestinians brokered by Clinton. And that's when I decided to start Peace. And here we are in 2026. You've been passionate about this Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian issue for almost... All my life. Ever since I was 12 years old. 40 years old. Over 40 years. Ever since I was 12. What happened at 12 that caused you to become interested in it? when I was 12 years old I I wanted to work I didn't need to but I really wanted to be an entrepreneur maybe because my father was like that I don't know why what got into me because most nice Jewish kids didn't do what I did but I would get on the subway all the way to downtown Mexico first take a bus and take the subway and then work in a textile factory from the Zarfati family thank you if you're listening to give me that chance for my first job And I was cutting a textiles cloth and selling it in the checkout counter and carrying big telades in the heat of downtown Mexico.

18:16It forges you. And it was a great experience. But one day I was on the bus, and right in front of me were people talking about Jews. And they were talking about Jews having horns and talking about the Middle East conflict. And I remember as a 12-year-old being like, oh, wow, there's so much ignorance. There's so many problems with the lack of understanding between people. I need to prevent what happened to my father from happening to other people by building bridges. And so ever since I was 12, I started writing letters to the newspapers and getting involved in learning about how to. I thought that my mission was going to be building peace in the middle.

18:56Do you think that the Holocaust was singular or it could be revisited? Something like it. Oh, it absolutely can. Absolutely can happen. In some ways, things like it, not as, can't compare tragedies. I'm not like, I don't want to reduce other people's suffering. But yes, the lack, I mean, in fact, I now I'm one of the founders of the builders movement because we recognize that dehumanization, polarization, hate, division are the elements that bring about an ignorance, that bring about the conditions for a whole people to, for some to think they should destroy an entire people, like they did in Rwanda.

19:38Like, yeah, unfortunately, we as humans have the capability to think that the other side is not human and then do some atrocious things once that happens. Are you worried right now about the rising tide of anti-Semitism? Absolutely. That it'll kind of press over and become a tidal wave? I mean, first of all, I'm a Mexican Jew. I worry by definition. so I'm the son of a Holocaust survivor I think it's in my epigenetics to worry but I my worry is a very it's not a paralyzing worry it's a worry that drives me to action to do something good to build bridges to prevent what happening from happening to others like I built the builders movement the one voice movement kind peace works Empatico tons of other ventures that I've done some very successful not very but But I'm always driven to build rather than to complain or to be paralyzed.

20:31And so my worry drives me to do something constructive and concrete to actually do that. But yes, I'm very worried about this state of... So you've tried and failed at a million things, right? And then we're very, very successful with Kind. And a few others. What are the other ones? Well, I built together with my colleague, Mohamed Araushe, the One Voice Movement, which got close to a million Israelis and Palestinians across the West Bank, Gaza, and across Israel to mobilize, to propel their political representatives, to reinitiate negotiations. We built a whole human infrastructure of people that wanted to try to be problem solvers.

21:14I was one of the earliest investors in Cava. I built a company called Somos that makes delicious Mexican food. I've started many other business ventures. I helped build the builders movement. We created the builders of Middle East, which has over a billion views of helping in Arabic, in Hebrew, and in English show a positive side of the builders in the Middle East rather than the destroyers. They can keep going. But I can also tell you a hundred more things that I failed with. And I wear those failures very proudly because there's no chance I would have built Kine from a$10 ,000 company to a multi-billion dollar company had I not failed with peace works and learned the lessons from it.

21:56I'll come back to the first one in a second. The reason I'm asking the question about the failing to success is certainly the pursuit, let's call it, of Israeli-Palestinian peace, even though I think because the Abraham Accords, like you see Middle East peace maybe on the horizon or at least some form of normalization or integration. But it's 40 years that you've been at this. Do you think that it'll happen? It can. And it's interesting you brought the Abraham Accords because it is the most interesting example to bring up. Because, first of all, when I started dabbling in this, I had a set of assumptions, all of which were proven wrong.

22:35But then I developed another set of assumptions. And you can think about how during the early 90s, mid-90s, everybody said the only way for Israel to achieve peace with its Arab neighbors was by making peace with the Palestinians. All roads to peace go through the Palestinians. And unwittingly, it gave a veto power to the Palestinians and made a lot of factors why it was not the healthiest circumstances. When you look at what Jared and President Trump accomplished with Abraham Accords, you realize that all assumptions, all conventional wisdom is meant to be challenged and that every single one of those assumptions can be challenged.

