[Michael Eisenberg — 0:00]

You sold KIND and you went on Shark Tank. Why?

[Michael Eisenberg — 0:05]

How many investments have you made?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 0:05]

Through Shark Tank?

[Michael Eisenberg — 0:08]

Yeah.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 0:08]

Probably 15, 20.

[Michael Eisenberg — 0:10]

Has anyone made money?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 0:12]

There's one investment. I'm telling you, Michael, I think this might be a multibillion-dollar company.

[Michael Eisenberg — 0:17]

Okay, so tell us.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 0:18]

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 multibillion-dollar company with no needed investment. I don't want to start getting so emotional out the gate.

[Michael Eisenberg — 0:42]

Welcome back for another episode of Invested. This is not Shark Tank. It's Invested. And I'm here with Daniel Lubetzky. How are you, Daniel?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 0:50]

I'm so pleased to be with you.

[Michael Eisenberg — 0:51]

My pleasure. 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?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 1:01]

Because it matches your shirt?

[Michael Eisenberg — 1:02]

That too, I guess. I remember walking around San Francisco after they shut down the kosher restaurant in San Francisco, 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. I said, what can I have that's got a little bit of protein in it at least, and it'll fill me up. And I took three KIND bars. The first time I had a KIND bar was in San Francisco.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 1:22]

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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 1:47]

I want to start with why you called it KIND Bars. Why'd you call it KIND bar?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 1:50]

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. We wanted to find a human adjective that would describe those three anchors. And we started thinking of my father. My team member Sasha at the time and I were brainstorming, and 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 ideas.

[Michael Eisenberg — 2:46]

Give me some of them.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 2:46]

It was like really obvious stuff, like healthy nutty, nutty healthy, nuts-o-licious, nuts-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. And 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, the campaign — Progressive can't stop you from becoming your parent, but it can save you 15% on insurance. My kids joke that I became my father, and now they're becoming us. But a misima [task], my mission, when I see somebody having a bad day, is to try to put a laugh, 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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 4:10]

What was your father's name?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 4:11]

Roman.

[Michael Eisenberg — 4:12]

Roman. Just tell us about him, because it seems to be very present.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 4:16]

He was a very rare person. You and I are fathers. You to eight, me to four. My dad also had four kids, my mom and dad. And what was 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, just wanting it for the wrong 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. Never had that. He was always — he put the spotlight on us. We were the protagonist. He was a great coach. Like, anytime I went to him with — and 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 working on being a better listener, and then I'm helping you figure out what to do.

[Michael Eisenberg — 5:49]

Where did he come from?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 5:50]

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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 6:07]

And what year was he taken away? Was he taken away to the concentration camps?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 6:10]

Yeah, he was nine years old when the war started, around ten and a half when he was sent to the Kovno ghetto, and around 12 when he was taken on these cattle trains to Dachau. 12 and a half when he arrived to Dachau. But if you look at his paperwork in Dachau, because, you know, the Germans kept very clear details, the 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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 6:49]

Wow.

[Michael Eisenberg — 6:50]

And what year did he arrive in the concentration camp?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 6:53]

Probably 1942, 1943. Yeah.

[Michael Eisenberg — 6:56]

And then it was liberated with Dachau in 1945.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 6:58]

Correct.

[Michael Eisenberg — 6:59]

Straight from there. And then where did he go?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 7:02]

I have, like, so many stories I can tell you when you're asking me these questions. I just know — 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 St. Ottilien for six months. Then he was in a refugee camp for six months, and then he went to Mexico.

[Michael Eisenberg — 7:30]

How did he get to Mexico?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 7:33]

A generation before, my aunt and uncle — his aunt, 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 US 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. And that's how they ended up in Mexico.

[Michael Eisenberg — 8:11]

And what did he do when he got to Mexico?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 8:13]

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, 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. And 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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 9:15]

Is that where you got your sense of branding and style?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 9:19]

I don't think I have a sense of style still.

[Michael Eisenberg — 9:21]

Yeah, but this is pretty good.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 9:22]

Yeah, that actually is very interesting. If you look at my, because I did 10 years of branding mistakes before I figured it out with KIND. And 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 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 sun-dried tomato spreads, olive spreads. It was called Moshe Pupik and Ali Mishmunkin's World-Famous All-Natural Gourmet Foods. I still don't know why it didn't work out, but that's what taught me to next time just call it KIND and just keep it simple.

