Mark Cuban Called Out This Founder’s ‘Shark Tank’ Pitch. It’s A Lesson In Accepting Criticism | Inc.

– For me personally the reason I was put in this world is to build bridges and to try to make my small contribution to make this a better world. So every venture that I’ve started including Kind is about more than just making money. I’m Daniel Lubetzky, the founder of Kind. (light music) In the early years of Kind we didn’t even talk about our social mission, we focused just on the deliciousness and healthful attributes of the product.

Only in the last few years have we started leaning in and talking more about what we used to do behind the scenes. Partly because now our scale allows us to have an even greater impact. Though I do feel that what we’re doing with Empatico, which is a platform we created through the Kind Foundation has the most potential for transformative impact. We now are in 27,000 classrooms, connecting children ages six to 11 to discover each other’s humanity and impact millions of children in helping them realize that while we can be very proud of our backgrounds, we also should be very proud of our shared humanity.

I think companies have a responsibility to be authentic and transparent and if it truly speaks to them to do something with social purpose then I definitely believe that the private sector has a great role to play because market forces are scalable and sustainable so they are one of the best tools we have to try to improve the world. But it has to be authentic, it has to be transparent. I much prefer an authentic company that just focuses on generating jobs than a company that claims to have a social mission but it’s just a gimmick. But if there’s authenticity and you’re actually able to cook your social impact into your business model, it’s hard to compete with that.

And I do think there’s an increased consciousness that if we’re gonna be able to tackle the challenges of climate change, of resource scarcity, of extremism, inequality, in our society, the private sector needs to play a leading role. It’s not just what you want to achieve but how you achieve it. And it’s interesting to me to notice that sometimes people think the ends justify the means. In my experience has been that in every single decision, at every single moment, the way you react to every single human being and just every single occasion is going in the aggregate, define who you are, what your brand is, what you are as a company.

We live in a day and age where businesses have not sufficiently stood up for truth and integrity and democracy and a lot of these values that we’ve taken for granted are under threat in America and in the world. As a father of four, as a son of a Holocaust survivor, for me you cannot avoid standing up, even if there are consequences that somebody doesn’t like what you are saying. You know, as an immigrant to the United States I do not take for granted all these incredible things that have made America what it is today and so I’m very committed to invest in them and speak up for them.

Source: Inc.