00:00 Speaker A
Let’s stick with the macro investing environment here. Camino Partners, an investment platform focused on longevity, announcing new investments, including Barry’s Bootcamp, Well Labs Plus, and Home Healthcare Provider Network, LiveWell. Joining Camino’s other investments in businesses that include publicly traded quick service restaurant Cava. Here now to discuss more, we got Daniel Lubetzky. He’s Camino Partners founder, also the founder of Kind Snacks, which he sold to candy maker Mars in 2020 for $5 billion. Daniel, great to have you on here. I’m really excited to talk to you about your investment thesis on the longevity space. But first, I just want to get your sense on how you’re viewing the market right now. I’m sure you got a lot of family members asking you this. Our audience of investors want to know how someone like you is viewing the market, how you’re finding certainty in your investment thesis given the volatility right now.
01:53 Daniel Lubetzky
Just go to the fundamentals, Madison. I mean, when uh when we launched Kind, we went through the financial crisis, through many other crises, and Kind grew triple digits every year for 10 years in a row. And uh if you find a good team, a good product, a good value proposition, they’re going to stand the test of time. And in the longevity space, all of us are living longer, hopefully. And uh everybody wants to have higher quality of life. So areas that can help us improve that, whether it’s how to do better fitness, how to eat better, how to live better, how to have better connections with our health and wellness and the health care system, I think there’s a ton of innovation happening in that space. And if you find the right propositions that are actually delivering to the consumer, that are not fads, that people can actually see that it is actually impacting their health and their well-being, I think those are the companies that are going to outperform.
04:05 Speaker A
And for retail investors listening, Daniel, walk me through your rubric for sussing out which companies to invest in. What tools could investors listening maybe steal from you in in monitoring investment opportunities?
04:36 Daniel Lubetzky
We have far smarter people than me figuring that out, but one of the things they look at is gross margins and making sure that people are actually paying for those products or services and that people are actually appreciating them and that they are continuing to reorder. One of the things that I found, Madison, when I started Kind is, the first sale is actually the easiest sale. It’s the return sales that that take, that really, really matter. And same with subscriptions, same with reorders, same with any industry. Are people happy? Because you can fool one person once, but if you really, really want them to come back, they need to be really satisfied with the value proposition, and they will pay for it if it’s real. It’s not going to be artificially sustained through promotions or companies whose margins are not actually able to cover the costs or services that they’re providing, the goods or services they’re providing.
06:12 Yeah.
Yeah.
06:15 Yeah.
Yeah.
07:19 Speaker A
Daniel, great breakdown. Since you mentioned gross margins, I’m curious how that plays into your thesis on AI in particular. There’s been this question about whether the ROI for AI is really going to be there. Are people really going to pay up for chat GPT? How do you think about that?
07:51 Daniel Lubetzky
First of all, the changes that are going to happen through AI are very, very real. I was just last week at a BD TSMC conference with some of the smartest people in the space. And what I can tell you is that everybody’s reporting about how massive the productivity gains are, and I do think it’s going to help the entire market. I also will tell you this is not an area where I go directly because I’m not the smartest guy in that room. So I follow the people that are really smarter and invest in the best funds that really, really know how to discern who to invest in in the AI space. But for companies like uh CPG companies and healthcare companies and every other type of companies, you do need to start figuring out how to leverage those tools so that you can become more productive and it’s actually going to have an impact on everybody. And um everybody should just try to invest in the areas where they are the foremost expertise and where they are the smarter guy in the room. In our case, it’s looking at health and wellness, at longevity, at consumer product goods, and figure out how we can actually create sustainable positive impact that’s scalable for consumers.
10:13 Yeah.
Yeah.
10:40 Speaker B
Daniel, real quick, um, a big fan of Kind. Um, and clearly the uh the landscape has changed a lot. We’re talking about AI now and productivity tools. But you had great success over at Kind, and there’s some things that are just timeless. Uh and that’s why I was always very focused on management. Give me the one thing that you took from your success over at Kind that is going to, you know, make you successful in these great ventures that I see that you’re investing in.
11:13 Daniel Lubetzky
I think what made us outperform everybody at Kind was our culture and our values. We had the hardest working team, the smartest team, the most critical thinkers. We had a very open debate environment where people would engage and constructively tackling every question and debating with one another, which for that to be constructive and useful, people need to trust each other. People need to know that it’s okay to challenge conventional wisdom and be rewarded for taking risks. And so we had an ownership mentality, a we not me mentality. And I think creating the right culture for your team to outperform is essential in any company.
13:09 Speaker B
Speaks to your leadership, Daniel. Thank you so much for making time with us. Please come back soon. Appreciate it.
13:17 Daniel Lubetzky
Thank you, Madison. Thank you.
