The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan.
About the show:
For over a decade, The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan has been a leading entrepreneurship podcast for open-book conversations with, by, and for founders. Whether you're starting, building, or dreaming about your business, The Foundr Podcast is where you can access experienced founders who've been in your shoes to learn their proven methods, lessons from failure, and inspirational stories.
Past guests include Emma Grede, Mark Cuban, Neil Patel, Kendra Scott, Alex Hormozi, Trinny Woodall, Tim Ferriss, Sophia Amoruso, Simon Sinek, Tony Robbins, Amy Porterfield, Ed Mylett, Michelle Zatlyn, Reid Hoffman, Scooter Braun, Dany Garcia, Marc Lore, Ariana Huffington, Pat Flynn, Lewis Howes, Jordan Harbinger, and many more.
About the host:
Nathan Chan is the CEO of Foundr and the creator of The Foundr Podcast. Chan literally started from knowing nothing. He was just an average guy working in a 9-5 job he utterly hated. He knew nothing about entrepreneurship, nothing about startups, nothing about marketing, and nothing about online or how to build a business. In the past decade, Chan's built Foundr into a global leader in entrepreneurial education, helping tens of thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs start and scale their businesses.
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1
619: Airline Charged Me $65 - So I built a $250...
Adam Ewart turned a £50 excess baggage fee into a global bootstrapped logistics company operating in 145 countries, generating over $250 million a year, and staying profitable for 15 straight years.
46 min
2
618: (Solo) What 5 World-Class Founders Taught ...
Every year I sit down with some of the world’s most fascinating founders — but this year’s interviews hit me harder than most. Reinvention, resilience, copycats, failure, loneliness after exits, scrappy launches, identity crises… these conversations changed the way I think about leadership and what it means to keep building when things get tough.
10 min
3
617: How A Failing Skincare Brand Became An 8-F...
Aliett Buttelman spent eight years grinding in the dark before a single viral moment with Taylor Swift turned Fazit into an overnight seven-figure brand. In this interview, Aliett breaks down the exact pivot that saved the company, how she identified product-market fit after years of plateauing at $20K per month, and the organic social strategy that now generates over half a million views every day.
51 min
4
616: (Solo) 5 Honest Business Lessons I’m Takin...
2025 has been one of the most eye-opening years of my founder journey — personally, professionally, and strategically. Instead of sharing a highlight reel, I want to share the real lessons that moved the needle for me. Some changed how I think about business. Others changed how I think about myself.
7 min
5
615: Stop Chasing Sexy Businesses - This Boring...
David Royce went from a broke college kid in a door-to-door pest control job to building and selling four service businesses for nine-figure exits by applying Silicon Valley systems to an unsexy blue-collar industry. In this interview, he breaks down exactly how he scaled Aptive Environmental to over $500M in revenue, created a training engine that produced top-1% sales performers, and built a culture that became a recruiting magnet in a commodity market.
57 min
6
614: (Solo) Running on Fumes? Reset Your Mindse...
If you’re dragging yourself toward the end of the year feeling exhausted, overwhelmed, and mentally drained, you’re not alone. This is one of the toughest stretches for founders — you’re still running the business while everyone else is winding down, and the pressure can quietly compound into burnout.
8 min
7
613: Why Most Beauty Brands Fail - and How to B...
DIBS Beauty went from zero to one of America’s fastest-growing makeup brands in just four years, with founder Jeff Lee scaling the business into the mid–8 figures and landing a top spot on the Inc. 5000. In this interview, Jeff breaks down the strategy behind their explosive growth, the creator-led launch that built a 20,000-person waitlist, and how DIBS is winning in one of the most competitive categories in ecommerce.
51 min
8
612: (Solo) Funding vs Bootstrapping - The Real...
Should you raise money or bootstrap your business? It’s one of the biggest questions every founder faces — and the wrong decision can shape the entire future of your company. In this episode, I share the lessons I’ve learned from speaking with hundreds of founders about funding, and what I’ve personally applied in building Foundr and my ecommerce brand, Healthish.
11 min
9
611: From Homeless to Multi-Billionaire - His S...
John Paul DeJoria went from being homeless twice to building two global billion-dollar brands, Paul Mitchell and Patrón Tequila, using nothing but resilience, sales mastery, and a refusal to quit. This interview breaks down how he launched Paul Mitchell with just $700 while living in his car, created the ultra-premium tequila category from scratch, and built companies that now operate in 130 countries
58 min
10
610: (Solo) The Secret to Finding Agencies That...
