This is a YouTube conversation between Vishen Lakhiani and entrepreneur Miki Agrawal about finding disruptive business ideas. The opening introduces Miki and highlights her companies focused on consumer products across pizza, periods, pee, and poop, noting her recognition as a social entrepreneur and Forbes 'Top 20 millennials on a mission.'
Questions this video answers
Pizza, periods, pee, and poop.
Named social entrepreneur of the year at the World Technology and listed as Forbes 'Top 20 millennials on a mission.'
Now from what I know, your Companies cover the three Ps, right? Three, pizza, poop and piss.
No, it's pizza periods, pee and poop.
So it's the four P's, pizza, periods and poop. Okay, so now we got your attention.
Please welcome Miki Agrawal. She was named social entrepreneur of the year at the World Technology as well as Forbes Top 20 millennials on a mission.
Her out of the box thinking disrupted the 15 billion dollar industry and took her company from zero to 100 million dollars in just two.
And my whole concept has been around just looking at things with fresh pair of eyes and just asking myself, is this the best way to do it? And my first business out of college when I was 25 years old was the first gluten free pizza concept in New York City. That was farm to table, organic, local, seasonal, all these terms that used to be considered gross. Ugh, probably tastes like cardboard. And you know, cut to 15 years later, it's a staple in pretty much it's one in five Americans eat gluten free. And then the business that really, really took off is in the second P in the period space and create a pair of underwear that's leak proof and absorbent and antimicrobial and moisture wicking called Thinx. And the thing that I really loved the most was disrupting the notion that a woman's period is something to be ashamed about. And it's actually something to be proud of. In fact, every human being is here because of it. So you're welcome all men. Current pee that I'm working on is the poop pee. It's really disrupting the American toilet category. And the analogy that I love to give is imagine if you jumped in your shower, didn't turn the water on and just used dry toilet paper to wipe down your dirtiest bits. People would probably call you a little crazy, right? And so what I've invented and created is a simple, simple, beautiful, aesthetically pleasing modern bidet that simply attaches to your existing toilet. It literally takes a gross tree killing awful experience into this, like dainty, you can sip champagne while you do it. So over the last 15 years, you know, as an entrepreneur, I just got so much pushback from investors saying no one's going to invest in your companies. Ew, periods. Should I be even hearing this? Haha, you know, or poop or all these things. No one's going to buy your products. And I raised $0 for the first year for Thinx. I raised $0 for Tushy in the beginning and I had to do Kickstarter campaigns and I had to really fight for every customer and it turns out that people are interested in trying new products. I mean you know Thinx rose from nothing to 100 plus million dollars in two and a half short years. You know tushy we're on track to to being a $50 million business in the next year and so people are interested in challenging the status quo and trying new things. I think people just need to be given the permission to do so in every area of our lives. Whether it's talking about money out loud is considered tacky. Why? Who says stay in a single career path otherwise you're not considered someone who's serious. You have to get serious as you grow up. You know that's another big one instead of you know. No actually the disruption is you can still live in a childlike state of curiosity, playfulness and awe and still be a responsible adult at the same time. Yeah you can.