23:18and one of the dangers that we get into, particularly as we succeed, we start thinking we're too smart and particularly as we are introspective, we start thinking we've thought through these issues and I've seen this happen to a lot of people that you've worked through the problem so if you come up with your solution and then you think that is the answer, but guess what? Shit changes. Things change. Like other circumstances change and so you need to constantly be questioning yourself, revisiting. I see you wearing a kippah. What I like the most about the Jewish tradition is questioning. You know, the schools of, was it Hilel and Shammai?

23:57That you always welcome the other school. Why? Are you friends with Nusar Yassin? Yeah, I know him well. He was here in that seat. Nusar and I are very, very good friends. We collaborate. We do a lot of things together. And he, interestingly, told me about my Judaism, stuff that I hadn't thought about. Like how much he admires that in Judaism, people are very comfortable questioning things. I think that's one of our superpowers and it's a superpower for all builders. In all religions, in all humanities, people that are comfortable asking why, asking questions, can then figure out why not, why do things better, how to change things.

24:34So is it a daunting challenge to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict? Yes. Is it very hard for Arabs and Israelis to achieve full peace for Jews and Muslims, for Shia and Sunni, for any of these conflicts. Yes, they're very deep, entrenched conflicts, but all it takes is every one of us recognizing that we cannot be just watching the stuff and become protagonists. The way you've gotten involved lately, or at least as far as I know in the last three years, in trying to address positive progress for helping the people of Gaza. I think to build builders instead of destroyers It's up to us. It's up to us because if you really think about it, Michael, overwhelming majority of human beings, not 90%, but maybe 95 % or 99%, they want to be builders.

25:27They don't go to sleep thinking, I want to be a destroyer. They see themselves as builders. And the vast majority of people, it's not that they love the other side, it's that they want a better future for their children. But there's a tiny minority of people with extremist visions that deny the humanity of the other side. And that might be 10 % of our population, 1%, I don't know. But what's powerful about them is they wake up in the morning and they think, how can I advance my cause? Whereas the people that want to solve problems in their daily lives don't think, how can I solve these communal problems?

26:03They think it's for somebody else to solve it. That is a problem. You cannot, if an extremist, even if they're a tiny minority, they have the passion to solve and the moderates, have a passion to go to the movies, we're not going to resolve this. So you need to empower people to be builders and to solve problems, to be part of the solution, to be protagonists. What you described, I believe, is the silent majority of people who, as my wife likes to say, you know, most people just want to get up in the morning, have a family, you know, raise their kids in the right way, make sure that they are successful in life, and I would say don't have time or energy for the bigger issues that you're talking about.

26:46Not that they're bigger than raising a family. That's a big issue in and of itself, but call it a public policy or a national issue. How do you get people off the sidelines and create that passion in them just from getting out of their daily life, which is busy enough right now? This is an area that I've thought about for 30-plus years. people like you and I have a responsibility to find ways to help everybody put in their two cents because it is a daunting problem. It is a daunting challenge. So our task is to try to find a way for builders to contribute what they can because to your point, they're busy just making ends meet, just helping pick up their kids from school.

27:31They don't have the ability to do too much. But guess what? everybody can do a little bit. So it's in builders, in the builders movement, what we did in one voice, with any work, you need to try to find a way because there's a huge reservoir of goodwill. Everybody that I talked to about what I did there, like yesterday I was with this Israeli-Palestinian group and they were almost crying hearing the work we're doing and very grateful because a lot of people just don't feel there's a way to contribute. It's not that people don't want to contribute, they feel powerless. And so So both in terms of also culture, we need to give people agency.

28:08This oppressor versus victim framework that has been introduced to young people, it's about the stupidest, most dangerous frameworks for humanity because you're either an oppressor and no matter what your actions, you're going to be a bad guy. You're born a bad guy and you're always a bad guy. Or you're a victim and then you have no agency to actually be a protagonist in your own life and solve things. And so the framework of builders for destroyers is a framework where everybody has agency. and you have to choose. Are you going to deny the humanity to the other and take action to divide, to demolish, to diminish?

28:41Then you're a destroyer. And these are chosen carefully. Divide, demolish, diminish. What do they mean? To divide us from one another, to try to divide humanity and society across weird identitarian frameworks, to demolish, to destroy, because they don't know how to build, and to diminish. It's very important. destroyers, their primary goal is not to build, is to diminish humanity, to make others feel lower, to make others feel diminished. Or you're going to be a builder. You're going to wake up and like your wife said, have your breakfast, drink your coffee, but after that, build. Take action to build.

29:18Put in your two cents. How are you going to build? How are you going to elevate society? How are you going to build bridges, build schools, build innovation, build opportunities, build better communities, build bonds with one another? How are you going to elevate society? And in the builders' movement, our role is to try to enable people to do that. We have social media channels that you can join in Hebrew, in Arabic, in English. We now get over a billion views a year. And the goal is to help people not tell them what to think, but how to think with a builder's mindset, with curiosity, creativity, courage, and compassion.

