The Sacrifices You’ll Make To Succeed

Realities of Entrepreneurship

Last week, the Maker’s Row team had the pleasure of meeting Tylea Richard, the founder of Thundress, a brand producing 100% organic cotton, non-toxic undergarments made in America. She used Maker’s Row to find her manufacturing partners. In addition to making healthful garments available for purchase, Thundress has created a community of people interested in demystifying women’s health issues openly. The company is in its early stages and is currently running a Kickstarter campaign that expires today – Tylea has far surpassed her fundraising goals.

We previously released a short video of Tylea discussing the factors that motivate her to push forward. In this week’s video, she candidly discusses the sacrifices she has made to get her business off the ground and the positive responses that have emerged as a result. Compromises she has made include staying with friends, taking on a temporary job, and scaling back her social life in order to fully commit to the project. She’s careful about budgeting and has found ways to secure additional help through bartering services. There’s the additional stress of risk and uncertainty. The hard work is stating to pay off because people are already contacting her as an authority on health advice.

A few weeks ago, we hosted an event in collaboration with General Assembly, where a panel of Made in New York entrepreneurs expressed similar sacrifices they’ve experienced in effort to “make it.” Kevin Shahroozi started taking night classes at FIT and tapping into all his contacts in the fashion industry to gain expertise; others went knocking on factory doors for weeks before finding the right one. They’ve emerged from those periods with inspiring results.

Hear from Tylea (Part 2)


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