In 1998, Barry Nalebuff, a professor at Yale, and his former student Seth Goldman decided to launch a beverage company called Honest Tea, a company that sells ready-to-drink iced tea that truly tastes like tea. This should have been a recipe for disaster as neither Seth nor Barry had any experience in the industry or in running a business. They were going up against Coke, Pepsi, Snapple, … and yet the company grew (organically) from five thermoses to more than three billion bottles sold. In 2011, Coca Cola purchased the company. In this presentation, Barry will share his lessons learned, including: How to use basic economics to identify market opportunities, how to evaluate holes in the market to determine whether they are an opportunity or a sinkhole, how to be a lean start-up, how to structure equity in a way that is fair to investors and yet doesn’t dilute founders, how to recognize the most import aspect of your business, how to communicate your mission Most importantly, we’ll talk about how to create a successful mission-driven business without sacrificing one's ideals.

Barry Nalebuff is the Milton Steinbach Professor at Yale School of Management. An expert on game theory, he has written extensively on its application to business strategy. He is the coauthor of six books: Thinking Strategically and The Art of Strategy are popular books on game theory with over 400,000 copies in print. Co-opetition looks beyond zero-sum games to emphasize the potential for co-operating as well as competing. Why Not? offers a framework for problem solving and ingenuity. Lifecycle Investing provides a new strategy for retirement investing. Mission in a Bottle tells the story of Honest Tea in graphic format. A graduate of MIT, a Rhodes Scholar, and a Junior Fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows, Nalebuff earned his doctorate at Oxford University.

Barry practices what he preaches (and preaches what he practices). In addition to his academic work, he has extensive experience consulting with multinational firms, from American Express, GE, and McKinsey to Google and Rio Tinto. He advised the NBA in its prior negotiations with the National Basketball Players Association and served on the boards of Nationwide Insurance and Q Drinks. He presently serves on the boards of AGP (glass) and Calicraft (beer). In 1998, Barry and his former student Seth Goldman cofounded Honest Tea. In 2012, Nalebuff co-founded Kombrewcha, a line of hard kombucha beverages that was sold to AB-InBev in 2016. His latest ventures are Real Made (overnight oats) and Choose Health.

CFLD Hall, Schwarzman College, B1 Level

Guests from both Tsinghua and other universities may register for this event by scanning the QR code. Attendees must show their confirmed reservation and valid university ID to access this event. Attendees will be admitted to Schwarzman College on condition that they adhere to all building and event policies. This event is not open to members of the media and will be held off the record. No attributions or descriptions of this event may be published or shared online without the written consent of both Tsinghua University and Schwarzman College. This lecture will be delivered in English.