Shows / The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
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…
Episodes
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan722: How a $700 Pair of Glasses Led to a $2.89B Company | Warby Parker
Warby Parker started with a simple, infuriating question: why did a pair of glasses cost more than an iPhone? Neil Blumenthal and Dave Gilboa met in the first…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan721: Raquel Does $300K/Month - and Says it’s the Least Work She’s Ever Done
Raquel Vasseur never set out to build an empire - she set out to be free. After two retail stores in her early 20s that took out loans and tied her down, she…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan720: (Solo) How do You Know When It's Time to Fire Someone
At some point, every founder has to do the thing nobody trains you for and nobody really talks about: letting someone go. It is not easy, it is not fun, and I…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan719: The NEW Creator Playbook That Took Me from $80K Debt to $250K/Day | Trybe
Lukas Pakter filmed his bank account and posted it to the internet: $80,000 in debt, $100 to his name, an activewear brand quietly dying. A year and a half…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan718: (Solo) Why Your Profitable Ad Account Isn't Scaling (It's Not Your Ads)
I do a lot of enrollment calls for Foundr Operators, and I keep seeing the same pattern. A founder gets on a call doing a 5 or 6x return, literally printing…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan717: We Started Dad Gang with $750 and One Hat - and did $40M in 4 Years
Three best friends put in $250 each - $750 total - printed 100 hats in a garage, and sold out in 36 hours. No following. No ads. No business plan. Four and a…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan716: Ryan Spent 13 Years Without a Single Breakout Moment - Then Doubled His Whiskey Brand In 6 Months
Ryan Thompson ran a restaurant for 25 years, sold a couple of quick-serve spots, built a financial services company, and even ran a motel before he noticed the…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan715: (Solo) How to Stop Overcomplicating Hiring (My Biggest Mistakes)
Hiring is tough, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. But I was reflecting on this past year, and I have had a much better strike rate lately because of…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan714: From $0 to $5 BILLION - The Blueprint for Building Billion-Dollar Startups | Marc Lore
Marc Lore walked into his boss's office with a newborn at home, a huge salary, and no business idea - and quit anyway to become an entrepreneur. That instinct…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan713: (Solo) The Black Friday Profit Trap and How to Avoid It This Year
We are all gearing up for Black Friday Cyber Monday, and if you have not started planning yet, you need to. Here is a story that will stop you in your tracks…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan712: The Near-Death Experience That Built a $400M Year Business
Matt Pohlson was clinically dead for four and a half minutes. His heart had stopped, the doctor had already called it, and 40 ICU staff had gathered at the…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan711: Natasha Quit Her 9-To-5 In June - Her Drink Bottle Brand Now Does $15K/Month
Natasha was on maternity leave with a newborn who cried until he was five months old, permanently thirsty, and completely fed up that the one drink bottle she…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan710: (Solo) I Asked 10 Billionaires The Same Question - Here's What They Said
Over 12 years of interviewing more than 100 billionaires, I started asking every one of them the same question: if you lost everything tomorrow, the money, the…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan709: AI Agents: The Only Skill That Matters in 2026 (Masterclass)
Ari Meisel spent 15 years teaching founders to do less. He's worked with over 300 assistants and once ran his business on a single hour of work a day after…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan708: (Solo) What Nobody Tells You About Scaling Past $1M, $5M, and $10M
Every stage of business breaks you in a different way, and nobody warns you which thing is about to break. So it always feels like you are the only one who…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan707: How Two Aussies Took On Samsonite & Rimowa - and Won ($100M+)
Athan Didaskalou had bet everything on a one-year-old suitcase brand called July. Then Covid wiped out travel and nearly took the business with it. What…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan706: Jay Hated His Plumbing Job - Now He Sells Beach Pools and did $50K in a Month
Jay Haddad hated being a plumber. He lived for the weekends - free diving, waterfalls, surfing, the beach - and when he and his wife had their first daughter…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan705: (Solo) How Success Made Me Neglect the Thing That Built Everything
I am going to tell you about the dumbest thing I have done in 12 years of building Foundr. It is not a bad hire or a failed launch. It is something far more…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan704: How One Pivot Turned My FAILING Startup Into a $300M Brand
Mariam Naficy sold her first company for over $100 million in cash - two weeks before the Nasdaq crashed in 2000. Then she did something harder. She built…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan703: (Solo) If I Had to Start Over in 2026, Here's How I'd Make My First $1M
If I lost everything tomorrow, the team, the audience, the network, here's the exact tactical playbook I'd use to build back to $1 million from scratch. If I…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan702: Mark Cuban Calls Us His BEST Shark Tank Deal Ever ($200M+)
Four childhood friends pooled $30,000 in a Chicago apartment to make wet wipes for men. Everyone told them dudes would never use them. Thirteen years later…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan701: Trieu Doubled His Brand To $200K/Month In 5 Months - Whilst Still Working Full Time
Trieu became a dentist because he liked working with his hands and helping people - he got into UCSF's dental school as the very last student accepted, number…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan700: (Solo) The Ambassador Strategy - How to get Famous People to Sell Your Brand for Free
I interviewed the founder of HexClad about a year ago. Cookware, pots and pans, not the sexiest category in the world. But their ambassador is Gordon Ramsay…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan699: A Pizza Oven Saved My Life - Then It Built a $100M Company
Tom Gozney hit rock bottom with addiction at 21 and spent nearly a year in a South African rehab facility. What saved him back home wasn't a business plan - it…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan698: (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, all the…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan697: 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 she found a…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan696: 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 and…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan695: (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. And the…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan694: 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 tenth the price…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan693: (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 message…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan692: 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 loaded her first…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan691: 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 too…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan690: (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 competitor…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan689: 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 single month from…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan688: (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 team was…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan687: 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 never…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan686: 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 every…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan685: (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 and…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan684: 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 hair gel…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan683: (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 do for…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan682: 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 launch Pur…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan681: 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 molecular…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan680: (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 recording…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan679: 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 chemotherapy, failed IVF…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan678: (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 off right…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan677: 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 retrofitted $100…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan676: 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 to every…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan675: (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 it's the…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan674: 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 to pitch in 30 days. She…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan673: (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 the task…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan672: 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 epiphany…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan671: 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, and a…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan670: (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 the founder…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan669: 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 raising a cent or…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan668: (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 — your…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan667: 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 revenue…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan666: 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 met. She…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan665: (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 was…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan664: 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 companies…
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan663: (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. I was…