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
674: From $800 to $250M Selling Women's Fashion...
Demi Marchese started with $800, no investors, and no fashion background—just a clothing rack in the back of her car and 30 sororities to pitch in 30 days. She made $40,000 in her first month dressing girls for Coachella out of her living room, turned $800 into $40K, and never took a dollar from investors. Ten years later, 12th Tribe does close to $50 million a year with $250 million in lifetime revenue.
45 min
2
673: (Solo) Your Next Team Member Might Not Be ...
Most founders are still thinking about AI as a faster way to do their work. But that is not what is happening anymore. AI agents do not help you do the task. They do the task for you. And if you have not started asking which roles in your business actually need a human, you are already behind.
7 min
3
672: From Broke College Student to $20M Brand i...
While every brand was raising prices during inflation, Elina Wang cut hers—and nearly tripled revenue. The co-founder of ESW Beauty turned a juice bar epiphany and a $25,000 bank loan into a $20 million business across 10,000 retail doors, fully bootstrapped and profitable from day one.
39 min
4
671: Tori Quit The Barber Shop, Built a Brand I...
Tori Gill was still cutting hair on weekends when she sold her first 20,000 sunscreens. A former hairdresser with two kids, no e-commerce background, and a product that took two years to develop, she launched Sun & Daughter on Boxing Day 2024 and hasn't really stopped since. This is the follow-up episode - and a lot has happened.
43 min
5
670: (Solo) Why Great Products Lose to Better O...
7 min
6
669: They Built a Luxury Beauty Brand in Year O...
A Victoria's Secret Angel and a Goldman Sachs investor built one of the most talked-about luxury body care launches in recent memory without raising a cent or paying a single influencer.
52 min
7
668: (Solo) The One Marketing Concept Behind th...
Most founders think their product is different. But if your marketing sounds like everyone else's — better ingredients, better results, better formula — your customer hears nothing. Because when everything sounds the same, nothing stands out.
8 min
8
667: He Built a $300M Men's Grooming Brand in J...
Paul Tran started Manscaped with $50,000, a bloody problem nobody was talking about, and a category that didn't exist. The company hit $300 million in revenue in just 36 months, eventually turned down a $1 billion SPAC deal, and has become the #3 men's grooming brand in a category dominated by companies over 100 years old—while staying profitable the entire way.
47 min
9
666: Jess & Victor Started A Jewellery Brand Wi...
Victor Chan bought a $2,000 engraving machine off Amazon to make his girlfriend Jess a necklace — a hand-engraved star map of the exact moment they met. She thought it was the most thoughtful gift she'd ever received, and two weeks later they had a store. Two years on, By Lumine is doing $30–40K a month and Jess has quit her accounting job to go all in.
34 min
10
665: (Solo) Why Waiting Until You Feel Ready Is...
I still remember the day I launched Foundr. After all that work, all that effort — I made $5.50. And when I told someone close to me, they laughed. I was embarrassed, jaded, and genuinely questioning whether any of it was worth it. Here's the truth: that feeling never fully goes away. It just shows up in different forms. And if you're avoiding it, you're avoiding the exact things that grow your business.
6 min
11
664: He Changed How the World Builds Startups. ...
Eric Ries wrote the book that changed how the entire world builds startups. Now he's back with a more urgent argument: the way we're taught to build companies is quietly turning them against everything that made them worth building in the first place.
55 min
12
663: (Solo) More SKUs, More Problems — The Case...
When I started getting serious about e-commerce, I genuinely believed the more products you had, the more successful you'd be. More SKUs meant scaling. I was completely wrong.
12 min
13
662: I Bet Everything On Sugar Free Candy — Now...
Daniel Kitay put everything he had—his savings, his mortgage, and two months before his first child was born—on a container ship full of sugar-free gummy lollies from Switzerland. When a $250,000 shipping bill landed before he'd sold a single product, he had no option but to make it work. Five years later, Funday Natural Sweets does over $100 million in retail sales across 8,000 stores in Australia alone, selling a product every single second.
53 min
14
661: Donna’s Corporate Career Ended Overnight —...
