Snacks company owner made $220 million mistake that earned him $5 billion

Business can certainly be full of highs and lows, at least that's what one business owner found after a costly mistake - which somehow turned around miraculously.

Daniel Lubetzky is the man behind Kind Snacks, and it's fair to say that he went on something of a journey on his way to business success.

Now if you go into a supermarket you'll probably come across one of the snack bars which are made by his company.

But things were not always quite this rosy, with one decision costing Lubetzky $220 million, before his gamble paid off spectacularly.

The CNBC series The Moment follows the business from 2008, when its foundations were in a fund of $16 million from the private equity firm VMG Partners.

One of the clauses in the contract stated that as a condition of the investment Lubetzky had to sell the company within five years.

That certainly sounds like it could be nerve wracking - but Lubetzky felt confident enough that he could pull it off.

That's when things changed.

Lubetzky in an appearance on Shark Tank. (Christopher Willard/ABC via Getty Images)

Lubetzky said: "Four years into the deal, I was realizing that Kind could become so much bigger.

"My investors were pushing me to sell the company, and were very eager.

"My vision was to continue growing the company for many years to come. And their vision was to exit and get a return on their investment."

So Lubetzky had a choice - he could either cash in and risk losing out on a huge opportunity, or he could buy the company back from the equity company, which would come with risk of its own.

In the end, he opted for the second option, but this involved taking on a huge amount of debt.

He said: "I had a very strong feeling, informed by our momentum, that this was not the end — nor the beginning of the end — but the beginning of the beginning.

"And I wanted to keep going.

Lubetzky took on the debt to see if he could grow the company further, and it paid off. (Kind)

"But that was a scary moment. What if something goes wrong? Then, all of a sudden, you have so much debt, and you could maybe even lose your company.

"I had sleepless nights. We probably had a loan of, like, $200 million."

He had done his research and was certain it would work out, but there are always unforeseen ways that things could go wrong.

In the end however, things worked out extremely well, with sales doubling in 2014.

When he sold out to Mars, Kind reportedly was worth a whopping $5 billion.

He said: "I am still a meaningful stakeholder in Kind today, and I still guide them.

"We’ve agreed with our partners at Mars that Kind will be a separate standalone platform, and Kind is still growing by double digits.

"It’s not just about me having achieved more financial success with this path. "There is a possibility that Kind would have not reached the tens of millions of consumers that it reaches every day now."

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