AJAY PRAKASH

>> Craig Gould: Ajay Prakash, thank you so much for joining me today on the podcast. Ajay, you’re the co founder and CEO of Rinse. Rinse, is a company reimagining laundry and dry cleaning industry through tech enabled pickup and delivery. Been at this for more than a decade and you’ve been growing Rinse into a national brand. And I, want to talk to you all about rents, where you’ve been, where it’s headed. But I like to start, these conversations with C Suite folks with a common question, which is, Jay, what are your memories of your first job?

>> Ajay Prakash: My memories of my first job. well, first, great to be here. Thanks for having me. so I’ll tell you my first two jobs because my first job was, I taught tennis at a local country club, which was really fun because I taught kids from the age of 5 to 12. And right now I have three kids within that window. And so I found that actually there were some things I learned, during that time. That is, that has been useful now as a parent. but that was, you know, that was kind of a small job where I was just teaching tennis. I think the first formative job from a business perspective was after I graduated high school. I sold knives. I sold Cutco knives. And it was, it was just for the summer before I went to college. and you know, I didn’t know, it was just kind of something I could do and make some money. But there were so many amazing lessons in that job around sales, around how to connect with people, around just, just generally thinking about how to present a product that have been actually, you know, foundational for me as I’ve gone through my career, especially as, you know, I went through consulting and private equity after college and I wasn’t doing startup stuff, but out of business school I was starting to do startup stuff. And rents I’ve been doing for the last 12 years. And the amount of sales in the role of building a startup, whether it’s selling a new candidate to join your team or selling an investor to, you know, fundraise selling customers, it’s incredible. And you know, the foundational lessons from Cutco have actually continued to be very valuable today.

>> Craig Gould: So was Cutco, was that going door to door or was that, you know, at home show at your little booth with a little microphone on or how were you doing the sales there?

>> Ajay Prakash: No, so Cutco’s, it’s a bit of a machine. Like, there’s a lot of people who will go out and they’ll sell Cutco knives. But what you do is you, you start with people, you know, so you start with your parents or your friend’s parents and you just kind of practice the pitch. And Cutco had a model where they would pay you just to, just to present. So you didn’t have to have sales. But clearly the incentives were set up so that you actually make more money if you’re selling. And so what you would do is you would present to your friends and then at the end you’d say, hey, you know, I make money just for presenting. Do you have any friends that would be, that would, would take the time to meet with me? And as you do that, you started getting, you start getting further away. I mean a lot of the friends, parents will buy anyway. but then you kind of get further away from the, the friendlies. And now you’re talking to people who are warm because they’ve let you in their house and you’re demonstrating but you don’t know them and you’re actually just trying to sell to them. and so not, not that, you know, dissimilar from starting a consumer company where you start with friendly people friendly is to test your service and give you feedback. And then you start moving away to people you don’t know and you just have to, your product has to show up at that point where they’re not just doing it for you after college.

>> Craig Gould: Well, there’s grad school, you said consulting, private equity. Does the MBA somewhere in your resume also?

>> Ajay Prakash: Yeah, yeah, the NBA. Yep. So I, I did, I went. When I went to college, I did some internships in finance and consulting, went into consulting at Bain, out of college. And then at Bain they have a program where you can do what they call an externship. So six months. And I was fortunate enough, given the timing to do a six month externship at the NBA in New York. Focused, on international strategy. It was at a time when David Stern was the commissioner and he was focusing on the globalization of basketball. And so my role was to help develop the strategy and the models behind a, five year plan for China and a ten year plan for India for the NBA.

>> Craig Gould: it was a really formative time for the NBA, I mean, because it really has become a global brand.

>> Ajay Prakash: It was incredible because the model and the work we did, the team did, you know, after I left, I saw it all come to life. So it was very, very cool. It turns out that basketball has been incredibly popular in China for a long time. Well before Yao Ming. And so it was really just kind of doubling down on that. And then with India, cricket is the dominant sport. But, but the NBA was looking at, how do we, how do we start to take share mindshare. And you’re seeing it actually in India. You know, basketball is much more popular today than it was. And you know, you’re getting more. What India needs is that NBA star that will come out.

>> Craig Gould: Right.

>> Ajay Prakash: But you know, for now, it’s made a lot of progress since I was there.

>> Craig Gould: So what was the original pain that you saw that led you and your colleagues to start rinsing? How did you find out about this gap that needed to be filled or you thought you could fill?

>> Ajay Prakash: I knew I was going to start my own thing. I was very focused on consumer focused companies and I had really, gotten excited about a couple, a couple of trends. One was the idea of bringing technology to old school industries and the other was removing friction for existing customers. And the expertise I was bringing to the table was I used to work really long hours in consulting and private equity and I never had time to do any of those really important things that need to be done just in, terms of like daily living. and so I was thinking about, how do you, how do you make that easier? And this was at a time where, Uber Lyft, other companies were becoming very popular, the iPhone was becoming ubiquitous. And so I actually didn’t have the idea. I was playing with a bunch of different ideas. I didn’t have the idea that was getting me excited enough to take the leap. But then, my co founder, one of my co founders, James, who is one of my best friends from college, he came to me and he brought up the idea of doing something in dry cleaning. And it was from a place of, really deep understanding because he grew up in dry cleaning. His parents were dry cleaners. and so that combination of his understanding of the industry and the supply side and my understanding of the customer and startups, and just the fact that there was a lot of trust already built into our relationship, I think that’s what kind of got us to take the leap. And then we, as we started testing it and talking to customers and doing all the initial stuff, the feedback was so positive that, you know, we just kind of kept the momentum going. And here we are 12 years later.

