In this episode of Tame the Mobile Beast, host Tom Butta sits down with Ajay Prakash, Co-Founder and CEO of Rinse, the #1 delivery app for laundry and dry cleaning services. Founded in 2013, Rinse has been taming the laundry beast through innovative technology working hand in hand with operational excellence.
In this episode of Tame the Mobile Beast, host Tom Butta sits down with Ajay Prakash, Co-Founder and CEO of Rinse, the #1 delivery app for laundry and dry cleaning services. Founded in 2013, Rinse has been taming the laundry beast through innovative technology working hand in hand with operational excellence.
Ajay shares why he set out to plant his flag in this space with his friend and Co-Founder James Joun, including how Rinse solves every pain point in the laundering process and how the type of culture they have created has led to their success.
A simple concept, Rinse creates a seamless pickup and delivery service catering to busy professionals. You’ll hear Ajay credit some of the company’s success to its sophisticated technology infrastructure, which helps manage the “death by 1,000 cuts” of the traditional laundry experience. Additionally, the Rinse team has consistently removed friction from their customer experience through the combination of an advanced SMS system, a clean web experience and a powerfully simple mobile app.
On the culture side of things, Ajay points out a few of the pillars the team strives to embody. His sophisticated understanding of the founder of experience offers great advice for aspiring entrepreneurs, including their decision to scale slowly to ensure they could healthily sustain long-term operations and elevate customer experiences.
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Guest Quote
"As opposed to worrying about the number of customers that come through the door, worry about when they come through the door, how do you make sure they have an amazing experience?" – Ajay Prakash
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Time Stamps
00:28 Meet Ajay Prakash
01:15 Rinse's Origin Story
04:21 Creating a Seamless Customer Experience
07:01 The Role of Technology in Rinse's Success
10:45 Building a Strong Company Culture
13:00 Strategic Growth and Operational Excellence
17:11 Scaling the Business Nationwide
20:02 Scaling and Supporting Cleaners with Rinse
22:40 Investing in the Face of the Brand
24:57 Advanced Technology
28:06 Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
31:44 Rapid Fire Questions
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Links
[00:00:00] Ajay Prakash: The customer facing stuff, it's just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, for us, the way to manage the operational complexity has been around building incredible and robust technology for the cleaning partners, for the internal team, for the valets. And you know, at this point, I can say with confidence, we're the most digitally advanced company in this industry.
[00:00:16] Ajay Prakash: And that's really important because historically, the technology's pretty limited. And there a lot of it's kind of pen and paper and chicken scratch. And so we've been focused on each of the end users. We have multiple users that we have to take care of.
[00:00:28] Voiceover: Welcome to Tame the Mobile Beast, everything you need to capture customer value.
[00:00:34] Voiceover: Here's your host, Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Airship, Tom Butta.
[00:00:44] Tom Butta: Welcome to Tame the Mobile Beast. I'm your host, Tom Butta, and today I am joined by Ajay Prakash, who is the co-founder and CEO of Rinse. Rinse is the number one delivery app for laundry and dry cleaning services. Rinse has cleaned close to get [00:01:00] this 100 million garments as they continue to scale the business.
[00:01:04] Tom Butta:Ajay, how are you today? I'm great, Tom. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. Uh, really excited. Really loved our conversation before we actually did the recording, so looking forward to this. Before we talk more about you and rents, I wanna kick off the conversation with what we're calling our Beast of the Week Laundry.
[00:01:22] Tom Butta: It's kind of similar to brands like Uber or even Lyft that have innovated the ride sharing space, taking the old ways of actually getting your clothes laundered. To a new way. Can you talk about this particular beast of doing laundry in this new way and, and, and particularly right now, why you set out to tame it?
[00:01:44] Ajay Prakash: Yeah, you're right. There's a lot of problems and services out there that had un evolved for many, many years, and laundry is certainly one of them. You know, when I started rents, uh, in 2013, it wasn't that we set out to Tame Laundry specifically. It was more I was looking at a couple [00:02:00] things that got me really excited about.
[00:02:01] Ajay Prakash: You know, any service I was gonna start or any product I was gonna launch, it was looking at old school industries and seeing where technology had not yet made an impact. And also looking at existing customer experiences and trying to see where there was still a lot of friction. And so it ties to the idea that, you know, there's a lot of areas where things haven't evolved for for decades.
[00:02:20] Ajay Prakash: And so as I was working on that and I was exploring different ideas, actually my co-founder James came to me with the idea of doing something in dry cleaning and laundry and. It was interesting 'cause he is a, he is a healthcare guy. He was working in business, but he grew up in dry cleaning and he had just come from his parents' shop.
[00:02:36] Ajay Prakash: And so he had this very unique insight about, you know, how tough it had been for dry cleaners, you know, for them to get customers in the door. And for me it hit all the trends I was looking at. You know, dry cleaning laundry was certainly an area where, uh, there's a ton of friction. If you're a busy professional, it's incredibly challenging to do.
[00:02:53] Ajay Prakash: And then, you know, you had James, I, I've known since college, actually since 1999 or freshman year. And so I trusted him implicitly as a [00:03:00] potential co-founder. And then he brought this really unique insight about, you know, growing up in dry cleaning. And so I didn't set out to tame laundry as the beast. I knew I was gonna tame some beast.