29:56the four C's of a builder's mindset that helps you solve problems rather than tear each other apart. Three D's versus four C's. Yes. It also kind of sucks because I'm D of Daniel and yet I keep finding it's like they destroy, they divide, they demolish, they diminish shit and I'm the Daniel and the dad. For some reason, the C's have so many fun things. Are your kids' names starting with C's or no? No, I have a very, very important, this might be my most important contribution to humanity, a very, very big belief that every one of your kids has to start with a different initial because then you text them.

30:27You can say A, R, N, J. And I have friends like Robert Rodriguez, the filmmaker. He named all of his kids with an R. I have a bunch of people, Tori and her parents, name all of them with a T. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? Like, how are you? And then it's worse when they all start with R, A. I'm like, oh my God, you need to get to a third letter too. By that time, you might as well give the whole word. It's time for a voice note. What are you doing with your eight? What do I do? Like, do they have all different names, initials? There's not enough in the vocabulary for you, right? I think so, yeah.

31:02They do, actually. You hadn't thought about that? No, never once. And let's go through it. This might be a breakthrough. You're going to become more efficient. One of them has a nickname. You might actually succeed now. One of them has a nickname. They took his real name. It became from I to an S. And I have a daughter that starts with an S. So that's an overlap. I think we need to change the nickname. I think we're good, though. We had eight different ones, I think, on the real names. But start using the initials now. Maybe you'll succeed after all. Tell me, why do you think, I want to go on to a different topic, but why do you think that progressivism led to this identitarian and victim, identitarian politics and the kind of victim mindset and the oppressor-oppressed framework?

31:44What happened? There are many different questions. And why is it taking root now? Yeah. Still taking root. The oppressor versus victim framework is not new. It's been in existence since the Soviet times for decades. And for decades, they cultivated it. And it just kind of like, what's the name of that guy that popularized the, Malcolm Gladwell, for the big hair. He popularized the point about like how things don't change until they change very radically. I think the oppressor versus ifr framework, we were asleep at the wheel while people were cultivating that. And it was literally Soviet propaganda.

32:16And it's a terrible framework for any human being. Why would you want to be a victim or an oppressor? Like, it's just so dumb. It's so dangerous. But I think it's just started being taught by some people. And then once they are in that department, then they only hire people that will teach that. And slowly but surely, they take over the department. And then one generation later, all your kids are being taught that way and you don't even realize it. But I think what I find more interesting is all extremes can lead to bad outcomes, even if the intentions are very noble. I've been thinking about this issue a lot.

32:52I agree with this. This is very Maimonidean, by the way. I agree with this. Like Maimonides is all about this, but keep going. Please elaborate on that because I want to absorb it. Yeah, you go first and I'll chime in. Okay, but remember to remember. I've noticed a few examples of how good intentions lead to bad outcomes. For example, I was with the president at Stanford University, President Levin, And he was telling me that prior to him coming, when new students came into Stanford, the first thing they did, before anything, they assigned them to the school assigned identity group and sent them for a day with them.

33:34If you're black, go with the black kids. If you're gay, go with the gay kids. If you're Jewish, maybe go to Jewish. And they would send them building. But it came from a positive intention. and they're like, we want the Hispanic kids to connect with our Hispanic kids. We don't want them to feel alone, which is all fine. But you then look forward and then it's all these identitarian clubs and frameworks and they don't connect with one another. So the president changed and said, the first day we bring everybody together and say, what do we all have in common? Curiosity, open minds, respect. Like what are the values that we expect from you over the next four years at Stanford for everybody to hop by?

34:15And yes, go ahead and develop your pride in being Jewish, Mexican, whatever you want. But first and foremost, you're a Stanford student with a quest to build bridges, to be a builder, to have open minds. Whatever it is in the ethos, in the culture of why you were selected, these are the things that you all have in common. And so this incredibly interesting example of how good intentions to try to protect that particular identitarian framework so people don't feel left out, all of a sudden led to horrible outcomes. When I was growing up, bullying was very prevalent. And it's not good. People with a positive intention tried to overcome bullying.

34:55That's a noble goal. You shouldn't want to have bullying. You should try to overcome bullying. You fast forward 20, 30 years. And I noticed that a lot of times we were removing from kids agency for them to learn to solve their own problems. 100%. And so if they read them the riot act the first day they start school and kids are terrified. And when I talk, because we have the builders work, we're doing pedagogical work with colleges. And some of the heads of the universities and their advancement teams and their admissions teams tell me when I ask them that the thing that they are most fascinated by and sobered up by is that these young people, arrive without a skill to interact with another and resolve problems together.

