560: The College Dropout Who Built an $11 billion Toy Empire | Nick Mowbray (Best of Foundr) [VIDEO]

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan

Nathan Chan

Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Business

4.9 • 665 Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What You’ll Learn in This Episode In this episode, Nick Mowbray, co-founder of ZURU, shares how a backyard hot air balloon project turned into a global toy and consumer goods empire with over $3 billion in projected revenue. He shares: • Why he and his brother lived off cents for 7 years in China to make ZURU work • The brutal lessons learned from getting sued as young entrepreneurs • How their first viral product generated $100M+ in revenue • The “2% better every week” mindset that helped them outpace Hasbro & Mattel • Why they never raised VC money—and still scaled to billions This is a raw, relentless look at what it actually takes to go from zero to global dominance—without outside funding. If you want to scale fast, build lean, and think bigger, you’ll want to listen to this one. Foundr Community Offers Want 1-on-1 mentorship to launch or scale your brand faster? Apply for eCommerce coaching: → Starting your ecom biz? ⁠Click here⁠ → Already selling and want to scale? ⁠Click here⁠ Want all-access to step-by-step training from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders? Start your Foundr+ $1 trial today → ⁠Click here⁠ Omnisend | Get 50% off your first 3 months of email and SMS marketing with Omnisend with the code FOUNDR50. ⁠Click here⁠ to get started. Connect With Nathan Chan Instagram → ⁠Click Here⁠ LinkedIn → ⁠Click here⁠ Connect With Nick & ZURU Nick's Instagram → ⁠Click here⁠ ZURU Website → ⁠Click here⁠ ZURU's Instagram → ⁠⁠Click here⁠⁠ ZURU's LinkedIn → ⁠⁠Click here⁠⁠ Follow Foundr for More Business Growth Strategies YouTube → ⁠Click here⁠ Website → ⁠Click here⁠ Instagram → ⁠Click here⁠ Facebook → ⁠Click here⁠ Twitter → ⁠Click here⁠ LinkedIn → ⁠Click here⁠ Podcast → ⁠Click here

Transcript

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0:00.0	We didn't really have a big idea or really any business plan.
0:03.3	We'd scraped together all the money we'd ever made, and we went to China.
0:06.5	We started and we lived off nothing for seven years.
0:09.3	We just worked 24, seven, seven days a week.
0:11.6	Every day we basically just scrapped and fought and kept getting knocked down
0:14.9	and kept getting up because we were so competitive that we really wanted to work out how to win.
0:19.7	He's one of the co-founders behind Zuru, a backyard idea turned global toy empire
0:25.0	through bold innovation, industry disruption and relentless global expansion.
0:29.2	The company was set to achieve over $3 billion in annual revenue in 2024.
0:34.5	He's built a multi-billion dollar year annual revenue company.
0:38.2	Can you talk us through how that is possible?
0:40.8	Part of our DNA is we have this mentality
0:42.7	around 2% improvement a week.
0:44.6	And improvement compounds,
0:46.4	and quickly you become really good at something.
0:48.4	It's the reason I guess in a short time
0:49.8	we can grow to the size we've had.
0:51.4	Where there are times where it was so tough, Nick, where you thought this is too hard?
0:56.1	One of the things that you have to accept about being an entrepreneur is you're always going
0:59.8	to have problems.
1:00.4	You're always going to have fires.
1:01.8	We just had like problem up to problem.
	...

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