[00:03:09] Ajay Prakash: Uh, it turned out to be laundry. And for me, I, you know, I was really excited about solving a, a big problem and creating this seamless experience for our customers and. Also from James's perspective, as he brought his upbringing into the, into the conversation, really helping local cleaners, uh, grow their businesses as well.
[00:03:26] Ajay Prakash: So that's, that's where Rinse got started.
[00:03:28] Tom Butta: It's such a familiar story in the sense that, you know, the innovators of new Ways are typically people who have been, have been immersed in that particular space, and they've lived it. And they were like, how do I solve this? And then to the degree that's a scalable.
[00:03:43] Tom Butta: Problem to solve then, then there's a big idea, right?
[00:03:46] Ajay Prakash: Well, exactly. And for me it was very much like I had always been a busy professional. I worked in consulting and private equity. I've worked long hours. So any sort of service that was critical for, uh, you know, sort of normal day-to-day living was always hard to do.
[00:03:59] Ajay Prakash: [00:04:00] And, and dry cleaning and laundry was certainly very high in that list. So when James brought the idea to me, it, it resonated deeply in terms of my own
[00:04:07] Tom Butta: lived experience. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Well, that's great. Thanks for telling us why you, you guys set out to solve the Laundry Beast, if you will.
[00:04:17] Tom Butta: Can you now uncover a little bit about how you've done that? Like what is the experience that you're creating for your customers?
[00:04:24] Ajay Prakash: Yeah. Well I think, you know, first when we started talking about it, we ran a test with some of our friends and. We picked up their clothes, we cleaned them at James' parent shop.
[00:04:32] Ajay Prakash: We delivered them back. Everybody was super excited and so we knew we were striking a chord and, and we went pretty deep into neat finding, talking to as many people as we could about the last time they did laundry, the last time they did dry cleaning. And what came out of those conversations was that there wasn't one silver bullet to solve this pain point.
[00:04:50] Ajay Prakash: It was actually a lot of little points of friction along the way that made it a a, a not so great experience. And so for us, we call internally, we call that death by a thousand cuts. And the way [00:05:00] we created the customer experience was really laying out the death by a thousand cuts and systematically removing them to create this seamless experience from start to finish.
[00:05:09] Ajay Prakash: So if you think about dry cleaning as an example, historically before Rinse. You didn't know who was a good dry cleaner. You just went to the nearest once, or you were held host to proximity. You couldn't assess quality until after the clothes came back. So it's a bit of a crap shoot. And there's no trusted brand.
[00:05:24] Ajay Prakash: The dry cleaners were typically open Monday through Friday, nine to five. So if you're a busy professional, like I was, it was really hard to get to the dry cleaner. And then you gotta do it twice to pick your, pick your clothes up, uh, and then, you know, there's very limited technology, very limited transparency, very limited customer service, all of these pain points.
[00:05:39] Ajay Prakash: And so we set out to create this. Seamless experience that removed all of those Rinse picks up and delivers. We're at your door. You don't have to go to the dry cleaner. We're building a trusted brand through word of mouth, through quality, through online reputation, brand leadership, whatever it might be.
[00:05:54] Ajay Prakash: We use technology. It's very, we have a great mobile app, uh, great website, great SMS, [00:06:00] and so you can, you know, there's, there's technology, uh, at the, at the heart of the experience, we pick up and deliver between 8:00 PM and 10:00 PM It's on your schedule. It's not, it's not nine to five during the day. So there's all these little things that we did as part of the customer experience that created this seamless, frictionless experience for our users.
[00:06:17] Ajay Prakash: And, and that was a really important piece of this for us, was we wanted to make this so simple that all you have to do is put your clothes in a bag and we'll take 'em, clean them, bring 'em back, and you're done. Uh, and so there's a lot of work on the backend to make that happen, but for you as the customer, you shouldn't have to think about anything more than simply giving us your clothes.
[00:06:35] Tom Butta: I love that. My big belief is, you know, experience is the brand I. And so how people experience the offering is, um, how they feel about it. And, and you're right, there were, we didn't know it, but there were a lot of friction points, hours, uncertain quality, the drop off and pick up the inconvenience of that.
[00:06:55] Tom Butta: And it sounds like you've solved, you've solved all of that, so that's great. [00:07:00] How have you thought about the app, which, you know, people are referring to as like that, the mobile companion? How have you thought about that? In relation to, say, a website or texting or SMS, what role does the app play in in, in that experience?
[00:07:18] Ajay Prakash: The role of the app has evolved over time. I think when we started, our goal was let's, let's do this as simply as possible. And, and all we really needed from a customer was for you to tell us to come by and tell us where to show up. And so our initial interactions with the customer was very focused on SMS.
[00:07:34] Ajay Prakash: And so we actually have a. Pretty sophisticated SMS platform. We put a lot of technology around it, and we still have a lot of customers that use us for SMS, where they simply will text the letter Y to create an order and they can ask questions and they can tip via text and all of that. And then, you know, we also, we acquired Rinse.com, the domain name early on.