35:44They're like terrified. They're actually very good in the classroom, but when they need to solve a problem, they get scared because cancel culture and all sorts of threats and all sorts of hovering helicoptering parenting with good intentions to overcome the bullying, remove the agency from the kids to learn how to solve it themselves. So it's fascinating because you should try to overcome the bullying, but the better way to overcome the bullying. Going back to my dad, to coach people for them to sort it out. When that happens, don't remove them and send them here and send them there and do it for them as the administration.

36:20No bullying. You go for two weeks to your school. To outsider, we expel you. They expel kids so easily because they bullied. That's a missed opportunity to teach a person. Okay, deal with the consequences. Sort it out among yourselves. Coach them. Teach them. Bullying is not good, but help them learn the skill of being a builder and solving problems. I promise you Maimonides. Maimonides says that there's different human character traits that are on a spectrum. He says that you need to take the golden path in the middle on all of them, except for anger, which you shouldn't have anger. I was thinking about your father when I was thinking about Maimonides, someone who went through so much but didn't have anger.

37:03Yeah, you know, it's so hard for me as a father because I sometimes lose my temper. I don't remember my dad ever losing his temper with me. Like, I'm sure once I remember he did something like that. But in general, he never, never, never, I don't remember having anger. You know, you've talked about your father in terms of naming the company Kind. And, you know, one of the mottos of this podcast is values create value. Yeah. And I know that was a big part of Kind. But I think everyone, a lot of people say that. but then it costs them a nickel. And then it goes out the window. What are examples of things at Kind that cost you a nickel but that reflected the values of the...

37:44Before I go there, I need to tell you two things. Ron Holiday, who's a very good friend of mine in Austin, told me that values are only values when they're tested and they cost you something. And it's a very interesting insight. I really like that insight. And the other thing I want to tell you is Camino Partners, our company, our framework is building value through values. because we did it right of kind. We learned how to build a culture and a community where everyone was a stakeholder, everybody's owner, whether you were the janitor or the president of the company, everybody got stock options.

38:17And after six months, the right to buy those stock options and encourage to become an owner. We made scores of people into multimillionaires and everybody was part of the ownership spirit and mentality. And we created that culture where we didn't take shortcuts. So at Lemonade, just as an example, when we set up Lemonade, and we talked about the business model of Lemonade, which is aligned with our customers rather than the way normal insurance companies work, which is they make money when you get screwed. We basically created a Ulysses contract, which is we tied our own hand. We wrote it into our company documents.

38:54And that's how we tied the company's hand so we can't kind of get out of it. I love that, actually. How does it work out? because I met the woman. Lemonade is the fastest growing insurance company on planet Earth. And the woman that either is in marketing or runs, she's impressive. Lior's wife? Yeah, Maya. Wow, I remember meeting her. I thought she was really impressive. Yeah, she's the chief business officer of Lemonade. Yeah. I think part of this stuff is to state your values publicly so that you're bound by them. Yeah, state your values. We did that very well at Kind. I learned from doing it wrong at PeaceWorks.

39:27And at Kind, we set out who we are, what we are, and what we are not. So what were you not? We set a very set clear of guardrails of what our brand stands for and what it will not do. So, for example, I'll give you one of many examples. At some point in our industry, there was a huge fad for zero sugar. There were a ton of products that were doing zero sugar. And at that time, doing not zero sugar added, which you can do, zero sugar present in your products. Which in my product, we cannot do because almonds have sugar. Milk has sugar. Sugar is present in almost every product, in fruit and everything.

40:06And so if you're making a fruit nut bar, you cannot have it have zero sugar. The only way you could have a zero sugar product is by using all artificial ingredients. And we didn't want it to do that. So we, it was hard, by the way, it wasn't easy. We saw how for a while the zero sugar fat was growing and we were like intimidated by it. so we went in to try to develop products and fortunately we looked at our value set and said okay this is not us we're not going to be able to follow that fad we're going to be what we are not what we're not but we developed the dark i might have been that one let me see what i gave you yeah the dark chocolate and sea salt yeah and uh that product has five grams of sugar which is less than what our other products have 13 grams of sugar we found a way to design a product with a teaspoon equivalent of sugar.

41:00Two grams out of the five grams come from the almonds, three grams from added sugars. But it's not that much. It's just a very, very small amount of sugar. But it's not zero sugar. And it tastes good. It doesn't taste like cardboard, which was our promise was that it's going to be kind to your body, to your taste buds, and to your world. So it's finding, having the courage to say what I'm not going to do, which is very hard for an entrepreneur. The salt and the sugar together is incredibly addictive. Yeah, it's good. Those are the best products. If you're interested in finding out ahead of time what's going on in Israeli tech, what the latest trends are, who's breaking not only news, but breaking the trend lines, then you want to subscribe to Aleph's newsletter.

