Show Notes
Matt Pohlson was clinically dead for four and a half minutes. His heart had stopped, the doctor had already called it, and 40 ICU staff had gathered at the window like a silent choir when his mother refused to let them stop fighting.
He came back - and the clarity from that experience reshaped his entire company. Omaze, the platform he co-founded to raise money for charity by giving everyday people the chance to win once-in-a-lifetime experiences, has sent people to be mentored by Michelle Obama, ride a tank with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and win a Lamborghini handed over by the Pope. After Matt's near-death experience, he made the hard decision to kill the parts of the business he loved most - and grew revenue over 500% while increasing headcount just 10%.
In this interview, Matt breaks down the counterintuitive focus decision that unlocked Omaze's explosive growth, the controversial charity philosophy of chasing dollars over percentages, and what flatlining taught him about fear, decisions, and building a company that scales optimism.
What you'll learn in this interview:
The near-death experience that reset how he leads - and why he calls death his best friend and travel companion
Why he killed the celebrity-experience model he loved - cutting from 300 campaigns a year to 50 - and went all in on "Omaze Owned"
How a Daniel Craig campaign meant to raise $300K pulled $2.1 million - and the test that revealed the car mattered more than the celebrity
How revenue grew over 500% on just a 10% headcount increase - and the focus principle behind it
The controversial charity philosophy: why chasing dollars to the charity, not percentages, is what the nonprofit space actually needs
The exact economics of both models - 60% to charity on celebrity campaigns, guaranteed 15% on prize campaigns - and who carries the risk
How to actually partner with A-list talent: running the real numbers before giving away 5-10% of your company for star power
Why the biggest decisions don't get better the more people you ask - and his "when you don't know what to do, do nothing" rule
Virtues over values: why what your team does matters more than what they believe - and how he rebuilt culture at eight people
Why nothing is ever as bad as the fear of it - and how replacing fear with love changed how he operates
If you're building a mission-driven business, wrestling with whether to focus or diversify, or trying to lead through the kind of pressure that breaks most founders, this conversation will fundamentally change how you think about fear, focus, and building something that genuinely scales good in the world.
SAVE 50% ON OMNISEND FOR 3 MONTHS
Get 50% off your first 3 months of email and SMS marketing with Omnisend using the code FOUNDR50. Start here → https://your.omnisend.com/foundr
SAVE 95% ON XERO FOR 6 MONTHS Simplify your business finances with 95% off Xero for your first 6 months. Start here → https://foundr.com/xero
GET UP TO $10K IN MATCHED AD CREDITS ON APPLOVIN Scale your DTC brand beyond Meta and Google with up to $10,000 in matched ad credits, plus $1,000 free to test AppLovin. Start here → https://applovin.com/foundr
WANT TO GROW YOUR BRAND WITH META ADS? Join the Foundr Operators Waitlist → https://foundr.com/operators HOW WE CAN HELP YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS FASTER Learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+ Start your $1 trial → https://www.foundr.com/startdollartrial
PREFER A CUSTOM ROADMAP AND 1-ON-1 COACHING? → Starting from scratch? Apply here → https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-start-application → Already have a store? Apply here → https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-growth-application
CONNECT WITH NATHAN CHAN Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/n
More from The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
Lukas Pakter filmed his bank account and posted it to the internet: $80,000 in debt, $100 to his name, an activewear brand quietly dying. A year and a half later he’s doing over $250,000 a day, on track for $70-80 million this year, and has turned his growth playbook into Tribe - a creator-sales platform now used by over 16,000 brands. The shift that changed everything was a single realisation: making other people money makes you more money. Instead of being the one guy filming TikTok Shop videos, he turned his best customers into an army of sellers - and built the software to run it.
I do a lot of enrollment calls for Foundr Operators, and I keep seeing the same pattern. A founder gets on a call doing a 5 or 6x return, literally printing money, and they will not scale. They are terrified to spend more. And if I had understood the principle behind this ten years ago, I would have made tens of millions of dollars more. That is a big claim, so hear me out.
Three best friends put in $250 each - $750 total - printed 100 hats in a garage, and sold out in 36 hours. No following. No ads. No business plan. Four and a half years later, Dad Gang has done over $40 million in revenue selling hats built around one idea: dads deserve better than goofy, frumpy products that make fatherhood a punchline. The craziest part? Grant, Bart and Ejay still run the entire thing with zero employees, a private Facebook group of 15,000 dads, and an equity partnership with Gary Vaynerchuk - and they're deliberately building it as a lifestyle business, not a rocket ship.
Ryan Thompson ran a restaurant for 25 years, sold a couple of quick-serve spots, built a financial services company, and even ran a motel before he noticed the craft distillery movement taking off and decided someone in Vail, Colorado ought to start one - so it might as well be him. He went to Moonshine University in Kentucky, learned distilling from A to Z, wrote a business plan, and scraped together every dollar he could. Thirteen years later, 10th Mountain Whiskey & Spirit Company makes seven spirits, runs two tasting rooms, and donates to military nonprofits - named in honour of the historic 10th Mountain Division that helped start American skiing (and, as it happens, Nike).
Hiring is tough, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. But I was reflecting on this past year, and I have had a much better strike rate lately because of one basic shift. And sometimes it is the basic stuff that is easiest to forget.