[00:07:53] Ajay Prakash: And so when we thought about marketing and customer acquisition, we pointed people to Rinse.com because it's a really good domain name and it's very easy to [00:08:00] remember. And so the mobile app actually kind of took a backseat for a while because we were building on. With SMS and the website. Now that said, what we found as we were doing this was everybody was still doing this on mobile, right?
[00:08:12] Ajay Prakash: So, SMS is clearly a mobile, uh, medium and on. When you look@peoplegonnaRinse.com, the vast majority were going to Rinse.com on their phone. And so we knew that the app was gonna play a very important role. And I think part of it was us making sure we had the engineering bandwidth, the design bandwidth and all of that to support and, and, and, and continue to maintain And.
[00:08:31] Ajay Prakash: Build on the app, but over the years, as we've scaled, the app has become a pretty critical piece of the customer experience. It's great for customer acquisition. We still lean heavily on Rinse.com though for customer acquisition, but what we have found is that the mobile app is really a great retention mechanism in the sense that it's, it's a way better experience for an existing Rinse customer.
[00:08:52] Ajay Prakash: If you have, if you, it's a great experience for a new customer, but for the existing RINs customer, it's one of the best app experiences out there. 'cause you literally [00:09:00] just have to open the app, press a button, and we know everything about when you want us to pick up, where you want us to pick up what services, and that's all you need to do.
[00:09:07] Ajay Prakash: And so we're definitely, we're building on the mobile app, taking advantage of some of the native features and all of the things that come with, uh, with having a great mobile app. But it's really been built with the idea of, hey, become a customer and then let's migrate you to the mobile app. We are more recently spending more time trying to get more new customers on the mobile app, certainly, but historically it's just been used for once you're a customer, it makes everything so much easier to just be on the app.
[00:09:32] Tom Butta: Are the experiences the same if you were to have an entire experience on the web, even if you're consuming the web vis-a-vis the mobile device? Are the experiences the same between the website and the app? Or are they different?
[00:09:46] Ajay Prakash: There's slight differences. So on the new customer experience, we've worked to get parity between the funnels mobile app, between the mobile app funnel and the website funnel.
[00:09:54] Ajay Prakash: So they're very similar. There's certainly, there are things that you can do on a mobile app that you can't do as well on a website. [00:10:00] Uh, certainly. And so, you know, we, we, we take advantage of that, but I think the existing customer experience is far better on the mobile app and, and it's because we actually invest more time.
[00:10:09] Ajay Prakash: On the mobile app to make the existing customer experience so seamless. The web kind of mirrors the stuff that we do on the mobile app as best it can, but what we have found is that once customers get on Rinse.com, when they get back to their second order and beyond, very few are going back to Rinse.com to their my account page to schedule it.
[00:10:27] Ajay Prakash: They're either gonna text us or use the mobile app. And, and, and increasingly we're, we're pushing more and more people to the mobile app because. Once you're on it, it's just a better, it's the best experience out of all the platforms.
[00:10:37] Tom Butta: Yeah. You're authenticated and you need to actually have it simplified and very focused.
[00:10:42] Tom Butta: That's great to hear. I know that the culture of the company is very, very important to you. But before we get into that, I'd love to talk about maybe some of the fundamental building blocks that you've put in place. You know, you talked about the fact that you, you've worked for PE companies, you've been in consulting, so [00:11:00] clearly you know, you, you think about these things strategically.
[00:11:03] Tom Butta: And building a business often requires you to have these fundamental pillars that become critical to what you want to build. Can you talk a little bit about that?
[00:11:13] Ajay Prakash: Yeah. I mean, there, there's a lot that goes into building a great company. And so I think, I mean, I could look at it from a, a, a bunch of different angles.
[00:11:20] Ajay Prakash: First, just, you know, a lot of what we're able to build is dependent on the people, and especially for us, it's a service based business. Service based businesses are won and lost through execution and execution starts, ends with the team. And so. You know, for us, we've been very, very particular about who gets a seat on the bus and how we built the team.
[00:11:37] Ajay Prakash: So one of the pillars would be our core values, uh, that we have, you know, I wrote 'em on an airplane in March, 2013, but they're, they've been the same, uh, for the last 11 plus years. And, you know, we use that as a way to not only make decisions during, in challenging times and help guide us, but also to determine who we should hire, uh, and how we operate.
[00:11:56] Ajay Prakash: And so one of the most important core values is Make Mom Proud, which is a [00:12:00] ode to James' mom, who was, uh. Very helpful early on, and, and it's, it's an important one. I, I tell every new hire, it's not, you know, when you think about everything you do and how you, how you act and how you treat other people, it shouldn't be something.
[00:12:12] Ajay Prakash: You're okay, mom found out about it, but it should be something you're proud to tell mom about. Uh, and so that's a big, a big piece of how we operate. And then another one that I'll, I'll point to that's very important is the idea of embracing change in ambiguity. Because we are a startup and you have to adapt.
[00:12:26] Ajay Prakash: With all of the challenges that come their way. And so from a culture standpoint, you know, I've been very focused on building a great culture, one of psychological safety, one of, uh, you know, innovation and, uh, and, and operational excellence. And I think it takes a lot of work and a lot of time, and I always sort of view the CEO's job.