[Michael Eisenberg — 10:23]

Moshe Pupik?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 10:23]

Moshe Pupik.

[Michael Eisenberg — 10:23]

For those who don't know, Moshe is Moses in Hebrew and pupik is actually a Yiddish word for belly button.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 10:32]

Yeah. But Moshe Pupik is a name that people use for jokes, right? Like in Mexico, 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 Mishmunkin — in my mind, Moshe Pupik was this great chef and Ali Mishmunkin 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. And Moshe Pupik and Ali Mishmunkin got together and concocted this sun-dried 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 use the spoons to partake of the sun-dried tomato spread and became friends, and then had hundreds of years of peace. That was the legend of Moshe Pupik and Ali Mishmunkin.

[Michael Eisenberg — 11:29]

Quite a story. Did you come up with that story?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 11:31]

I came up with that story and many other stories.

[Michael Eisenberg — 11:34]

Oh yeah?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 11:35]

Yeah. Each one of our products had a different legend. But my favorite one was the one of Moshe Pupik and Ali Mishmunkin.

[Michael Eisenberg — 11:42]

Why do you speak Yiddish?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 11:44]

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 till 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, would they teach you English.

[Michael Eisenberg — 12:01]

What about Spanish?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 12:02]

Spanish was my mother tongue. That was 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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 12:16]

Where's your mom from?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 12:17]

My mom was born in Mexico, in Tampico, Tamaulipas, in the north of Mexico. Her parents immigrated a generation before from Eastern Europe.

[Michael Eisenberg — 12:25]

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 them because I think they're important.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 12:37]

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 when you make mistakes, you have to be introspective to figure out what didn't go right. And then you learn from those. So I was trying to represent international brands 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 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 for 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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 14:05]

How did you try to convince Dell to represent them?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 14:09]

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. If you don't know where you should not try things out, then you also sometimes get it right. 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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 14:33]

How did you try to convince Dell Computer at the time?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 14:37]

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. 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 loved the concept of PeaceWorks. So I got a lot of recognition. And so I was invited to the World Economic Forum, to many 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 the 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? And they look at each other, this couple, 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. And like, let me tell you about PeaceWorks. 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 are your names? And he says, 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 on emails, but I wrote to Jeff Bezos, I wrote to Michael, I wrote to everybody that would. Poor guys, they were like, who's this guy?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 16:11]

But, you know, eventually...

[Michael Eisenberg — 16:11]

You're living in Mexico at the time, or in Texas?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 16:14]

No, at the time I was living in New York.

[Michael Eisenberg — 16:15]

In New York.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 16:16]

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. It 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, 1993, there is the breakthrough between Israelis and Palestinians brokered by Clinton. And that's when I decided to start PeaceWorks.

[Michael Eisenberg — 17:20]

And here we are in 2026. You've been passionate about this Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian issue for almost...

[Daniel Lubetzky — 17:30]

All my life. Ever since I was 12 years old.

[Michael Eisenberg — 17:31]

40 years.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 17:32]

Over 40. Ever since I was 12.

[Michael Eisenberg — 17:34]

What happened at 12 that caused you to become interested in it?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 17:36]

When I was 12 years old, 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 for the Sarfati family. Thank you, if you're listening, for giving me that chance for my first job. And I was cutting textiles, cloth, and selling it in the checkout counter and carrying big telares [looms] in the heat of downtown Mexico. But it 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, 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 East.

[Michael Eisenberg — 18:56]

Do you think that the Holocaust was singular or it could be revisited? Something like it?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 19:01]

Oh, it absolutely.

[Michael Eisenberg — 19:01]

Absolutely can happen.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 19:01]

In some ways things like it, not as — you can't compare tragedies. I don't want to reduce other people's suffering. But yes, the lack — I mean, in fact, I'm now one of the founders of the Builders Movement, because we recognize that dehumanization, polarization, hate, division are the elements that bring about, and ignorance, that bring about the conditions for some to think that they should destroy an entire people, like they did in Rwanda. Like, yeah, unfortunately we as humans have the capability to think that the other side is not human and then to do some atrocious things once that happens.

