Meet Paul Hedrick: Founder of Tecovas With Tecovas, Bootstrapper Paul Hedrick Hits His Stride The popular Western boot company heads into new territory with the web brand’s first retail store, opening soon in Austin. Paul Hedrick got the idea to start a Western boot company in, of all places, Greenwich, Connecticut. After growing up in Dallas, he went off to Harvard and, like a lot of smart young people with analytical minds, started a career in management consulting. At 26 he was working for a private-equity firm in Greenwich and traveling across the country to meet with entrepreneurs in all kinds of fields—a candy company in Chicago, a dental implant maker in Denver, a restaurant chain in Dallas. He started getting itchy to create something himself. His boss was sympathetic, so one day in early 2014, they met for a brainstorming session. Hedrick crossed his legs at one point and looked down. He was wearing a pair of $600 ostrich cowboy boots. “I always loved