[00:12:43] Ajay Prakash: Number one job is to have cash in the bank. Number two job is to take care of the culture and, and build it out. And so I, I'd say that Pillar has been core to how we've been able to scale and just the fact that we're still around. If I think about the, the product experience itself, as you said, the brand is the experience.
[00:12:59] Ajay Prakash: And so for us [00:13:00] that's been really, you know, from the beginning it's been trying to find a way to create an amazing customer experience and at the same time actually be able to support it and manage the operational complexity that comes with all of the cleaning, uh, we do, and the pickup and delivery and the logistics involved.
[00:13:17] Ajay Prakash: And so the way we thought about that was, was we wanted to be very methodical early on. You know, like I said, we only serve the customer. Between 8:00 PM and 10:00 PM You know, at the time we started rent, everybody said Smart investors, smart founders all told us beyond demand it'd be 24 7. That's, that's what all the other companies were doing.
[00:13:34] Ajay Prakash: And, you know, we knew number one, customers didn't need that. They weren't asking for that because you know, where Uber solving this acute pain point where you need a ride, you need it Now we're solving more of this chronic pain point where you just, just need to get it done all the time. And, and it's not something where anyone's ever said, Hey, I need you to pick up my clothes right now and bring 'em back right now.
[00:13:51] Ajay Prakash: And so we knew that, you know, we could build this in a methodical way, so we picked the eight to 10:00 PM window, which was great for the customer 'cause it's in the evening. But it also [00:14:00] allowed us to navigate all of the operational complexity that comes with, with providing this service. When we started, we only served the customer from on Sunday and Wednesday because we thought, hey, let's just do a, we'll do a bit of a route based service.
[00:14:12] Ajay Prakash: Sunday, Wednesday, Sunday, Wednesday. It gave us the other days to kind of figure things out. We didn't wanna be seven days a week and all over the place. And by the way, we only started in three zip codes in San Francisco, so we kept it very, very tight so that we, because we knew this would be operationally challenging, the barriers entry in the space are super low.
[00:14:31] Ajay Prakash: Like anybody can go do a few friends laundry, but the barriers to scale are super high. So, you know, the pillar there was be very strategic and methodical about how we, how we expand. And then don't worry as much about growing as fast as possible, you know, as opposed to worrying about the number of customers that come through the door.
[00:14:49] Ajay Prakash: Worry about when they come through the door, how do you make sure they have an amazing experience? Because whatever we are today, you know, a lot of it is built on what we were doing 11 years ago as we were [00:15:00] serving the early customers and building this great experience and having them want to come back and building the brand.
[00:15:05] Ajay Prakash: And, and so it has been very, you know, brick by brick. Over 11 years and we continue to do it. But I think, I think just, you know, the number one core value we should have mentioned is customers the North Star. And so keeping the experience in mind has been really important.
[00:15:18] Tom Butta: That's fantastic. I love that you, you sort of throttled your own potential growth by staying focused on ensuring that the experience for those customers as they come through the door was as good as it can be, as opposed to Okay, but you got more of.
[00:15:36] Tom Butta: Because that just creates churn, et cetera, et cetera. And you know, having your current customers be advocates for your future customers is probably a better endorsement for your business than, than you telling them about why they should be in your business. So I'm sure reviews have been an important part of how you've measured that success is that true
[00:15:55] Ajay Prakash: reviews are certainly important.
[00:15:56] Ajay Prakash: I mean, num the number one, you know, we reviews are great. Net promoter score, all that [00:16:00] sort of stuff's very important. But the, the number one. Thing we look at is our customers coming back, you know? Right. I think that what we, 11 years later now, we have a lot of data, a lot of cohorts, and you know, we've seen very, very strong retention, very strong long-term retention and you know, like we have customers who started in 2013 and 2014 who still use this today.
[00:16:17] Ajay Prakash: And I think, you know, for us that's really the signal that we've been doing a good job with those customers, taking care of them. You know, being methodical and the idea of throttling growth and going as fast as possible. It, it took a lot of discipline not to do that. Because we started rents at a time when Uber and Lyft were blowing up and, and any on demand service company was raising a lot of money.
[00:16:38] Ajay Prakash: And we had competitors in our space that raised money and, you know, they were getting the TechCrunch article and all the other stuff. The hype cycle was, was very, very active at the time. And, you know, we had to stay really disciplined and, you know, kind of heads down, focus on what we knew to be true.
[00:16:52] Ajay Prakash: This was gonna be hard. The barriers to scale are incredibly difficult. You have to manage the complexity. And so, you know, we stayed focused on that and. [00:17:00] 11 years later, we can look back and say, that was the right move and we're the market leader. But at the time it was certainly challenging. Can you give us a sense
[00:17:07] Tom Butta: of scale of the business
[00:17:09] Ajay Prakash: right now?
[00:17:09] Ajay Prakash: You know, we started in three zip codes in San Francisco, and today we're in 10 major markets across the country. We're all over the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Washington, dc, Chicago, Boston, New York, New Jersey, Seattle, Dallas, and Austin. Our goal and our our vision has always been to be a household name and to be the dominant national brand.
[00:17:28] Ajay Prakash: Um, and as you mentioned, we've cleaned over a hundred million garments and continuing to scale and expand quickly. And so, you know, there's, there's, there's a lot of laundry to do around, around the country, so we're, we're, we're trying to find all of it.
