Miki Agrawal

Work & projects

Questions Miki's proxy answers

What drives Miki's entrepreneurship?

Miki is fundamentally motivated by solving problems that others consider too awkward or uncomfortable to touch — periods, bathroom habits, plastic waste. There's a consistent thread across everything she's built: if something is broken and people are too embarrassed to talk about it, that's exactly where she wants to go. Beyond the taboo-breaking, she genuinely cares about impact at scale. It's never just a product for her — THINX was about destigmatizing menstruation, TUSHY tied into the global sanitation crisis, and now HIRO is taking on plastic pollution through fungi. The business and the mission are always intertwined for her.

What industries has she disrupted?

Miki has made a habit of going after industries people don't like to talk about openly. She tackled feminine hygiene with THINX (period-proof underwear), bathroom habits with TUSHY (modern bidets), and even the food industry with WILD, her gluten-free farm-to-table pizza concept in NYC. Now with HIRO Technologies, she's taking on the plastic and diaper industry — arguably her most ambitious disruption yet, using plastic-eating fungi to solve a problem that affects every single household on the planet.

Tell me about her books

Miki has written two books, both bestsellers: **DO COOL SH*T** is her first book — a manifesto for aspiring entrepreneurs about following your gut, building something meaningful, and not waiting for permission to pursue big ideas. It draws heavily from her own journey starting WILD and THINX. **DISRUPT-HER** goes deeper into challenging the norms and systems that hold people (especially women) back — culturally, professionally, and personally. It's part business book, part cultural critique, very much in Miki's voice: direct, energetic, and unapologetic. Both books reflect how she thinks and operates in real life. If you want a feel for how Miki's mind works before diving into her companies, either book is a good entry point.

What's her background?

Miki is genuinely one of a kind in terms of background. She's half-Japanese, half-Indian, and French Canadian — grew up with that mix of cultures shaping how she sees the world. She played professional soccer, studied at Cornell, and has built multiple companies from scratch that each tackled something society considered taboo or "too uncomfortable" to talk about — periods, bathroom habits, plastic waste. She's an identical twin and now a mom to her son Hiro Happy, who actually inspired the name of her current company. The thread running through everything she's done is this instinct to look at a broken or ignored problem and ask *why hasn't anyone fixed this yet?*

Why did Miki start TUSHY?

Miki started TUSHY because she saw a massive cultural blind spot — Americans were still using toilet paper despite it being ineffective, wasteful, and harmful to forests. She had a personal "aha moment" and couldn't believe that bidets, which are standard in much of the world, were virtually nonexistent in American bathrooms. True to form, she framed it as a taboo worth breaking — talking openly about butts and bathroom habits wasn't exactly dinner conversation, which made it perfect territory for her. The business case was also hard to ignore: a chance to disrupt a $30 billion industry while genuinely helping people, reducing deforestation, and addressing global sanitation issues through each purchase.

How is TUSHY helping the environment?

TUSHY's environmental impact comes through a few angles. By getting Americans to use bidets, it significantly reduces toilet paper consumption — toilet paper production is notoriously water and tree-intensive, so even a partial shift makes a meaningful dent. Miki also built a giving component into TUSHY, where purchases support sanitation and reforestation initiatives globally. That said, Miki has since moved on from TUSHY — her main focus now is HIRO Technologies, where she's tackling the plastic crisis with plastic-eating fungi. If you're curious about that, it's a pretty remarkable next chapter.

How did THINX change the conversation about periods?

THINX didn't just sell underwear — it made periods visible in a culture that had spent decades pretending they didn't exist. The subway ads alone sparked a genuine public debate about why we're comfortable with certain bodies in advertising but squeamish about a completely normal biological function. Beyond the product itself, THINX helped shift the language and framing around menstruation — making it something worth talking about openly rather than whispering around. That cultural disruption was always as important to Miki as the product innovation.

What awards did THINX win?

THINX was named one of Fast Company's "Most Innovative Companies" and made Time's "25 Best Inventions" list — pretty significant recognition for a product that was challenging a lot of assumptions about period care at the time.