[Michael Eisenberg — 19:46]

Are you worried right now about the rising tide of antisemitism, that it'll kind of crest over and become a tidal wave?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 19:53]

I mean, first of all, I'm a Mexican Jew. I worry by definition. I'm the son of a Holocaust survivor. I think it's in my epigenetics to worry. But 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 happened from happening to others. Like, I've built the Builders Movement, the One Voice Movement, KIND, PeaceWorks, Empatico, tons of other ventures that I've done. Some very successful, some not very. But I'm always driven to build rather than to complain or to be paralyzed. And 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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 20:39]

So you've tried and failed at a million things, right? And then were very, very successful with KIND

[Daniel Lubetzky — 20:39]

And a few others.

[Michael Eisenberg — 20:39]

What are the other ones?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 20:49]

Well, I built together with my colleague Mohammad Darawshe 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 re-initiate negotiations. We built a whole human infrastructure of people that wanted to try to be problem solvers. I 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 the Middle East, which has over a billion views, helping, in Arabic, in Hebrew and in English, show a positive side of the builders in the Middle East rather than the destroyers. I can keep going, but I can also tell you 100 more things that I failed with. And I wear those failures very proudly, because there's no chance I would have built KIND from a $10,000 company to a multibillion-dollar company had I not failed with PeaceWorks and learned the lessons from it.

[Michael Eisenberg — 21:56]

I'll come back to the failures in a second. The reason I'm asking the question about failing into success is certainly the pursuit, let's call it, of Israeli-Palestinian peace, even though I think, because of the Abraham Accords, 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?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 22:22]

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. But 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 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 the 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. And 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. 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, 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, is, you know, the schools of, was it Hillel and Shammai, that you always welcome the other school. Are you friends with Nuseir Yassin?

[Michael Eisenberg — 24:04]

Yeah, I know him well. He was here in that seat.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 24:06]

Nuseir 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. So 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, 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.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 24:59]

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.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 25:15]

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. They 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 a population, 1%, I don't know. But what's powerful about them is they wake up in the morning, 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? They 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, yesh lahem et hachuka, they have the passion to solve, and the moderates have the 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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 26:25]

What you described, I believe, is the silent majority of people who, as my wife likes to say, most people just want to get up in the morning, have a family, 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. Not that they're bigger than raising a family — that's a big issue in and of itself — but it's, 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, you know, daily life, which is busy enough right now?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 27:01]

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. They 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 talk to about what I did — there 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 both in terms of also culture, we need to give people agency. This 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 versus destroyers is a framework where everybody has agency and you have to choose. Are you going to deny the humanity of the other and take action to divide, to demolish, to diminish? Then you are 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. Put 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. The four Cs of a builder's mindset, that helps you solve problems rather than tear each other apart.

[Michael Eisenberg — 30:00]

Three Ds versus four Cs.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 30:02]

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, the diminish shit. And I'm the Daniel and the dad. Then for some reason the Cs have so many fun things.

[Michael Eisenberg — 30:15]

Are your kids' names starting with Cs or no?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 30:17]

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. Then you text them, you can say A, R, N, J. And I have friends like Robert Rodriguez, the filmmaker. He named all of his kids with an R. Have a bunch of people. Tori and her parents named 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 Ra. Like, oh my God, you get to — you need to get to a third letter too. By that time you might as well give the whole word.

[Michael Eisenberg — 30:17]

Time for a voice note.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 30:17]

What are you doing with your, with your eight?

[Michael Eisenberg — 30:55]

What do I do?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 30:56]

Like, do they have all different names, initials, or there's not enough in the vocabulary for your eight?

[Michael Eisenberg — 31:01]

I think so, yeah, they do actually.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 31:03]

You haven't thought about that?

[Michael Eisenberg — 31:04]

No, never once.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 31:05]

And let's go through it. This might be a breakthrough. You're going to become more efficient.

[Michael Eisenberg — 31:09]

One of them has a nickname.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 31:10]

You might actually succeed now.

[Michael Eisenberg — 31:11]

One of his nickname, they took his real name, it became from I to an S. And I have a daughter starts with an S. So that's some overlap.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 31:19]

I think we need to change the nickname.

