Key Takeaways Serial entrepreneur and investor Jack Davis is a
Jack Davis is a serial entrepreneur and investor with a knack for spotting early trends in media, sports, and food, and growing consumer-facing brands just before they go mainstream. His track record includes Crypt TV, which he launched with horror filmmaker Eli Roth; Pop-Up Bagels; Jomboy Media, now in partnership with MLB; Dave’s Hot Chicken, which was sold for $1 billion; and the experiential dining brand Chain, which he co-founded with actor/comedian B.J. Novak.
Not too shabby.
Davis joined the How Success Happens podcast and shared the methodology for picking winners, which he says really comes down to one metric: organic demand. “I try to be in spaces where I believe that there’s going to be natural growth in the space,” he told Entrepreneur. “You can’t buy demand.”
While he’s obviously done well in the investing game, Davis was very open about the businesses that didn’t work out, explaining what he (and you) can learn from those projects that looked great on paper but not so much in reality. “Once you start spending a certain amount of money and aren’t seeing proportionate results from the money, that’s probably a really bad sign,” he says. (On the subject of struggle, be sure to read his open and honest Entrepreneur article about the mental and financial anguish that came with a last-ditch effort to save one of his companies. Spoiler: it all works out in the end!)
Listen to the entire conversation here, and check out Jack’s three success tips below, including a technique for answering the age-old question: Is this idea actually going to make any money?
It’s All About Organic Demand
Davis emphasizes that truly successful businesses have one thing in common: they are built on “organic demand” rather than manufactured hype. He advises, “Everything I’ve ever succeeded with has come from people believing in something, putting an idea together, and then building off of what we see from authentic organic demand.” In Davis’s experience, organic demand means seeing people standing in line in parking lots to buy Dave’s Hot Chicken or to try Chain. “You can’t fabricate organic demand,” he says. “We are not in a boardroom world anymore, where people can sit there and decide what people want. In the social media age, demand has become democratized.” Seeing engagement that outperforms your marketing budget (or lack thereof) is the green light that you are onto something great. “Thinking you can throw money at something to create demand is dangerous,” he warns.
Takeaway: Focus on building a product or service people genuinely want—paid advertising should never be your main engine for growth.
Related: Celebrity Chef Andrew Zimmern Says Social Media Is Ruining Food
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