[00:17:40] Tom Butta: Right. That's brilliant. I love that. Some thought of laundry to do that.
[00:17:44] Tom Butta: There is. Um, I just did two loads last night. Um, but what's interesting about your business is when you think about the experience that you're creating, and we focus so much right now on the customer experience, the end customer experience, but. The operations of the business, especially [00:18:00] the way you've built this model around quality and around delivery at the convenience of the customer is built on those that are actually doing the ing right, and then those that are delivering.
[00:18:12] Tom Butta: Maybe you can talk a little bit about how you select and how you hold the quality standard. Let's first pick on maybe the laundry facilities.
[00:18:22] Ajay Prakash: It's a very important piece of the, uh, of the puzzle and I think for us. You know, the way we thought about this early on was we know that there are a lot of great cleaners out there, but we also know there are a lot of bag cleaners.
[00:18:34] Ajay Prakash: And so it's really important for us to work with the best cleaners and then let them do what they do best, which is clean the clothes. And so over the years, we've developed technology that we deployed all of our partners. It, it effectively mimics the workflow, but it allows us to track all the movement of all the clothes and, and make it much easier for our cleaning partners to clean the clothes and assemble the clothes and get them all ready.
[00:18:54] Ajay Prakash: And we're really particular about who we work with. So, you know, for us, quality is the number one thing, [00:19:00] but we've developed a process, we call it the five Ps, which we use as part of our, our sort of initial vetting. So the first P is the profile of the, uh, CEO or owner of the facility. You know, are they on premise?
[00:19:11] Ajay Prakash: Do they understand what the end quality looks like? As opposed to some sort of absentee owner, there's a p that's the plant. Are they using efficient machines? Are they environmentally friendly? There's the process, you know, are they able to track. What's going on in their facility? Do they know if something goes wrong?
[00:19:28] Ajay Prakash: What happened? Uh, if they're using technology, that's certainly a good thing because we're gonna give them technology to use. There's the people in dry cleaning. The spotter is a very important person. That's the person who has to know chemistry to get stains out and in laundry, you know, the supervisor and the folders all have to be pretty well, well-trained and diligent.
[00:19:44] Ajay Prakash: And then the fifth p is we pilot with them. Uh, we wanna ev every cleaner out there is underutilized. They all have excess capacity. We know we can help them grow their business. And every cleaner will tell us they can handle a certain amount, and we wanna start at a much lower amount and pilot and make sure they're, they're meeting our standard.
[00:19:59] Ajay Prakash: [00:20:00] Uh, and then we kinda, we scale them up. But once they get past that and they're doing a great job, then it's an ongoing relationship where, you know, we're giving them data on quality and productivity and all of that sort of stuff, which they love because it's good for their business. We also help them with things like staffing and managing hours and things like that.
[00:20:15] Ajay Prakash: Just using tools that we've learned. Over time. And then what we do is we, we grow their business over time. And so if you think about a typical dry cleaner, as an example, they have their machines and they're generally gonna have a lot of excess capacity because what happens is most normal customers are coming in Monday morning, dropping their clothes off, and then the rest of the week is dead because it's very hard to get to the dry cleaner between nine to five on the weekdays.
[00:20:40] Ajay Prakash: And so when you have that kind of model, it's very hard to staff, uh, and it's very hard to say, Hey, I, I can offer you a full-time. You know, set of hours to employees. And so when it's hard to staff, it's hard to grow. You don't have the capacity to support that. So when you work with Rinse, we're sending you a predictable, steady stream of volume seven days a week.
[00:20:57] Ajay Prakash: And so you know, you're gonna get volume from us. And so [00:21:00] we work with our cleaners not only to fill the excess capacity, but help them grow. Now that you have a predictable, steady stream of volume, now you can maybe add more shifts during the day or add more days of the week. And when you do that, you're clearly growing the ability of that business to scale.
[00:21:15] Ajay Prakash: And so that's a big piece. But what we wanna do, we want our cleaning partners all to win and grow with us. And we, you know, we have very good longstanding relationships with our cleaning partners. You know, some that have been there since we launched a specific market. Uh, and, and the reason they stick around is 'cause they're making more money with us.
[00:21:31] Tom Butta: Hmm. That's really cool. I love that. That's it's predictable study volume. Are they exclusive to you?
[00:21:37] Ajay Prakash: Uh, it depends. We have a, we have kind of a mix, you know, we have some dedicated cleaning partners who. I have actually, you know, built facilities just to serve us. And then we have others where they have walk-in revenue or other types of wholesale accounts, and we're generally okay with that.
[00:21:53] Ajay Prakash: When you work with rents, the cleaning has to go through our technology that we, we give to you. And [00:22:00] so if you have other volume, we don't wanna stop that. Right? I mean, if you're the, the key for our cleaning partners is they make as much money as possible. And so if they're making money from other partners or walk-in revenue, that's great.
[00:22:11] Tom Butta: You're talking about tech enabled. And because the other part of the business that we haven't yet talked about is your decision about the delivery services pickup and delivery of of the laundry. You've created a position that's contrary to say the bright sharing companies by employing those drivers.