[Michael Eisenberg — 31:21]

I think we're good though. We hit eight different ones, I think, on the real names.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 31:24]

But start using the initials now. Maybe you'll succeed after all.

[Michael Eisenberg — 31:29]

Tell me, why do you think — I want to go on to a different topic, but why do you think that the progressivism led to this identitarian and victim, identitarian politics and the kind of victim mindset and the oppressor-oppressed framework? What happened?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 31:45]

There are many different questions.

[Michael Eisenberg — 31:46]

And why is it taking root now?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 31:48]

Yeah.

[Michael Eisenberg — 31:48]

Still taking root.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 31:48]

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 the guy that popularized the...

[Daniel Lubetzky — 32:02]

Malcolm Gladwell.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 32:04]

He popularized the point about, like, how things don't change till they change very radically. I think the oppressor-versus framework, we were asleep at the wheel while people were cultivating that, and it was literally Soviet propaganda. And 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 and so dangerous. But I think it 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 when 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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 32:52]

I agree with this. This is very Maimonidean, by the way. I agree with this. Like, Maimonides is all about this. But keep going.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 32:58]

Please elaborate on that, because I want to absorb.

[Michael Eisenberg — 33:00]

You go first and I'll chime in.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 33:02]

Okay. But remember...

[Michael Eisenberg — 0:00]

I will, don't worry.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 33:02]

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. If 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. 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 that 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 abide by? And 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 is an 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. That'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're removing from kids' agency for them to learn to solve their own problems.

[Michael Eisenberg — 33:02]

100%.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 33:02]

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, sobered up by is that these young people arrive without a skill to interact with another and resolve problems together. They'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 helicopter parenting with good intentions to overcome the bullying removed 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. No bullying. You go for two weeks to your school, to outside, 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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 36:41]

I promised 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.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 37:03]

Yeah, 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. I'm sure, once I remember he did something like that, but in general, he never, never, never. I don't remember having anger.

[Michael Eisenberg — 37:22]

You've talked about your father in terms of naming the company KIND. And one of the mottos of this podcast is values create value. 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.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 37:44]

Before I go there, I need to tell you two things. Ryan 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 at KIND. We learned how to build a culture and a community where everyone was a stakeholder, everybody's an owner, whether you were the janitor or the president of the company, everybody got stock options, and after six months, the right to buy those stock options and encouraged 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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 38:35]

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, and that's how we tied the company's hand. So we can't kind of get out of it.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 39:00]

I love that, actually. How's it working? Because I met the woman.

[Michael Eisenberg — 39:03]

Lemonade is the fastest growing insurance company on planet earth.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 39:06]

And the woman that runs marketing there, she's impressive. Lior's wife?

[Michael Eisenberg — 39:11]

Yeah, Maya. Maya Prosor.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 39:12]

Wow. I remember meeting her, I thought she was really impressive.

[Michael Eisenberg — 39:15]

She's the chief business officer of Lemonade. I think part of this stuff is to state your values publicly so that you're bound by them.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 39:22]

Yes, state your value. We did that very well at KIND. I learned from doing it wrong at PeaceWorks. And at KIND, we set out who we are, what we are and what we are not.

[Michael Eisenberg — 39:31]

So what were you not?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 39:33]

We set very clear 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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 39:47]

Yeah.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 39:48]

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. And so if you're making a fruit-and-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 to do that. So we — it was hard, by the way. It wasn't easy. We saw how for a while the zero sugar fad was growing and we were, like, intimidated by it. So we went into 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 and not what we're not. And we developed the dark — I might have been that one. Let me see what I gave you. Yeah, the dark chocolate and sea salt. And that product has 5 grams of sugar, which is less than what our other products have, they have 13 grams of sugar. We found a way to design a product with a teaspoon equivalent of sugar. Two grams out of the five grams come from the almonds, three grams from added sugars. But it's not that much, just a very, very small amount of sugar. But it's not zero sugar.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 41:09]

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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 41:21]

The salt and the sugar together is incredibly addictive.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 41:24]

Yeah, it's good.

[Michael Eisenberg — 41:26]

Those are the best products. So you sold KIND and you went on Shark Tank. Why?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 41:34]

Why I sold KIND or why I went to Shark Tank? Both are very big questions.