A 20-year career in high-level finance ended in a single day when Donna Gilbertson was made redundant with one day's notice. No plan B, two kids at home, and a household now running on one income — she could have played it safe and taken the next accounting role that came along. She went to the interviews. Every single time, she didn't want to be there. So instead, she pulled $7,000 from her home loan offset account and bet it on a hair towel. Two months after launching Junie, she'd done $51,000 in sales.
47 min
15
660: (Solo) The New Role Defining Which E-Comme...
Most founders think they're ahead of the curve because they're using AI. But if you're only using it for basic ad copy and product descriptions and wondering why it sounds like everything else on the internet — you're not using AI. You're scratching the surface of it.
6 min
16
659: How Molly Sims is Disrupting a $200 Billio...
Molly Sims spent nearly six years modeling in Europe, graced the cover of Sports Illustrated, and starred in Las Vegas and The Carrie Diaries—then quietly spent three years and over $2 million of her own money developing a skincare brand nobody asked for. When she launched YSE Beauty on April 24, 2023, she had no idea if it would work. It did.
51 min
17
658: (Solo) You're Posting Everywhere — But Do ...
Most founders can tell you their follower count, their reach, their impressions. But ask them which channel is actually driving revenue — not likes, not email subscribers, actual revenue — and most of them can't answer that confidently.
6 min
18
657: They Bet Everything on a Sport Nobody Took...
These two brothers sold a profitable airsoft business to bet everything on a sport most people had never heard of. In 2014, Rob and Mike Barnes founded Selkirk Sport in the pickleball space—back when the sport was small, the products were cheap, and the category felt entirely mom and pop. Eleven years later, the company is valued at over $200 million with revenue up 1,900% since 2019, and pickleball is closing in on tennis as America's most-played racket sport.
50 min
19
656: How Chloe Built a $50K/Month Personalised ...
Chloe Widera spent 15 years as a freelance makeup artist, ran a hair and makeup agency, worked inside one of the world’s fastest-growing beauty brands, and still felt like something was missing — until she built a gifting brand from her living room that hit $54,000 USD in a single month.
39 min
20
655: (Solo) The Fuel Crisis Is Already Hitting ...
Most e-commerce founders see the fuel crisis in the news and think it's someone else's problem. But if you're shipping products right now, it's already showing up in your bills — and if you're still running last year's shipping model, you're bleeding margin without realising it.
12 min
21
654: The Hoodie That SAVED Their Business ($5M ...
Tori Robinson and Leah O'Malley launched Boys Lie as a cosmetics brand with 16+ SKUs and generated $250,000 in revenue in year one—against $250,000 in debt. But they discovered customers only wanted the two branded hoodies, not the makeup. Sitting on mountains of unsold inventory and ready to quit, they sent a blind gift to Gigi Hadid. Two months later, Gigi stepped out in their "Boys Lie Goodbye" sweatsuit in a paparazzi moment during her breakup with Tyler Cameron. Demand exploded overnight. They pivoted entirely to apparel and never looked back.
53 min
22
653: (Solo) Why Community Is the Most Undervalu...
Most e-commerce founders treat influencer marketing and community like two separate strategies — two separate budgets, two separate teams. But that split is exactly why so many brands hit a ceiling they can't explain.
7 min
23
652: IM8 Founder: What It REALLY Takes to Build...
Danny Yeung went from selling baseball cards at age 12 to scaling Ubuy-Ibuy to nearly a million a month in revenue in just six months before Groupon acquired it in 2010. Then during Covid, he launched a PCR testing operation that processed 28 million tests and generated over $800 million in revenue across three years. He listed the company on the Nasdaq at a billion-dollar valuation—then watched it crash to $40 million within 18 months. Instead of giving up, he bet the entire company's future on launching IM8, a consumer supplement brand co-founded with David Beckham that scaled from zero to nearly $10 million a month in just over a year.
59 min
24
651: From 7 Years In Recruitment To $60K In 6 M...
Michael Forshaw read a book, taped his mouth shut every night for a year, and then built a business out of it — launching Breath Sleep Tape from idea to live store in just ten weeks.
28 min
25
650: The Lie About Social Media Growth (And Wha...
Most founders are still treating social media as a vanity channel — a place for likes, views, and followers. And here's the tough truth: if your social media isn't converting into customers, subscribers, or owned audience, you're building on rented land. And that's incredibly risky.
9 min