Doing laundry could be a chore. It takes time and is tedious. Few of us love to do it.
So it’s no shock that startups have emerged to take that load off your again — actually. And traders are lining as much as fund new and older gamers alike.
Eleven-month-old NoScrubs has simply raised $2 million in a pre-seed spherical led by Initialized Capital for its on-demand laundry supply service. And in late February, Rinse raised a $23 million Collection D led by LG Electronics to proceed rising its 12-year-old enterprise, which incorporates dry cleansing companies.
Whereas they’ve completely different enterprise fashions, the 2 corporations are the newest examples of laundry startups attracting enterprise capital. And so they’re hoping to reach an area that has seen different startups wash up.
Early Instacart worker Matt O’Connor, CEO of NoScrubs, and Sudhanshu Gautam, CTO, (pictured above) based the startup practically a yr in the past with the intent of constructing a sooner, extra reasonably priced laundry service. The corporate claims it could actually return folded hundreds inside a number of hours from pickup. Clients can both pay on demand or join a subscription.
To date, NoScrubs is simply obtainable in its dwelling base of Austin, the place it’s approaching 1,000 distinctive clients, O’Connor tells TechCrunch completely. (I used the service briefly in 2024 when our dwelling renovation resulted in a lack of entry to our washer and dryer.)
Rinse, which touts itself because the “Uber of laundry,” was based by CEO Ajay Prakash, CTO Sam Cheng, and James Joun in 2013. It has raised over $70 million since inception.
San Francisco-based Rinse at present operates in a number of main U.S. cities. It pledges to show round laundry or dry cleansing inside as little as 24 hours (for an additional payment) however has a typical three- to four-day turnaround. It prides itself on hiring its staff as workers relatively than making them impartial contractors.
NoScrubs
The concept for NoScrubs was born whereas O’Connor was head of geographic enlargement at Instacart as one in all its first 20 workers. He grew to become annoyed together with his laundry service, which he felt was too costly and gradual.
NoScrubs believes the velocity at which it’s capable of flip round its companies provides it an edge. It has designated what O’Connor describes as strategic areas unfold all through Austin in order that the space traveled after the time of pickup is minimized. These areas are a mix of what he described as “vetted laundromat companions and customary laundry rooms in condo complexes.
The corporate plans to broaden inside Texas and “throughout many of the U.S.” he says by the top of 2026. Presently, NoScrubs has 13 workers.
Rinse
The concept for Rinse got here whereas Prakash and Joun, two former Dartmouth classmates, and Cheng launched into a mission to show this chore right into a tech-enabled service.
Prakash’s background was in startups and Joun’s mother and father had spent greater than 20 years working a brick-and-mortar dry cleaner in South San Francisco. They piloted the idea with associates earlier than bootstrapping the enterprise.
Since these early days, Rinse says it has cleaned greater than 100 million clothes. Whereas it operates primarily a direct-to-consumer mannequin, it’s now additionally rising the B2B facet of its enterprise, the place it serves industrial shoppers akin to multifamily operators, cafes, and spas.
Trying forward, Prakash says Rinse’s subsequent step is to amass and model brick-and-mortar laundromats and cleaners. It additionally intends to proceed to broaden geographically.
Immediately, it employs about 600 valets and about 100 non-valet staff.
Like NoScrubs, it gives a subscription service in addition to a higher-priced pay-as-you-go possibility.
Buyers
Initialized Accomplice Zoe Perret believes that NoScrubs stands out due to its mannequin of leveraging underutilized machines in laundromats and condo complexes relatively than proudly owning its personal infrastructure.
“Even this quickly after launch, preliminary traction of their first market exhibits a transparent path towards scalability whereas sustaining robust unit economics,” she mentioned. “As they proceed to show this enterprise mannequin works, they will plug and play to broaden into new geos at scale.”
Frontier Enterprise Capital joined Initialized in backing NoScrubs’ pre-seed spherical.
In the meantime, LG helps promote its funding by providing Rinse’s companies to purchasers of its washer and dryers. Contemplating that the U.S. laundry amenities and dry-cleaning companies market dimension was estimated at $15.75 billion in 2024, it’s clear that it is a large business with room for a number of gamers. Not all corporations within the area have fared properly, although. In 2016, Washio shut down its operations, which Rinse scooped up. And in 2014, Y Combinator-backed door-to-door laundry service Prim introduced it was shutting down.
