Entrepreneurship: why 'crazy' ideas lead to success

Nate Cooper of Barrel Ventures recalls writing the first check for Olipop at the idea stage and being thrilled by a product that bridged the gap between kombucha's functional benefits and soda's taste. He says successful founders must be functional lunatics who are right, fast, and willing to go against consensus, and rates Olipop's Ben as the world's best beverage formulator. The fund specializes in food and focuses on networks, fundraising, and branding support rather than interfering in management; he believes Olipop could become a beverage company worth 100 hundred million dollars. He describes nicotine-free pouch brand Ultra's growth in the 12 months since launch as the fastest he has ever seen and predicts revenue of 10 hundred million dollars within 5~10 years. He expects GLP-1 to have only a modest impact on snacks but a substantial impact on alcohol, prompting his bet on hemp THC beverage brand Nowadays; failures in cultivated meat make him wary of the dual risks of execution and acceptance. All directional outlooks are the speaker's conditional judgments, not definitive predictions of short-term prices.