41:37And you can sign up right in the show notes in the description of the show. Please subscribe to the newsletter. So you sold Kind and then you went on Shark Tank. Why? Why I sold Kind or why I went to Shark Tank? Both are very big questions. Yeah, both, actually. I asked myself whether I should have not sold Kind very frequently. Kind was like not just a business for me. It was my baby. It was a vehicle for all of my values, for all of what I did. We created the most incredible culture. We have the most incredible performance in my industry. Like we grew a company from basically nothing to a multi-billion dollar company with no needed investment.

42:16Like I sold some secondary shares, but we never really needed meaningful money. We got to a$7 billion valuation with only$5.2 million lifetime in primary And five out of the 5.2 stayed in the balance sheet, never needed it because we grew triple digits, cash flow positively and profitably for 10 years in a row. So why? Around 2016, 2017, I started thinking we need to grow internationally. We had tried it and it had taken us a while. we are seeing competitors leapfrog us in other countries because in the U.S. we're very solid. Everybody had tried, but nobody had succeeded. But we saw people borrowing our playbook and trying to apply it in other countries.

43:04And we wanted to have the ability for kind to win in all those countries. We felt we needed an international partner. Initially, we wanted a partner that would just take the international rights and we would do it in the U.S. we didn't find a partner that was interested in doing that. And, you know, I also wanted to do other things with my life. And the biggest mistake I made is assuming that if I no longer am running kind, then I'll have a lot more time. You understand why? Because once you have all the resources from that company and you need to allocate those resources and you still have the responsibility to invest that money, it's very, very hard.

43:46In some ways, in terms of time allocation, it's much harder today because 15 years ago, I had kind and one voice. You know, work for peace in the Middle East to help Israelis and their neighbors to build economic relations and peaceful relations and kind. Today, kind now has hundreds of investments. It's so much harder to manage that. And I'm working in the Middle East, in the United States, in Ukraine, in other areas where I feel like fighting anti-Semitism, fighting hate, fighting all sorts of challenges that I think our world has encountered. So it's much harder to keep up. Why did you do Shark Tank?

44:27I love Shark Tank. I was on a plane one day and I look at this weird format where people are talking and I'm a very curious person. I talk to everybody, like I told you, like my parents. So I ask the person, I interrupt them, I can't believe I do that but I do that it's like what are you watching and they're like oh it's Shark Tank I'm like what is Shark Tank they explain it to me I sit down and I'm probably on a long haul flight and I watch like 10 episodes I'm like I am in love with that show and then a couple years later they call me and they're like we want to invite you as a guest shark I'm like I'm in because I used to watch Shark Tank with my kids and we would pause and I would talk to the kids you teach kids about entrepreneurship you teach kids about how to negotiate you learn a lot what's what I love about Shark Tank is it's very engaging and entertaining but you're also teaching people about the American enterprise system or about the entrepreneurship system in general and it's one of the only shows that goes through generations like three generations, grandparents, parents and kids watch it together and it's very enjoyable, very engaging.

45:31It's gone now for 18 seasons. It's just like an iconic show. How many investments have you made? Through Shark Tank? I need to count them. Probably 15, 20. Has anyone made money? Yes, but none has given me back the money. It's very tricky. That's why Mr. Wonderful, Kevin, with his thing to get royalties and to do it, he's kind of right because it's very hard. A lot of these are small businesses that unless you sell them, which a lot of these people don't want to do, it's very hard for you to actually see. Even the successful ones are still at an earlier and off stage. But there's also a lot that don't succeed because it's a work of love because it's starting super early stage.

46:15So I also do Shark Tank because I like giving back. This is my way to teach entrepreneurs and help them the way I was helped. You like being on TV. I enjoy it so much. I also enjoy the challenge. It is so hard, Michael, at least my first season. And you can tell my personality. I'm very comfortable talking. and nobody's ever accused me of not talking enough till my first season on Shark Tank. I'm like in it. First of all, the stage is very big. It swallows all the energy. So I'm thinking that I'm screaming. I'm thinking I'm not active. And the producer like, Daniel, you need to step in. You need to wake up.

