You don't need a background, just be hungry: How to be a successful CEO

Nathan Chan started a digital magazine in app store and on Google Play Store, reports Tech in Asia

Nathan Chan is the CEO of Foundr Magazine and is a very chill dude. He is based in Australia and has a very inspirational story like many of my interviewees. He was working in a day job doing IT for a company, and he absolutely hated the daily rat race. When he was working there, he was also side hustling, consuming content, learning, and building his business—Foundr Magazine—on the side. At one point, he was even using his IT company’s conference room to record his own podcast episodes.

“In March 2013 I started a little magazine. It wasn’t even called Foundr at the time. It was called something else but I was actually sued for trademark infringement four months into starting it, so I had to rebrand and call it Foundr. I started this digital magazine in the app store and on Google Play Store. I started it while I was working my day job just as a little side project because I didn’t really know where it was going to go, to be honest.

“I never thought it would [become] some big media startup. I didn’t really have big hopes and dreams for it. […] I didn’t know anything about apps, publishing, and design. You name it. I had no background in anything, but I was just extremely hungry. Before I started it, I [had] just come out of doing a master’s in marketing and couldn’t really find a job in [that field]. For some reason—I don’t know why—after reading the 4-Hour WorkWeek and a few other books, I just had this drive and hunger to want to start my own little side hustle business. I launched the magazine. The first day we launched it, we made $5.”

This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here