KIND Snacks Founder Invests $62 Million in Nasal Strips

Daniel Lubetzky changed the snack industry with his company KIND Snacks. Now he’s betting those same instincts can transform how Americans think about breathing.

Camino Partners, the investment platform founded by Lubetzky and led by President Elle Lanning, today announced a $62 million investment in Intake Breathing — a fast-growing nasal strip company whose product is already used by top-tier athletes. It’s the largest investment in Camino’s history.

“This is the company that most reminds me of KIND,” Lubetzky said. “That’s how excited I am.”

In particular, Lubetzky and Lanning say, they see a similar opportunity: Snack bars used to be unfamiliar, overlooked, or slightly stigmatized, and then KIND turned them into an everyday health habit. Can Intake do the same with nasal strips?

How They See the Opportunity

For Lubetzky, who is also widely known as a recurring investor on Shark Tank, this investment all began with data.

“The data is insane,” he said. “Like when I looked at the data with my team, I’m like, my God, I’m so excited. I’ve not seen this data since KIND days. People try Intake and then they keep going.”

That stands out in the wellness industry, he says. Many supplements and wellness products fail to create repeat customers, because people can’t tell if they’re actually working. “But with Intake, you immediately feel it,” he says. “You understand that it’s working. When you sleep, you sleep better. You know that you sleep better.”

Lanning, who worked alongside Lubetzky during KIND’s rise and now leads Camino Partners, said they’re especially excited about the category of nasal strips. Unlike many other wellness products, nasal strips are already familiar to a mass-market consumer — but they’ve been positioned narrowly, often as something you use when you’re sick or congested.

Lanning said that’s an opportunity: When an entrepreneur can find a narrowly used product, and then introduce new occasions to use it, they’re able to expand and define a category themselves.

“I think this is very much a shift to quality breathing as a foundational part of your everyday health,” she says. Which is to say: They want people to think of nasal strips as a regular thing, not just an occasional thing. (And in fact, Lubetzky and Lanning wore them during the interview for this story.)

Even better, nasal strips are a habit that require regular refills, and therefore produce recurring revenue. Intake sells packs of 30 uses for $40, and monthly subscriptions for $25.

Where Intake Goes Next

Intake Breathing has come a long way. But there’s still a long way to go, Lubetzky and Lanning say.

In fact, the company began in a very different industry, and wasn’t originally intended a wellness product at all.

A brief history: In 1980, a serial inventor and avid skier named Jim Castillo was struck by a car. Doctors told him not to ski anymore; another injury could permanently damage his knee. But he wanted to return to the slopes. So he developed his own protective knee brace, and that ultimately led him to cofound a company called Innovation Sports, which became a leading manufacturer of athletic knee braces. It entered the motocross market in 1983.

In 2014, Castillo set his sights on a different motoceoss problem: The sport’s goggles often pinch a rider’s nostrils, which makes it difficult to breathe during competition. He wondered if he could solve that.

Castillo built a small magnetic clip that paired with a piece of metal stuck to the rider’s nose. The idea was to sell this as a goggle accessory. The prototype worked, but it sat on the sidelines for years. Eventually, his family urged it into reality, because they saw an opportunity to turn it into a standalone breathing solution. The family financed the company’s first production run, and his son-in-law Alex Hauck became CEO. A successful Kickstarter campaign in 2019 helped move things along.

The business has grown organically, making its way into wellness and athletic communities, and selling exclusively online. Now Lubetzky and Lanning are ready to add operational firepower.

“Everything they’ve done has been really intuitive,” Lanning said, “which also is something that’s important in founder-based businesses.”

Next, Lanning said, her team wants to help the company build retail partnerships, sharpen its brand positioning, and expand athlete endorsements.

But above all, Lubetzky says, he wants entrepreneurs to take note of this: Investors like him cannot transform a business, unless the quality of the product is already top notch. “In consumer product goods, the product is king,” he said. “If you do not have a killer product perfected, you can invest all you want, market all you want, at the end it’s not gonna take off.”

Daniel Lubetzky changed the snack industry with his company KIND Snacks. Now he’s betting those same instincts can transform how Americans think about breathing.

Camino Partners, the investment platform founded by Lubetzky and led by President Elle Lanning, today announced a $62 million investment in Intake Breathing — a fast-growing nasal strip company whose product is already used by top-tier athletes. It’s the largest investment in Camino’s history.

“This is the company that most reminds me of KIND,” Lubetzky said. “That’s how excited I am.”