46:52I'm like, what are you talking about? I feel like I'm invading people's privacy and screaming. It takes a lot. And were you a Seinfeld fan? I'm not such a TV fan, but I have watched some Seinfelders. You know, Jason Alexander plays the role of George. Yeah, sure. You remember George? Sure. George, in one episode, somebody teases him, is mean to him, gives him some bad lines. And three days later, George is driving and he comes up with a comeback line. And he says, oh, I should have said this. That's what happens to me on Shark Tank. Like, it's so quick and so fast that I find myself a week later processing, oh my God, I can't believe I didn't do this because it's really, it's what you see is what you get.

47:35It's real. You don't know what company is going to present to you. And you have to develop the pattern to decide what to do or not to do on the go. What's your favorite investment? There's one investment that I did and we just recorded in June. This fall it's coming. I'm telling you, Michael, I think this might be a multi-billion dollar company. Okay, so tell us. First, no, I can't. Why not? But I'll tell you, it's the first platform investment that's a technology firm that could really, really, really, if we hit it right, there's a lot of challenges. I think it could become a major thing. I'm very excited about it.

48:17Is it like reverse Darwinism, though? Like the really great companies come to your family office and, you know, if you're in Austin, they go to Joe Lonsdale and Elon or whoever it is, put it there. And if I didn't get money from you in the normal ways, I go to Shark Tank and I'll find Daniel Lubecki there and see if I can persuade him to give me a few niggers. I literally said that today to somebody. It's like, oh my God, this person wants to produce a movie. I'm like, listen, if they want asking me for money to produce a movie, I know it's a bad movie because they're going to go to the right people for the right stuff.

48:41I agree with you. I do think Shark Tank, first of all, is a platform that gives entrepreneurs enormous amount of reach. So all of a sudden, your product is on there. Like one of the deals that I did, oh, my favorite deal is Nuro. Nuro, of the ones that I can announce. Nuro is an incredible company. But I actually didn't do the deal in the tank. It's these two young Asian guys, Ken and Ryan. They launched this Nuro gum that if you want caffeine or if you want to go to sleep or if you want other forms of supplementation, you do it through mints or gum. They present amazing, guys, as bright as they come, insane.

49:24I'm like, oh, my God, these guys are incredible. One, by the way, is paraplegic. He had an accent. Incredible story. Just about as bright as they come. But they're growing really fast. They went from zero to a million dollars very fast. And in my mind, I'm like, they're probably just getting distribution into the shelves, but it's going to then dip and the valuation's not right. I bow out. Kevin gives them an offer, others go for it, but they don't get a deal. I tell them, guys, I really like you. if you ever need me, I'll give you a hand, but I'm not going to invest. A year later, they call me and they're like, Daniel, remember how you said you'd give us a hand?

50:03And I'm like, yes. And like, we're about to go out of business. Like, what happened? Like, we're getting sued with a frivolous lawsuit by someone that's suing us for our trademark. We would win in court, but this person's got deep pockets and they're going to take us out of business. And they will not reason with us. So I'm like, okay, I'll give you guys a hand. and they're like, are you sure? I'm like, yeah, I'll give you a hand. And I go to this person and I say, listen, you know you would lose in court. So I'm going to step behind them and eventually you're going to lose. But then you'll lose a lot of money and I'll lose a lot of money.

50:40So the person decides to settle with them and leave them alone. And they're so grateful because I literally saved their business. They start growing like this. Today they're a$100 million revenue business and on their path to become the next billion dollar brand. And a few months ago, they reached out and was like, look, we're raising money. We want to put you on the cap table. We want to give you some stock options and some ability to invest. And I ended up doing it. When I helped them, I didn't do it for any reason other than to help them. But it felt really good to close the loop for them and for me.

51:15And so we recently did an update on them on Shark Tank. And Shark Tank is not just when it airs, then there's updates and then it re-airs, re-airs, re-airs. You get every time that it airs, more people buy your product, more people are working. So there's a lot of value. But you're right. Some of it is adverse selection. Like if you, not every, it depends who's presenting. In this case, the company that I told you that I think is going to be insane, I think that they need the help, but their concept is very good. And you gave them money. We haven't closed. You know, when they present to you on Shark Tank, you only watch 8 to 11 minutes.

51:57But the pitch goes 30 to 45 minutes. Once in a while longer. But that's still not enough time. So you're given the chance to do due diligence. If anything they said in the tank is not accurate, you can bow out. So we're going through the due diligence phase. I hope we will close because I'm very excited about it. What's the failure that you've learned the most from? I mean, so many, but PeaceWorks had so many pieces of failures. It's without any doubt is what helped me build Kind. From Moshe Pupik and Ali, which was world famous, all natural good methods to Kind, from trying to be everything to everybody with PeaceWorks to trying to be very focused with Kind.

