The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
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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 o...
Recent Episodes
699 episodes
698: (Solo) She Worked 7 Hours a Day & Made Zero Sales - This Was The Fix
I got on a call recently with a founder in our community who had everything right. Amazing product, clear gap in the market, strong differentiators, a...
697: I Sold My House to Fund My Idea - and Built a £26M brand
Sam Faiers had already shut down two businesses. She'd laid off her entire team in one day when the fashion brand stopped turning a profit. So when sh...
696: Jamie Left a Nike Exec Job to Bootstrap A Drinkware Brand - Now It's On Track For Seven Figures
Jamie spent over 20 years in corporate America, including a stint as a Nike executive, before a barbecue accident changed everything. Hosting friends...
695: (Solo) I Was Winning. So Why Was I Falling Apart?
A few years ago I started waking up in the middle of the night, heart pounding, cold sweats, this overwhelming feeling of dread I could not explain. A...
694: We Were Two Weeks From Shutting Down - Then We Found Our $30M Product
Chris and Jake Yap were two weeks from shutting down. A billion-dollar
retailer had copied every product they launched and sold them for one
693: (Solo) How I Built a Billion Dollar Network From Nothing (And How You Can Too)
I get this all the time. DMs, emails, some version of "hey Nathan, can I pick your brain?" And I get it, the intention is good. But here is what that...
692: I Was Selling Muesli From My Car Boot - Now I Run a $35M/Year Brand
Narelle Plapp started Food for Health twenty years ago making recipes
for patients who couldn't find allergy-friendly food on any shelf. She
691: Anastasia's $850K Brand Collapsed To $42K A Month - Then She Tripled It Herself
Anastasia Chapman came up with the idea for her brand where all good bathroom ideas start - sitting on a toilet, hiding a competitor's product she was...
690: (Solo) The Truth About Selling Your Business (From Someone Who Said No)
At some point, if you are building a DTC brand and getting traction, someone is going to reach out. An aggregator, a private equity firm, a bigger com...
689: I Sold ONE Product in ONE Color - Then Exited for Half a Billion
Rob Ward exited Quad Lock last year for half a billion dollars. He never
took a cent of outside investment to build it, was profitable every
688: (Solo) I Lost Years Of My Life To This One Mistake (And You're Probably Making It Right Now)
I have never said this directly on the show before, but shiny object syndrome did not cost me months. It cost me years. Entire years where the Foundr...
687: I Broke Every DTC Rule and Built a $1 Billion Brand From My Garage
Sandra Oh Lin walked away from running eBay's fashion business in 2011 to pack craft boxes in her garage. She raised just $11 million in total - and n...
686: Claire Built The World's #1 Dachshund Brand From Home - Now Doing $140K/Month
Claire Wolfson got her first dachshund at 20, became completely obsessed, and watched him get paralysed by the spinal condition that affects almost ev...
685: (Solo) The $500,000 Lesson I Had to Learn the Hard Way
A few years ago I lost half a million dollars in 30 days. Not in crypto, not in a speculative bet. In the business I built from my parents' basement a...
684: She Bet Her House Deposit on Hair Gel - and Built an 8-Figure Brand
Yasmina Elmerkaoui had one shot - use the house deposit to buy a home, or bet it all on a hair gel she'd spent two years formulating. She chose the ha...
683: (Solo) The Expense Audit That Could Save Your Brand Thousands This Year
This is not a growth hack. It is not going to go viral on a Twitter thread. But I genuinely believe it is one of the highest leverage things you can d...
682: From $2M in Debt to a $250M Gum Company | Pur Gum
Jay Klein lost $2 million on a gum nobody wanted. He sold the remaining
stock to a pig feed company for $13,000 - then used every cent of it to...
681: Dr. Angela Spent $350K Building The Skincare Brand Her Daughters Needed — Now It Does $40K/Month
Dr. Angela Casey spent nearly 15 years treating skin cancer before she had her business idea. She didn't come from entrepreneurship - she came from mo...
680: (Solo) The Thing Nobody Tells You About Building a Business Alone
After interviewing over 700 founders, including more than 100 billionaires, I kept noticing something that never made it onto the podcast. When the re...
679: The $20 Jar of Salt Behind Her 9-Figure Jewelry Brand
Jennifer Fisher started with $5,000 and a dog tag she sketched on a
piece of paper for her son - a son she almost never had, after
chemo...
678: (Solo) The First Hire Mistake That Trips Up Almost Every Solo Founder
Most founders make their first hire reactively. They're overwhelmed, stretched across every function, and they just want someone to take the pressure...
677: We Built a $250M Cold Plunge Brand - From a Garage | Plunge
Ryan Duey was living in an RV with his float spas closed and no backup
plan when he and Michael Garrett built their first cold plunge from a
676: Alisha Spent 16 Years In Salons - and Distilled it all Into One $7K/Month Product
Alisha dropped out of year 10 to become a hairdresser, opened her own salon at 20, and ran it for nearly a decade - applying five different products t...
675: (Solo) The Money Mistake That's Quietly Killing Your Business
I've wasted so much money over the years running Foundr that I don't even want to know the number. And if I'm honest, it came down to one thing: when...
674: From $800 to $250M Selling Women's Fashion | Demi Marchese
Demi Marchese started with $800, no investors, and no fashion
background—just a clothing rack in the back of her car and 30 sororities
t...
673: (Solo) Your Next Team Member Might Not Be Human
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 th...
672: From Broke College Student to $20M Brand in 10,000 Stores | ESW Beauty
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...
671: Tori Quit The Barber Shop, Built a Brand In Her Spare Room, and Hit $1M In Under 2 Years
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,...
670: (Solo) Why Great Products Lose to Better Offers - and How to Fix Yours
I see it every single time. Great product. Solid branding. Ads running. And yet it won't scale. Conversions are flat, the economics don't work, and th...
669: They Built a Luxury Beauty Brand in Year One — With a Team of Two | Brunel
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
668: (Solo) The One Marketing Concept Behind the Fastest Growing DTC Brands Right Now
Most founders think their product is different. But if your marketing sounds like everyone else's — better ingredients, better results, better formula...
667: He Built a $300M Men's Grooming Brand in JUST Three Years | MANSCAPED
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...
666: Jess & Victor Started A Jewellery Brand With $2,000 — Now It Brings In $40K A Month
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 me...
665: (Solo) Why Waiting Until You Feel Ready Is the Biggest Mistake You Can Make
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...
664: He Changed How the World Builds Startups. Now He's Warning You About What Comes Next | Eric Ries
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 c...
663: (Solo) More SKUs, More Problems — The Case for Going Deeper, Not Wider
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...
662: I Bet Everything On Sugar Free Candy — Now It Brings In $100 Million A Year
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
...
661: Donna’s Corporate Career Ended Overnight — So She Built A $51K Brand In 2 Months
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 ho...
660: (Solo) The New Role Defining Which E-Commerce Brands Win in 2026
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 wo...
659: How Molly Sims is Disrupting a $200 Billion Industry
Molly Sims spent nearly six years modeling in Europe, graced the cover
of Sports Illustrated, and starred in Las Vegas and The Carrie
Di...