When you’re just starting out, the fastest way to grow isn’t automation, ads, or scaling systems — it’s doing things that don’t scale. In this episode, I share why the most successful founders — from billion-dollar startups to small ecommerce brands — all begin by leaning into the unscalable.
8 min
11
609: From $0 to $20M in 3 Years Selling Supplim...
From professional rugby player to successful entrepreneur, Damien Fitzpatrick built a sports recovery brand trusted by elite athletes around the world.
63 min
12
608: (Solo) Why Short-Term Wins Can Quietly Kil...
When I first started Foundr, I made a lot of short-term decisions — and most of them hurt us more than they helped. It took years (and a few hard lessons) to understand that sustainable growth only comes when you play the long game.
9 min
13
607: How I Built a $120M/Year Cookie Business F...
Loren Castle turned a life-threatening cancer diagnosis at 22 into the spark that built Sweet Loren’s, a $120M-a-year clean food brand now sold in over 5,000 supermarkets nationwide. In this interview, Loren shares how she bootstrapped her way from baking cookies in a tiny New York apartment to landing Whole Foods without packaging, rebranding her entire product line to be allergen-free, and scaling a household name—all while staying profitable and purpose-driven.
50 min
14
606: (Solo) The Week Before Black Friday: What ...
It’s not too late to win Black Friday. Even if you’re behind, there’s still time to drive serious results—if you focus on the right moves. In this episode, I share my final Black Friday checklist after 10 years of running campaigns for Foundr and other brands. You’ll learn exactly what the most successful ecommerce stores are doing one week out to build anticipation, maximize conversions, and protect their margins without relying on panic discounts.
9 min
15
605: He Bought an Airline for $0.30 (and made B...
Tony Fernandes turned a failing airline into a billion-dollar business and built AirAsia into one of the most recognized brands in Asia.
40 min
16
604: (Solo) What Labubu and Apple Can Teach You...
Think scarcity is just a marketing gimmick? Used properly, it’s one of the fastest ways to increase perceived value, build community, and grow sales—without racing to the bottom on discounts.
11 min
17
603: He Built a $1B Beauty Brand Selling $1 Mak...
Joey Shamah built e.l.f. Cosmetics into a billion-dollar beauty brand by doing the exact opposite of every competitor in the industry. In this interview, the e.l.f. co-founder breaks down how he turned a radical $1 makeup idea—laughed at by investors and retailers—into a global powerhouse that went public on the New York Stock Exchange.
50 min
18
602: (Solo) What I Learned From Alex Hormozi’s ...
Everyone saw the headlines—but the real lessons from Alex Hormozi’s $100M book launch are in the planning, positioning, and pre-launch. In this episode, I break down the fundamentals you can lift straight into your next product launch or Black Friday promo: how to think like a founder (not an influencer), engineer your unit economics, and turn months of value-led content into a movement people want to be part of—before you ever make the ask.
12 min
19
601: The Couple Who Built a 9-FIGURE Brand Whil...
Natalie Holloway turned a $5,000 side hustle into Bala — a globally recognized fitness brand worn by millions and backed by Mark Cuban and Maria Sharapova.
56 min
20
600: (Solo) How Founders Should Actually Use AI...
AI is the biggest shift since the internet—and if you’re not using it daily as a founder, you’re falling behind. In this episode, I break down exactly how I use AI to think clearer, execute faster, and lead better—without being technical.
11 min
21
599: They Rejected Her Idea, She Turned it into...
Suneera Madhani built Stax from an idea her employer rejected into a $1B fintech unicorn processing over $25B in payments.
39 min
22
598: (Solo) Your Brand Is Not a Logo: Why Most ...
Think your “brand” is a logo, font, and color palette? That’s polish—not branding. Real ecommerce branding makes customers feel understood, builds instant trust, and increases conversions across your product pages, emails, and social.
8 min
23
597: How She Built a $33M App with ZERO Ads | T...
Tezza Barton bootstrapped the Tezza app from a two-person passion project into a 25M+ download, $33M/year creative-tech brand—with just 15 employees and zero paid ads for the first four years.
50 min
24
596: (Solo) The Most Unexpected Lessons I Learn...
You might expect my favorite interviews to be with Richard Branson, Tony Robbins, or Barbara Corcoran. But one that surprised me — and stuck with me more than most — was with Scooter Braun.
9 min
25
TRAILER: Welcome to The Foundr Podcast with Nat...
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan is where ambitious founders get real playbooks, not theory. Every week, Nathan sits down with the world’s top entrepreneurs and operators to unpack how they built, scaled, and led category-defining companies.
1 min