52:37With PeaceWorks, I didn't understand. I was a confused Mexican Jewish lawyer selling sundried tomato spreads in the streets of Manhattan. And I was walking down the streets, literally, I took out my legal briefcase, emptied it of my legal books, filled it with pita breads and baguettes. And I would take these jars of sundried tomato spread, olive spread, and I would open the jar and hand-feed it to all the buyers. And I would go door by door. I would wake up at 7 a.m. in the morning, start on 122nd on Broadway, walk down door by door, store by store, store by store, and then cross the street and then go up.

53:14Broadway and then rinse and repeat the next day in Madison, the next day in Third Avenue, etc. And then the following day or a week later, I would take my written-up car to deliver the product. And I was determined to get on the shelf of every store. And I didn't understand the difference between what you call the bodega or at that time mainly it was Korean grocery shops, were owned by the Korean community, or Amazes. I'm telling you, Michael, I was so stupid. I didn't understand that products that are meant to be in Macy's are not meant to be in the bodega. And I would go one by one and try to be in every store.

53:54And one day I went into this store on 84th and Broadway. And I talked to Mr. Kim and I told him, would you try this Peaceworks product made through Cooperative Ventures between Arabs and Israelis? I said, sorry, you know, we people come here to buy toilet paper, ketchup, essentials. They're not going to buy a sundried tomato spread by Arabs. I'm like, okay, but Mr. Kim, you have to understand. This product is delicious. And I'm literally force-feeding the gentleman. After an hour, he gets tired of me. He goes, because I guess in the Korean culture, you can't just say no or I just won't listen.

54:29He leaves. He goes down the basement. Yeah, the storage is underground there. And I follow him. I go down the basement behind him. I swear to you, this is true. I did that so many times. I just go everywhere. And eventually, Mr. Kim says, okay, I'll buy one case for you. I'm like, yes,$33. I'm like, this is it. Daniel, you're going to succeed because you have the grid. You don't give up. Yes, Daniel, you've got it all. And I'm like, oh, feeling so proud that after two hours, I got a$33 order. The next week, I go buy, and I look on the shelves. 12 jars, all still there. the next week, 12 jars, all still there.

55:13A month later, two months later, a year later, 12 jars full of dust. I felt horrible for Mr. Kim, but also for my brand because it's not doing him any favors. He lost$33 that he's not converting. In our industry, in CPG, consumer product goods, you need to turn the product. People are actually selling you shelf space. They're not selling, like, you need to turn the product from those shelves. And if the product is not turning two years later and it doesn't do my brand any favors, it starts looking old and whatever. So that's how I learned that, like, oh, my God, you don't want to be everywhere.

55:51You want to be where you need to be, where the consumer wants to find you. In that case, for Moshe Pupik, it was for a grocery at a specialty store. It was a specialty product. And so when we launched Kind, we were very, very clear about who we were, what we were. We didn't want to be everything to everybody because then you end up being nothing to nobody. We wanted to be the right product. Am I talking too fast? I don't know if they're great. It's like, dude, we cannot understand you, let alone with your Mexican Jewish accident, let alone with talking so fast. So I'm sorry. You're doing great.

56:25Put some subtitles. How do you teach your kids that agency and grit? it's not the easiest because all of us as parents want to give our kids everything our instinct as parents is to give everything to our kids and as one of the debbie a teacher at our kids preschool one said it's like you as parents want to remove all the rocks from the road that your kids are walking we as teachers have the duty to put some of the rocks so they learn how to stumble learn how to grow and so it's it's not easy but i i do a few different things first of all they need to earn their own income they need to work, they need to do chores they need to develop jobs we give them a very basic allowance for them to learn how to manage their own money but then they have to anything extra they need to earn from their jobs you need to teach kids and people to be comfortable taking risks, to reward one of the reasons why Israeli society and American society are so good at entrepreneurship is because we're comfortable with things not working out.

57:30We're fine with what we call stupidly the word failure. It's not really failure. It's just you had a setback, you had a challenge, it didn't work. Another try. You're learning, you're learning, you're learning. And in certain cultures, if you quote unquote fail, it is a shame for your family. It is a sign of, you cannot have it. You have to teach your kids, yourself, and your society that it's okay to try things out. And when they don't work, just make sure that you're introspective and learning from them. I have one last question for you. What's your aspiration that you say, I need to succeed at this over the next 10 years?

58:09You've done so much. I need to make sure that the world that you and I inherit to our children is closer to the one that we inherited, where hate, division, dehumanization against Jewish people and against others, where all of the, you know, when I was growing up, I came from Mexico to the United States in 1984. Democracy was advancing. Rule of law was advancing. Economic freedom and economic expansion of capitalism were expanding across the world. The United States was exporting these all over the world. So I thought my job is just to try to help build peace between Arabs and Israelis. I still care about that, and I still am going to work that's still the end of my life to help do that.

