CEO of @foundr. On a mission to build the largest entrepreneurial ecosystem online that supports, educates & fuels founders
Melbourne, Australia
Joined February 2012
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I’m Nathan Chan, the founder of Foundr.
I’ve interviewed hundreds of founders, including:
- Alex Hormozi
- Tony Robbins
- Gary Vaynerchuk
- Daymond John
- Tim Ferriss
- Richard Branson
- Arianna Huffington
- Emma Grede
- Sophia Amoruso
- Codie Sanchez
And so many more.
Here’s a little about me and what I've done so far:
> Grew up in the Melbourne suburbs. Mum was a nurse, Dad was a teacher, and we had no connections
> Worked an IT support job I hated, literally crawling under people's desks and changing their passwords
> Started a little digital magazine in 2013 as a side hustle... some nights I worked on it until 5am, then went straight to my day job
> Sued by one of the biggest business magazines in the states, which turned out to be a massive blessing in disguise
> Around the same time, I kept calling Richard Branson's head of PR until she picked up. He agreed to the cover, and I gave the Richard Branson edition away for free
> Went full time in 2014 and never raised money (I wanted to control my own destiny)
> Grew our Instagram from 0 to 10,000 followers in two weeks. I wrote a blog post on it that went semi-viral, people started asking for a course, and that course became our education business
> Built and exited Healthish, a DTC brand that was essentially a one-product company selling a time-marked water bottle
> Spent 10s of millions profitably on ads using my own money (but also lost millions too)
> Interviewed hundreds founders, including countless billionaires and some of the greatest entrepreneurs across multiple generations
> Have built one of the largest online education platforms in the ecom space and see everything that works and also everything that fails
> Been building Foundr for the past 13 years, and I'm still building it
And here’s what I'll be posting about:
> What these founder interviews taught me about scaling profitable businesses
> Why no agency is ever going to care about your brand as much as you do, and what that means for your ads
> Why one problem, one feature beats a full catalog (what Healthish taught me)
> Even more lessons from the founders on my podcast, including the stuff that never makes the highlight reel
My goal going into 2027 is to share all the lessons I've learned on my journey, in the hope of helping you guys on yours.
If that's the kind of thing you want to follow, stick around.
One of our members doubled his business from $100K to $200K/month in 4 months.
Meet Trieu. He's a dentist by trade.
After he opened his own dental office, his neck and back started aching from long working hours. He'd watched mentors retire early because of neck surgery and back pain, and he could see the same thing coming for him.
The only ergonomic option was a wall-mounted microscope that cost about $20,000.
So he tinkered with prisms until he could sit up straight, and he paid for the prototyping himself.
That became Hero Loupes, magnifying glasses that let dentists and hygienists keep their necks straight instead of bending down.
He'd built an incredible product.
But after launch, he was stuck at $5K to $6K a month for a long time.
Raising his ad budget scared him, because it felt like he was handing all that money to Facebook.
He didn't know his numbers, so he didn't have the confidence to increase spend.
All he wanted was to cut back his days at the clinic and spend more time with his two little ones.
- We helped him restructure his account.
- We built up his confidence in his numbers.
- We kept watching those numbers alongside him.
He kept increasing spend.
- That took his business to $200K/month while he was still working full time as a dentist.
See, a great product gives you something worth scaling, but knowing your numbers gives you the confidence to do it.
I sat down with the college dropout behind two billion-dollar brands.
Her name is Emma Grede. She launched Good American with Khloé Kardashian, and she's a founding partner of Skims.
She shared 8 lessons for founders who want their customers to keep coming back:
TL;DR
1. Earn the second order - make a product better than anything else for your customer
2. Test before you launch - put a prototype in real customers' hands first
3. Find the underserved customer - build for the people few brands cater to
4. Build a listening system - hear from customers regularly through social, surveys and focus groups
5. Act on bad feedback - let what you don't like hearing change your decisions
6. Treat "it can't be done" as a problem - keep going round and round until you figure it out
7. Hire people who know more than you - pay them more than you pay yourself
8. Make a decision and move on - go with your gut, talk it out, and check with other CEOs
P.S. If you liked this:
Follow for more founder lessons like these, and watch the full conversation with Emma here: youtu.be/WL_WBaCWTj0
Things you should've done in 2020 in ecom:
- Build products with at least 80 to 90% gross margins
- Launch a subscription
- Send your ad traffic to landing pages
- Treat your creative as your targeting
Things you should be doing in 2027 in ecom:
- Build a creator army
- Run an affiliate program
- Launch fresh ad angles every month
- Raise your AOV to $70 to $150 or more
- Add a subscription upsell to your hero product
- Follow the playbook of an operator who has scaled
- Sell while your category is booming
In 2032, you will either say “I'm glad I started” or “I wish I had.” The choice is yours today.
Sat down with a dentist running a 7-figure loupe brand stuck at $100K/mo.
His ads work, he was just scared to spend more on them.
Here are 6 lessons from his journey:
6. Decide what success looks like.
Pick the monthly number and the life you want from it. When you hit that number, the target will move to the next one. A clear picture of success helps you appreciate what you've gained so far.