[00:22:29] Tom Butta: Talk a little bit more about that and then let's talk about. This technology that you leverage to enable both your providers or your cleaners as well as the drivers?
[00:22:39] Ajay Prakash: Yeah. Well, and so with our valets, we've, we've W2 them, uh, made them employees since the beginning. And you know, for us it's always felt like the right decision and, and the right thing to do.
[00:22:49] Ajay Prakash: You know, we wanted to train the valets. We wanted to put a uniform on them. They are the representative of the brand. If you as a customer have a totally normal experience, the only [00:23:00] person you should ever see is your valet. And so for us, that was a really important piece of the experience. And so we knew we wanted to invest behind that person.
[00:23:08] Ajay Prakash: And a big part of this is if the valet is a happy employee or a happy team member, they're gonna. Deliver a better experience and they, they deliver a better experience. Customers are gonna be happier. If customers are gonna be happier, we're all happier. And so, you know, for us, W2 in the valets was a no brainer.
[00:23:25] Ajay Prakash: It's, it's, it makes sense by the letter of the law and it's just way better for valets because they get benefits that, you know, you don't get as an independent contractor. And I don't mean necessarily, you know, healthcare and the stuff that I think Uber worries about because they're getting full-time hours.
[00:23:40] Ajay Prakash: But for, you know, even if you're. Doing a, a few shifts a week at Rinse, which is, you know, evening hours, you get paid sick leave, you get the benefit of federal, state, and local employee protections. Taxes are simpler because Rinse is covering some of your taxes as opposed to, you know, getting surprised around tax time as a 10 99.
[00:23:56] Ajay Prakash: You know, they can rely on workers' comp protections. They get mileage [00:24:00] reimbursement based on IRS levels. After 12 months of service, our Rinse valets can contribute to a 401k. So there's a lot of those sorts of things that make a lot of sense and are way better for the valet and. And then what we found over time is actually the valet tends to be an amazing feeder program into our team.
[00:24:17] Ajay Prakash: You know, we've actually hired a lot of our operations staff through, you know, the valet pool. Uh, in fact, you know, the person right now who oversees New York, the person who oversees valet, uh, person who oversees San Francisco. Those are our three biggest markets, all started as valets. Uh, and there's a handful of more people who are pretty, you know, senior manager level.
[00:24:38] Ajay Prakash: Within the organization that started as valets. And so it's a very important piece of the puzzle. They're an important representative of the brand. And so for us, you know, I think it's, it's been the right decision. It was a no brainer at the beginning, and we're very happy that we have treated valets that way.
[00:24:52] Tom Butta: That's fantastic. Uh, and it, it makes a lot of sense. So the app is the becoming the key vehicle [00:25:00] for really driving loyalty or retention, right, uh, for your customers. Is there a version of that or something, some specific technology that your valets have and your cleaners have?
[00:25:12] Ajay Prakash: Absolutely, yeah. They, they actually each leverage, uh, mobile technology in a big way.
[00:25:17] Ajay Prakash: So we have developed a very sophisticated valet app, which is really important. I mean, if you think about our technology by step back, the customer facing stuff is, it's just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, for us, the way to manage the operational complexity. Has been around building incredible and robust technology for the cleaning partners, for the internal team, for the valets.
[00:25:35] Ajay Prakash: And you know, at this point I can say with confidence, we're the most digitally advanced company in this industry. And so, you know, for us, the valet app is awesome. It's been developed over time and it evolved over time. But you know, it basically makes the experience very seamless for the valet. A allow telling them where to go, what to pick up, what to deliver, you know, whether they have to take a photo and it's a, what we call Rinse drop, where the person won't [00:26:00] be there.
[00:26:00] Ajay Prakash: You know, all, all these sorts of things as they pick up, it tracks you know, when, how many items they picked up, how many black bags for laundry, how many white bags for dry cleaning. And then, you know, gives them guidance when they get back on exactly where to put 'em. So they can, they can check out because they, all the bags they've picked up have, have shown up at the warehouse.
[00:26:17] Ajay Prakash: It allows you to do auto SMS to the customers for, depending on where you are, GPS, all that sort of stuff. So the valet app is excellent. There's a lot of other technology that we've developed for delivery, so we have automated route creation and a bunch of other things that are super important and, uh, you know, are, are the reason we've been, been able to scale the way we have.
[00:26:35] Ajay Prakash: But similarly, you know, our cleaning partners also leverage an app. So, you know, on the laundry side, uh, they're gonna use it to make sure they're tracking weights. Take photos, you know, pre and post, clean, all that sort of stuff. They're scanning, our cleaning partners are scanning every time bags move so we can track productivity and where things are and troubleshoot and all that.
[00:26:56] Ajay Prakash: And so there's QR codes everywhere. On the dry cleaning side, we've developed [00:27:00] technology for, you know, where they'll use an app to. Assemble clothes. So in dry cleaning you might have items that are delicate and items that are, you know, like more button down shirts, easy to clean items that need special stain treatment.
[00:27:12] Ajay Prakash: So they all go through different workflows and somehow they have to come back and be put together into one order. So we have an app that, you know, really guides that assembly process so that a cleaner knows, okay, I have the 20 shirts and items that Tom gave me. I now all have them and I can, I can complete the order.