58:51And I think it's going to come. And I think actually the Middle East, Israel, and its neighbors that are its partners are going to become some of the most incredible countries because there's just so much energy here, so much opportunity, so much talent. So I think actually it's not just going to get resolved. It's actually going to reward those that are part of the journey because it's going to, I think, become a very, very important success story for the world. And it's not just allegorical. You can look at the data to prove that out. But I also now worry about the state of all of these Western democracies and the threats against rule of law and tolerance and respect and kindness and democracy and economic freedom.

59:33And I think our job is to make sure that we remind everybody about the importance of these values. Because in my opinion, a meritocracy and all of these things are what helped build the United States into what it was, what helped Israel from the desert that is what it is and what's going to help our Arab neighbors and others to help build a better future. How do you know if you were successful? How will I know if I'm successful? How will you know if I'm successful? It's pretty clear. Is hate going down or is it going up? How do you know? Like Islamism, for example, as a form of hate is on the rise.

1:00:06Antisemitism as a suffering of hate is on the rise. How do you know if you're going to be successful? I mean, first of all... My campuses are becoming more intolerant. You know, your Stanford story is an outlier for now. But it's starting to change. If you look at, it took 20, 30 years to get into this trouble. It's going to take 20, 30 years to get out of it. So in higher education, which is among the worst stars, but even K-12, people have seen it and they're now starting to change. But it's going to take a long time. Curriculum and training of education. Social media is one of the biggest problems right now.

1:00:43You're not going to solve that. You have to. because alternatively society is going to be in trouble. You have to in two, three ways. Number one, you need to adjust Section 230. It makes no effing sense that an entire industry, the most important industry, by the way, is immune of any liability. It's never existed in history, and if it stays, it's going to destroy our society. It's why, because there's effects that are going to destroy the economy. I'll give you an example. Right now, whether it's on social media or an e-commerce website, if they take your likeness and monetize it and make money over a deep fake, they cannot be sued.

1:01:28It makes no sense whatsoever. Right now, if they take an infringing patent or trademark, a product from China that copies our Shark Tank company, they cannot be sued. So it's going to destroy the small businesses. It's going to destroy the American enterprise spirit. You need to make some adjustments so that internet companies and social media companies can be held liable under a certain set of circumstances. It's tricky to adjust it, but it's not where it is right now where there's zero liability. Now, to your question, it's not going to happen because all of these companies now are so powerful and they have more lobbies than anybody.

1:02:07The only way you're going to solve this problem and all other problems is by uniting citizens to force the politicians to be accountable to the will of the people rather than to special interests, industry groups, or extremists. Like political parties have amassed so much power and they're now just focused on getting reelected and getting more power rather than solving problems for citizens. That's what the Builders Movement's about. Anybody that's watching that has even the most tiny belief in what I'm saying, go to my channel, Daniel Lubezki. Go to Michael also if you're not following me. But go to all of our builders' channels in all of the languages that we have, and join and listen and start joining.

1:02:48We'll give you tools for how to do this. Ultimately, we need to build a block of citizens that holds politicians accountable to follow the will of the people and to solve problems together rather than tear each other apart. Like there's all these extremists that are getting elected by monetizing all of this hate. We cannot let that happen. So, yeah, it's going to be hard, but we have to solve it. It's not just going to otherwise force, create hate. It's going to destroy the economic fiber that exists. What's something kind you want to say about somebody? My mom always notes that I'm in love with my father and I talk about my dad all the time.

1:03:27My mom is the friendliest, sweetest. She will talk to everybody even more than my dad even normally. She makes friends with everybody. She's just full of life. She's 82 years old, and she's always thinking about others. She comes up with a suitcase filled with toys for everybody and gifts for everybody. She's always trying with these tools. She's 82 years old, can barely make it through. She's always bringing gifts and toys for everybody. She's a sweetheart. Thank you. Are your kids embarrassed by the fact that you talk to everybody? Oh, yes. They are embarrassed, and they can't help themselves becoming that.

1:04:02Daniel, thank you for joining. Thank you, man. And you should definitely subscribe to Daniel's channel. channel. And if you want to follow Daniel Lubetzky, he's on X at Daniel Lubetzky, spelled D-A-N-I-E-L-U-B-E-T-Z-K-Y. That's on X. You can find him there. And also on Instagram. And also on Instagram and other channels. Are you on TikTok? Probably, yeah. Probably, yes. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and subscribe to the YouTube channel. And if you enjoy the content, please subscribe to our newsletter as well.

1:04:36Thank you.