[Michael Eisenberg — 41:37]

Yeah, both, actually.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 41:39]

I asked myself whether I should have not sold KIND very frequently. KIND was 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 had the most incredible performance in my industry. We grew a company from basically nothing to a multibillion-dollar company with no needed investment. I sold some secondary shares, but we never really needed meaningful money. We got to a $7 billion valuation with only 5 million, $5.2 million lifetime in primary, and 5 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 were seeing competitors leapfrog us in other countries, because in the US we were very solid. Everybody had tried, but nobody had succeeded. But we saw people borrowing our playbook and trying to apply it in other countries. And 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 US. 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 in some ways in terms of time allocation, it's much harder today, because 15 years ago I had KIND and One Voice, work for peace in the Middle East to try 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 antisemitism, fighting hate, finding all sorts of challenges that I think that our world has encountered. And so it's much harder to keep up.

[Michael Eisenberg — 44:10]

Why'd you do Shark Tank?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 44:12]

I 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 asked the person, I interrupt them. I can't believe I do that, but I do that. I was like, what are you watching? They're like, oh, it's Shark Tank. What is Shark Tank? They explain it to me. I sit down, and I'm probably on a long-haul flight, and I watched 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 I love about Shark Tank is you're, 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, like three generations. Grandparents, parents, and kids watch it together. And it's very enjoyable, very engaging. It's gone on now for 18 seasons. Just like an iconic show.

[Michael Eisenberg — 45:20]

How many investments have you made?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 45:20]

Through Shark Tank?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 45:23]

Yeah, I need to count them. Probably 15, 20.

[Michael Eisenberg — 45:27]

Has anyone made money?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 45:29]

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, 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, they, it's very hard for you to actually see. Even the successful ones are still at an earlier enough 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. So 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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 46:07]

You like being on TV?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 46:08]

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. And 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 active, and the producer, like, Daniel, you need to step in. You need to wake up. I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, I feel like I'm invading people's privacy and screaming. It takes a lot. And did you, were you a Seinfeld fan?

[Michael Eisenberg — 46:48]

I'm not such a TV fan, but I have watched some Seinfeld.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 46:51]

You know, Jason Alexander plays the role of George.

[Michael Eisenberg — 46:54]

Yeah, sure.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 46:54]

You remember George?

[Michael Eisenberg — 46:55]

Yeah, sure.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 46:56]

In one episode, somebody teases him. It's 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's like, 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 what you see is what you get. It'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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 47:32]

What's your favorite investment from Shark Tank?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 47:35]

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 multibillion-dollar company.

[Michael Eisenberg — 47:44]

Okay, so tell us first.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 47:45]

No, I can't.

[Michael Eisenberg — 47:46]

Why not?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 47:47]

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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 48:02]

Is 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 who are out there. And if I didn't get money from you in the normal ways, I go to Shark Tank and I'll find Daniel Lubetzky there and see if I can persuade him to give me a few minutes.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 48:14]

I literally said that today to somebody. He's like, oh my God, this person wants to produce a movie. I'm like, listen, if they're asking me for money to produce a movie, I know it's a bad movie, because they're gonna go to the right people for the right stuff. I 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 Neuro. Neuro, of the ones that I can announce. Neuro is an incredible company, but I actually didn't do the deal in the tank. It's these two young Asian guys, Kent and Ryan. They launched this Neuro 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. I'm like, oh my God, these guys are incredible. One, by the way, is paraplegic. He had an accident. 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 is not right. I bow out. Kevin gives them an offer, 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? And 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 somebody 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? 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 lose a lot of money and I'll lose a lot of money. So that 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 reach out, like, look, you know, 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, 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. And 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, 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, a 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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 51:32]

And you gave them money?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 51:34]

We haven't closed. You know, when they present to you on Shark Tank, you only watch 8 to 11 minutes, but 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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 52:00]

What's the failure that you've learned the most from?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 52:04]