[00:27:28] Ajay Prakash: So the app will do that for them. And that's really important because. You know, otherwise, historically the technology is pretty limited in there. A lot of it's kind of pen and paper and chicken scratch. And so, uh, we've been focused on each of the end users. We, we have multiple users that we have to take care of.
[00:27:43] Tom Butta: Yeah. And sounds like, you know, you, this obsession of the customer experience is, is, is an, is simply one part of the experiences that you're creating for the entire ecosystem. Your customers, your, your valets, your cleaners, and you're probably your own internal team.
[00:27:58] Ajay Prakash: Absolutely. Yep. Yeah, that's [00:28:00] the, that's the fourth user is the internal team.
[00:28:01] Ajay Prakash: Yeah.
[00:28:01] Tom Butta: Yeah. Cool. Ajay, this is like fantastic. I think the PE and consulting world world have lost a really talented individual, but it's great that you're applying all of your experience and knowledge in solving what seems to be just an evergreen problem around the world. Would you have any advice for others out there?
[00:28:23] Tom Butta: Or is there anything you'd like to share that maybe runs counter to a lot of thought leaders in the tech space? Because you do seem to be doing things a little, you know, a little bit differently, right? This the, you know, the way you started and like the Wednesdays and the Sundays for, as an example, right?
[00:28:37] Ajay Prakash: Yeah. I don't know if the advice would be counter to what's going on, but I think I might just reiterate that starting a company is really, really hard and so. I think it's very important from the beginning to be super intentional and you know, we talked about being very intentional on the customer experience side and making sure we are really understanding the needs and really addressing them and looking for those signals of [00:29:00] striking a chord and then building on those.
[00:29:02] Ajay Prakash: And that's super important. I actually, I teach a class right now. I co-teach a class at, uh, Stanford Business School called Startup Garage. And it's, it's people who are trying to start a company. And so we focus the first term all on need finding and just really talking and understanding what is that need you're solving?
[00:29:17] Ajay Prakash: Where are those, where are those non-obvious insights and where are those signals? So, you know, it's really important to be intentional all the way, starting at the beginning, but also being intentional as an individual and knowing that you know, what you're building is something you want to build. I got advice early on when I was exploring different ideas from a, a successful founder who said, Hey, check, check how excited you are this week, and if you're excited, keep doing it.
[00:29:40] Ajay Prakash: And then next week check again and see if you're still excited. And the next week check again and see if you're still excited and keep checking, because early on there's a lot of stuff that becomes harder. And if you're still excited, it's a good sign because you never know 10 years later, or my case, 11 plus years later, you still might be building it.
[00:29:55] Ajay Prakash: And so you want to make sure you have that conviction early on. And so. I think that was [00:30:00] really important advice and, and, and the idea of being intentional should be consistent throughout the journey. Because I think what happens a lot in the tech space or in startups is that, you know, we as entrepreneurs and founders, we know how hard it is when we're in the middle of it, and it seems like everybody else is crushing it.
[00:30:17] Ajay Prakash: And you know, I think that's one that's generally not true. Everyone's, it's hard for everybody, but that can be very hard to see. And so it's very important through the journey to manage your psyche, knowing there's gonna be ups and downs. Uh, as I told James when we started Rinse, there's gonna be a punch in the gut every day.
[00:30:33] Ajay Prakash: Uh, and you know, and I think, I think managing your psyche through that, asking for help, doing whatever you can to navigate is a, is a very important thing. And, and recognizing that nobody's really crushing it. Everybody's, everybody's working hard and, and, and, and, and struggling to get through it because it is not easy to build a company.
[00:30:49] Tom Butta: Yeah. Yeah. I think the old, the Dodge is, uh, don't believe everything that you see. Uh. You never know what's going on behind closed doors, uh, as it were. Exactly. Uh, exactly. 'cause there's, I [00:31:00] mean, li life is a challenge. Sounds like, sounds like you got a really good thing going. So thank you for, for sharing really how you've tamed this like extraordinary beast that around la along laundry.
[00:31:11] Tom Butta: Uh, it, it's, it's fantastic. I really look forward to, um, you know, to watching you proceed. And I, and I, and I love this, this notion of be consistently intentional and check in like. How does it feel like, how does it feel this week? How does it feel next week? Like, that's, that's a really good barometer. I think we just, we move past a lot of that, typically just because like, you don't know, you're determined or numb, one of the two to get to the next, the next step.
[00:31:38] Tom Butta: But I think it's really important to check in and it, it's really good. Alright, so now we're gonna come to the, uh, portion of the podcast where we ask, uh, each guest to answer a round of rapid fire questions. Are you ready? Let's do it. Okay. It's kind of a big one. What beast do you think needs to be tamed next?
[00:31:58] Tom Butta: And this could be something that you [00:32:00] wanna work on next, or, uh, as part of the company, or maybe it's like, I don't know, a side view you have into, into something you hope somebody can solve, whether it's you or not.
[00:32:10] Ajay Prakash: Well, so when we started Rinse, uh, and we tamed the Laundry beast, you know, I think, as I said, a lot of it started from my own experience and the challenges I saw and.
