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PODCAST

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan

Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome toThe 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 conversationswith, by, and forfounders.Whether you"re starting, building, or dreaming about your business,The Foundr Podcastis where you can access experienced founders who"ve been in your shoes to learn their proven

business entrepreneurship

All Episodes

9:14

693: (Solo) How I Built a Billion Dollar Network From...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/08/10

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 actually says to the person receiving it: I want your most valuable asset, your time, and I am going to give you nothing in return.Here is the thing: I grew up in the suburbs with zero entrepreneurial connections. No successful friends, no business-owning parents, no network to speak of. Every single room I have ever been in, I built my way

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48:39

692: I Was Selling Muesli From My Car Boot - Now I...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/08/06

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 Woolworths order by hand - 14 pallets that showed up via fax and had to be paid on delivery, funded by $13,000 from her parents. One SKU eventually did over $2 million in a single retailer. Then she did something most brand founders never attempt: she borrowed $8 million, bought a paddock, and built her own factory. Nine years later,

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51:30

691: Anastasia's $850K Brand Collapsed To $42K A...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/08/05

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 embarrassed to be seen with. She developed the formula in an Airbnb in Cape Town, mixing batch after batch and testing them by dropping samples into wine glasses of water. She hand-poured her first 50,000 units in her mum's garage. Then, after her biggest-ever year, a trademark dispute forced her to legally change the brand name overnight - and

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11:44

690: (Solo) The Truth About Selling Your Business...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/08/03

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. And most founders have no idea what to do when that happens because nobody ever walks you through it.Here is the thing: that cold email landing in your inbox is not random. There are analysts sitting in offices right now scraping the internet for fast growing Shopify stores, looking for founders who might be ready to tap out. And they are

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54:13

689: I Sold ONE Product in ONE Color - Then Exited...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/07/30

Rob Ward exited Quad Lock last year for half a billion dollars. He nevertook a cent of outside investment to build it, was profitable every single month from day one, and ran the business with a skeleton team for years while competitors burned cash chasing scale. His first product got ripped off. His second became the thing everybody with a phone mount on their bike, car, motorcycle, or desk knows by name. This is his third appearance on the Foundr Podcast across a decade, and the first

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11:33

688: (Solo) I Lost Years Of My Life To This One...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/07/27

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 spread across five or six initiatives instead of going deep on one or two. And the worst part is it never felt like a mistake. It felt like being smart because I kept seeing opportunities everywhere.Here is the problem: every new thing you chase takes focus away from the thing that is already working. And the most dangerous shiny objects are

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52:09

687: I Broke Every DTC Rule and Built a $1 Billion...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/07/23

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 needed another dollar. KiwiCo has now shipped over 50 million crates, crossed $1 billion in lifetime revenue, runs profitably since 2016, and operates with a team of under 150. The standard DTC playbook says outsource fulfillment, buy every customer with paid ads, and burn cash until you exit. Sandra broke all three rules and built one of the

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28:54

686: Claire Built The World's #1 Dachshund Brand From...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/07/22

Claire Wolfson got her first dachshund at 20, became completely obsessed, and watched him get paralysed by the spinal condition that affects almost every sausage dog. The original plan was to design a supportive harness. That didn't work out. So her husband Chris drew a simple wiener dog silhouette, they slapped it on some beanies, and Bean Goods was born. That was 2011. Thirteen years, one capsule tee collection, two designers, and zero business education later - they're doing $140,000 to $150,000

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11:55

685: (Solo) The $500,000 Lesson I Had to Learn the...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/07/20

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 launched on $3,000 from a credit card. And the part that still gets me is that the loss itself was not the dangerous part. The dangerous part was everything that led up to it. Here is the thing nobody warns you about: your most vulnerable moment as a founder is not when things are falling apart. It is when everything is working, people are telling

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51:15

684: She Bet Her House Deposit on Hair Gel - and...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/07/16