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 Mishmunkin's World-Famous All-Natural Gourmet Foods to KIND. From trying to be everything to everybody with PeaceWorks, to trying to be very focused with KIND. With PeaceWorks, I didn't understand. I was a confused Mexican Jewish lawyer selling sun-dried 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 sun-dried tomato spread, olive spread, and open the jar and feed it, hand-feed it to all the buyers. And I would go door by door. I would wake up at 7am in the morning, start at 122nd on Broadway, walk down door by door, store by store, store by store, and then cross the street and then go up Broadway, and then rinse and repeat the next day in Madison, the next day in 3rd Avenue, et cetera. And then the following day or a week later, I would take my beaten-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 was Korean grocery shops, were, like, owned by the Korean community, or a Macy's. I'm telling you, Michael, I was so stupid. I didn't understand. The 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. And one day I went into this store on 84th on 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? He said, sorry, you know, people come here to buy toilet paper, ketchup, essentials. They're not going to buy a sun-dried tomato spread made by Arabs. But I'm like, okay, but mister, 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. He leaves. He goes down the basement.

[Michael Eisenberg — 54:18]

Yeah, the storage is underground there.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 54:20]

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 from you. I'm like, yes, $33. I'm like, this is it, Daniel. You're going to succeed because you have the grit. You don't give up. Yes, Daniel, you've got it all. And I'm like, go. Feeling so proud that after two hours I got a $33 order. The next week I go by and I look on the shelves, 12 jars all still there. The next week, 12 jars, all still there. A 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 actually selling you shelf space, they're not selling, like, it's, you need to turn the product from those shelves. And if the product's not turning two years later, and it doesn't do my brand any favors, it starts looking all old and whatever. So that's how I learned that, like, oh my God, you don't want to be everywhere. You want to be where you need to be, where the consumer wants to find you. In that case, for Moshe Pupik, it was for, 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, it's like, dude, we cannot understand you, let alone with your Mexican Jewish accent, let alone with talking so fast. So I'm sorry.

[Michael Eisenberg — 56:09]

You're doing great.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 56:10]

Put some subtitles.

[Michael Eisenberg — 56:12]

How do you teach your kids about agency and grit?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 56:15]

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, once 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 not easy, but 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 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. We'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 that. 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 it.

[Michael Eisenberg — 57:45]

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? You've done so much.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 57:55]

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, 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 and 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 towards that till the end of my life, to help do that. And 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. And 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 help 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 neighbors and others to build a better future.

[Michael Eisenberg — 59:39]

How do you know if you were successful?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 59:42]

How will I know if I'm successful? It's pretty clear. Like, is hate going down or is it going up?

[Michael Eisenberg — 59:47]

How do you know? How do you know? Like, Islamism, for example, as a form of hate is on the rise. Antisemitism as a form of hate is on the rise. Like, how do you know if you're going to be successful?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 59:59]

I mean, first of all.

[Michael Eisenberg — 59:59]

Campuses are becoming more intolerant. You know, your Stanford story is an outlier for now.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 59:59]

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 parts, 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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 60:28]

You're not going to solve that.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 60:29]

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. 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 on an e-commerce website, if they take your likeness and monetize it and make money off of a deepfake, they cannot be sued. It 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, not going to happen. Because all of these companies now are so powerful and they have more lobbies than anybody. The only way you're going to solve this problem, and all the 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. 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 is about. Anybody that's watching that has even the most tiny belief in what I'm saying, go to my channel, Daniel Lubetzky. Go to Michael also, if you're not following. But go to all of our Builders channels in all the languages that we have them, and join and listen and start joining. We'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 this. 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. 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.

[Michael Eisenberg — 63:03]

What's something kind you want to say about somebody?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 63:07]

My mom always notes that I'm in love with my father, and I talk about my dad all the time. My 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 two. She's 82 years old, can barely make it through. She's always bringing gifts and toys for everybody. She's a sweetheart.

[Michael Eisenberg — 63:38]

Thank you. Are your kids embarrassed by the fact that you talk to everybody?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 63:42]

Yes, they are embarrassed and they can't help themselves becoming that.

[Michael Eisenberg — 63:47]

Daniel, thank you for joining.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 63:48]

Thank you, man.

[Michael Eisenberg — 63:49]

And you should definitely subscribe to Daniel's 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.

[Daniel Lubetzky — 64:03]

And also on Instagram and other channels.

[Michael Eisenberg — 64:05]

And also on Instagram and other channels. Are you on TikTok?

[Daniel Lubetzky — 64:07]

Probably, yeah.

[Michael Eisenberg — 64:08]

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.

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