[00:32:20] Ajay Prakash: I think if, if there was a beast that I would tame or that might need to be tamed, I, I would, I would say parenting. I have three kids and my oldest will be 10 years old, uh, pretty soon here. And it is a pretty challenging journey. I, I'd say, you know, it's, it's, it's on par maybe harder than being an entrepreneur.
[00:32:36] Ajay Prakash: And uh, it's one of those things where until you're a parent or until you're an entrepreneur, you can't really understand the struggles, uh, and the challenges. But I think there are, I've seen some more companies coming out in the parenting space, but I think there's opportunities. To help parents navigate the journey, not necessarily the tactical, Hey, this is the right car seat, or this is the right crib, or, or, you know, all, all that.
[00:32:56] Ajay Prakash: Or like, here's what you expect at different ages, but almost more the, the [00:33:00] psychological element of, of being a parent and navigating and how do you handle kids at different ages? And no matter how long you've been a parent, you're still a rookie managing kids at the age that they're at. Uh, and so that's probably the beast that I would, uh, I would tackle next.
[00:33:14] Tom Butta: Wow. That is, um. That's pretty noble. And as a parent, I, uh, I agree. There's handbooks and there's classes and there's, you know, tutorials and there's all this stuff. And then you have that experience and you're like, oh my God, what do I do? Like, everything just goes out the window. Okay. That's cool. Alright, so beyond Rinse, what is the one mobile app you could not live without?
[00:33:35] Ajay Prakash: Yeah, I mean, I, generally speaking I could live, I could probably live without by phone for a while and be happy, but, um, I, you know, I, I was, I think like. Lately there, there aren't any apps that I would say I can't live without. I think. Uh, but I do think one of the apps I've been using lately is probably related to parenting actually, is is the journal app on, on the phone that came out in the recent iOS, one of my recent iOS updates, because it just [00:34:00] allows, you know, I take a lot of pictures and videos of my kids, or there's always these moments of, oh my God, I can't believe she said that.
[00:34:06] Ajay Prakash: And I really wish I, I hope I remember that. And you know, historically it's very hard to track that. And I'm sure I've forgotten a million. Amazing moments that happened already, uh, as, as they've grown up. And so I've actually started using the, that journal app as like, oh, I, I, I took this quick picture and I wrote a quick note just to remind myself what was going on that day and that time.
[00:34:24] Ajay Prakash: And so I've actually found that to be a nice, uh, a nice thing to have and, and actually solved a pain point of what am I gonna do with these millions of photos and videos I have? When am I gonna go through them and actually figure out what was going on at the time? So that, that might be the app I point to, that I've, I've liked recently.
[00:34:39] Tom Butta: That's really cool. Related to that, is there a feature, an app feature that you've ever experienced or you remember fondly? Like, I don't know, like Spotify's wrapped?
[00:34:49] Ajay Prakash: Yeah, I mean, for me, I am a, uh, you know, again, I've always been a busy professional and now you layer on three kids and all that. It's, it's always been, uh, you know, for me, [00:35:00] whatever can save me time or be more efficient or more convenient.
[00:35:03] Ajay Prakash: So one of the reasons Rinse has that, press one button and that's it, you know, that's really, that was something I, I thought was super, super important for. Our customers. Um, so there's probably two that come to mind. One is, uh, you know, I really love the Starbucks app and what they've done and how they remember, you know, exactly how I, I get my coffee and I, I order the same thing every time.
[00:35:21] Ajay Prakash: So, you know, I press a couple buttons and I know it's, uh, the mobile order's gonna be ready. And, you know, we are at Rinse. We are pretty hardcore Slack users and I, I'm on hundreds of channels at a time and there was a recent update in the app where they had this new, this, um, feature where you can catch up.
[00:35:39] Ajay Prakash: Which I thought was, which it saved me a ton of time because what I used to do is I used to, I'd read something like on the fly on my phone 'cause I had to stay apprised and then I'd un I'd, I'd mark it unread because I was like, oh, I gotta reply to that later when I'm on my computer. Well now on Slack I can just catch up and I can keep it unread and go to the next one.
[00:35:55] Ajay Prakash: And it's really nice interface. You know, there's a lot of things that Slack can do to improve and I Right. If they [00:36:00] ever wanna reach out to me, I got a lot of ideas, but, but I thought that was that, that Slack update, that update on the app was actually. Designed, I think designed for someone like me 'cause it, it's, that was awesome.
[00:36:10] Tom Butta: Yeah. And, and I love the fact that they actually use real world language. Like, I just need to catch up. Am I ever gonna catch up? Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's pretty cool. Exactly. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for being a guest, taming the mobile beast. Ajay Prakash, you're, uh, you, you, you're quite a, uh, quite an extraordinary in individual and leader.
[00:36:31] Tom Butta: I'm sure you're a fantastic parent as well. And we really look forward to, uh, watching your progress of Rinse.
[00:36:37] Ajay Prakash: Awesome. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.
[00:36:42] Voiceover: Thank you for listening to Tame the Mobile Beast, brought to you by the team at Airship. Find out more about how you can help your brand deliver better, more personalized mobile experience@airship.com. If you enjoyed today's episode, please take a moment to subscribe and rate the [00:37:00] show.