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. On launch night she packed orders until 5am, drove them to the post office herself, and woke up to find all 20,000 units - what she thought was a year's worth of stock - completely gone in 24 hours. Macao is now on track for eight figures in its third year, built on 90,000 Instagram followers, zero outside funding at launch, and a pre-launch

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12:21

683: (Solo) The Expense Audit That Could Save Your...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/07/13

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 your brand right now, and most founders never do it properly because it is not exciting. Here is what a mentor told me years ago that I keep coming back to: a dollar saved is a dollar earned. And depending on your margins, that dollar saved is probably worth $1.30 or $1.40 on the bottom line. In this episode, I walk you through a full line by

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58:57

682: From $2M in Debt to a $250M Gum Company | Pur Gum

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/07/09

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. Sixteen years later, Pur is the fastest-growing gum in North America, the #1 selling gum on Amazon, sells in over 50 countries, and does over $250 million in retail sales annually. All bootstrapped. All founder-owned. And built in a $20 billion industry controlled by fewer than ten giants who still haven't managed to take him out. In this

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33:35

681: Dr. Angela Spent $350K Building The Skincare...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/07/08

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 biology, medical school, residency, and a clinical practice. When the idea hit her, it was so obvious she couldn't believe nobody had done it properly. She searched every major retailer - Ulta, Sephora, Target, Walmart, Macy's - and found nothing worth recommending to her own three daughters. A Macy's assistant tried to sell her 12-year-old an

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12:13

680: (Solo) The Thing Nobody Tells You About Building...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/07/06

After interviewing over 700 founders, including more than 100 billionaires, I kept noticing something that never made it onto the podcast. When the recording stopped and I asked privately how they were really doing, so many described the same thing. The weight of carrying something you cannot put down and cannot hand to anyone else. Here is the truth I wish someone had told me earlier: entrepreneurs are five and a half times more likely to experience loneliness than the general population. And the

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47:03

679: The $20 Jar of Salt Behind Her 9-Figure Jewelry...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/07/02

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, and years of surrogacy attempts. She knocked on doors on 47th Street, got Uma Thurman to wear her piece on a Glamour cover, and bootstrapped the brand for 20 years without taking a single dollar from investors. Now Jennifer Fisher Jewelry is on track for nine figures, growing 50% year over year, and targeting 200-300% growth by 2028 -

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9:45

678: (Solo) The First Hire Mistake That Trips Up...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/06/29

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 now. So they bring in a generalist, hand them a list of everything they hate doing, and a few months later they're more frustrated than before. Here's the problem: hiring to relieve pressure is not the same as hiring strategically. And when you get it wrong early, it doesn't just cost you money. It costs you trust in the whole process of

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60:57

677: We Built a $250M Cold Plunge Brand - From a...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/06/25

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 bathtub in a garage. They turned their Shopify store on with zero marketing—and got a sale. What followed was one of the most unlikely scaling stories in DTC history: $30 million to $80 million in a single year, $250 million in cumulative revenue, four sharks bidding on Shark Tank, and a category they essentially created from scratch—all

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34:13

676: Alisha Spent 16 Years In Salons - and Distilled...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/06/24

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 client's hair, every single day. By the time she sold the salon, she already knew exactly what was wrong with the industry. What she didn't know was how to start an e-commerce brand. James Jade, her all-in-one leave-in conditioner that replaces up to five separate products, took two years and close to $21,000 to get off the ground. She doesn't

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8:25

675: (Solo) The Money Mistake That's Quietly Killing...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/06/22

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 business's money, it doesn't always feel like yours. So you spend it like it isn't. Here's the problem: when your personal and business finances are tangled up together, revenue starts to feel like income, a good month makes you feel like you can relax, and before long the business account becomes a piggy bank. You can't read your own

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46:59

674: From $800 to $250M Selling Women's Fashion |...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/06/18

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—fully founder-owned, profitable, and competing head-to-head with VC-backed brands like

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