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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

8:49

673: (Solo) Your Next Team Member Might Not Be Human

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/06/15

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.Here is the thing: this is not a big tech problem or a future problem. Small and medium sized businesses are rebuilding their teams around this right now, and the ones doing it well are not replacing people

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40:07

672: From Broke College Student to $20M Brand in...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/06/11

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. She did it by making the contrarian bet on retail-first when every founder around her was chasing DTC—then survived Covid wiping out every purchase order overnight while going through a co-founder breakup at the same

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44:18

671: Tori Quit The Barber Shop, Built a Brand In Her...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/06/10

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.In this episode, Tori gets real about what scaling from $100K to a million-dollar brand actually looks like from the inside: the stockouts, the 54-hour Facebook ad account

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8:13

670: (Solo) Why Great Products Lose to Better Offers...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/06/08

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 is convinced it's the creative or the funnel or the targeting.It's never the ads. It's the offer. Here's the problem: most founders spend 90% of their time perfecting the product and almost no time on the complete package around it. The framing, the bundle, the guarantee, the AOV. And without that, no amount of ad spend is going to save

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53:19

669: They Built a Luxury Beauty Brand in Year One —...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/06/04

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. Jasmine Tookes spent two decades on the world's biggest runways turning down incubator deal after incubator deal, waiting to build something real. When she finally met Sabrina Carstensen—who spent years evaluating consumer brands at Goldman—they launched Brunel bootstrapped, profitable, and with a two-person

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9:59

668: (Solo) The One Marketing Concept Behind the...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/06/01

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.Here's the problem: customers don't just buy outcomes. They buy belief that your way of getting there is different. And without a unique mechanism, you're leaving that belief on the table — and handing the sale to whoever communicates their difference more

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48:05

667: He Built a $300M Men's Grooming Brand in JUST...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/05/28

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. In this interview, the founder and CEO of Manscaped breaks down the exact DTC playbook that got him from 10,000 units sold out in two

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35:07

666: Jess & Victor Started A Jewellery Brand With...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/05/27

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. A software engineer and a Big Four accountant — both with zero e-commerce or marketing experience — they started with $100 worth of blank pendants,

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7:47

665: (Solo) Why Waiting Until You Feel Ready Is the...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/05/25

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. In this episode, I share why embarrassment isn't a sign you're doing something wrong —

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56:51

664: He Changed How the World Builds Startups. Now...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/05/21

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. The creator of The Lean Startup has spent years watching mission-driven founders get fired from their own companies, watching the spark that started everything get extinguished by the very success they worked so hard to create—and he's finally written

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13:23

663: (Solo) More SKUs, More Problems — The Case for...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/05/18

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.Here's the problem: most founders launch a hero product, get early traction, and then the anxiety kicks in. What if it runs out of steam? What if a competitor copies me? So they launch a second product, then a third — and suddenly they're mediocre at five things instead of exceptional at one. In this episode, I share how I

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54:14

662: I Bet Everything On Sugar Free Candy — Now It...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/05/14

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. In this interview, the founder of Funday breaks

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48:14

661: Donna’s Corporate Career Ended Overnight — So...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/05/13

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

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7:22

660: (Solo) The New Role Defining Which E-Commerce...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/05/11

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.Here's the problem: the advantage was never just having access to the tools. It's knowing how to direct them at scale. And right now, the brands pulling ahead aren't adding more headcount — they're finding one person who can build

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52:51

659: How Molly Sims is Disrupting a $200 Billion...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/05/07

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. The brand hit close to $30 million in revenue, is growing nearly 100% year-on-year, landed an exclusive partnership with Sephora, and closed a $15

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7:15

658: (Solo) You're Posting Everywhere — But Do You...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/05/04

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. Here's the problem: we've been told to be everywhere. More platforms, more visibility. But being everywhere without knowing what's working means you're spending more time creating than building — and quietly holding your business back. In this episode, I break

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51:09

657: They Bet Everything on a Sport Nobody Took...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/04/30

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. In this interview, the

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40:25

656: How Chloe Built a $50K/Month Personalised...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/04/29

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. Based in Dubai with two kids, an autoimmune diagnosis, and zero e-commerce experience, Chloe launched Inwords Gifting — meaningful, personalised gifts designed for highly sensitive people — without a business

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13:05

655: (Solo) The Fuel Crisis Is Already Hitting Your...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/04/27

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. Here's the problem: this isn't one cost squeeze. It's three hitting at the same time — carrier rate hikes, fuel surcharges, and geopolitical disruption — and the effective rate increase for most e-com brands right now is

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56:12

654: The Hoodie That SAVED Their Business ($5M in 2...

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan ·

2026/04/23

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

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