>> Craig Gould: Well, I mean, I guess the hope, in identifying these sorts of opportunities is where do you see friction and where can you remove the friction? Right. And so what were the rough edges that you felt like rinse could kind of sand away at? yeah.

>> Ajay Prakash: Well, I mean, actually, it’s a good way to describe it because when you look at the friction of laundry and dry cleaning, what we found was that there wasn’t one big point of friction or one silver bullet to solve this. It was a lot of these rough edges or small points of friction along the way. And so we refer to it internally as death by a thousand cuts. And so, you know, if you think about dry cleaning, you don’t know who’s a good dry cleaner, so you just go to the nearest one. You’re held hostage to proximity. You don’t. There are no trusted brands. And so you’re. The way to assess quality is to actually give them your clothes and see what comes back. you know, they’re open nine to five during the week because they want to do it on their hours. And that doesn’t work for people who are working professionals. There’s very limited customer service, there’s limited transparency. Nobody really knows what they’re paying or what they’re getting. So there. And there’s. There’s really no technology historically. And so that in dry cleaning, an example of a series of the friction points, very similar. I could give you a whole list in laundry. But what we saw was, hey, what if we take this experience and we, from start to finish, kind of remove all those friction points, systematically dismantle them, and create this seamless experience and the key for us was leveraging technology, being technology forward, but also being very customer centric because the industry has been built on a very vendor centric model, which makes sense because it’s people who are working really hard to put food on the table, pay the bills and so you know, they want to be home in the evening, they want to, they want to be open during the working day as well. and so you know, the idea of removing that friction, putting it, you know, being customer forward was really core to how we build rinse.

>> Craig Gould: Way back in the day like 99, 2000, one of my first startups was restaurant related startup and we were kind of competing alongside OpenTable. And I think about, you know, when I, when I think about your story, I think about just, you know, my experience trying to enter into a highly fragmented market like restaurants versus cleaners and a lot of the same things. There’s really no silver bullet. there’s very little consolidation. So it’s, it’s highly fragmented. And I also think about, well OpenTable, you know, eventually gained enough traction market share, they became a public company but they were selling technology into these individual individually owned entities. But I feel like rinse isn’t necessarily a technology solution in and I’m sure it’s evolved over the years but I feel like your service is wrapping around these entities versus you know, trying to sell them something for point of purchase or ah, a piece of technology.

>> Ajay Prakash: Yeah, I mean it’s definitely different than an open table. and so the way, the way I would think about this is that from a consumer standpoint we are removing all the pain points. We’re trying to create a much better experience and the way to do that is to again remove all those rough edges, from start to finish. So technology is core from the customer side, and execution is core. as a service based business. You know the, at the end of the day when you think about the way we take care of cleaning, the way we execute on the, on the operations, it’s really complicated. So in this space the barriers to entry are really low. You know, you could go start doing someone else’s laundry, that’s not that hard. But it’s the barriers to scale that are incredibly challenging. And it’s because there’s so much operational complexity. And so our approach was not to say, hey, we’re going to, we’re going to connect you, the customer with you, the cleaner and kind of get out of the way. Our approach was no, this is a very Complicated business. And you as a customer, putting a lot of trust in us by giving us your personal clothes, clothes you’ve invested a lot of money in, clothes you have emotion tied to, clothes that you need for important meetings, clothes that drive confidence. So what we wanted to do was actually manage the entire experience. And so how we have built it is on the customer side, certainly managing all the touch points, managing the brand, you know, creating this category, effectively. And then there’s a, there’s a valet component, our pickup and delivery. And so all of our valets are W2 employees. They work with rinse, they’re going to do pickup and delivery. We’ve, we’ve built a really, you know, elegant model of route density because we pick up and deliver in the evening between 8pm and 10pm which is more customer centric. But then on the cleaning side, you’re right, there is a lot of complexity and it’s very, very fragmented. And so the way we have focused on the cleaning side is we’ve said, hey, you know what, in this, in, in every market there are some really, really good cleaners and there’s some bad cleaners. And for us, we’re going to work with the best. We’re going to work with cleaners that want to grow their business. And what we do is we only work with a handful of cleaners, a very select number, and then we work to grow their business. And the growth is first through, you know, sending volume on, a predictable steady stream that fills their underutilized capacity and then working with them to continue to grow their business, whether it’s adding more shifts in a day or, or adding more days to the week, of service. And so all of our, all of our cleaning partners grow with us. And what we do is we build technology that we deploy into their facility that, you know, it certainly is built around a normal workflow of cleaning clothes and brings some more efficiency and leverages technology to make things easier. So as an example, in dry cleaning, clothes might go through a different process, but they all have to come back to get be put together. And so technology can make that a lot simpler. and so that has been the approach we’ve taken as we scaled. So certainly different than an open table. I’d view it. Marketplace might be not the right word for maybe a managed marketplace, but more like we’re owning the brand so we’re putting our stamp on every single piece of the puzzle.

>> Craig Gould: The way you describe that and I’m thinking of like market m demographics in terms of Aging baby boomers and what I’ve read about the employment preferences of millennials. And I’m wondering if these mom and pop shops, whether the cleaning industry is kind of at a ripe point for consolidation, because these mom and pop shops, their millennial kids aren’t looking at taking over the business. Is that. Is that a reality, or is that just kind of me m imagining things?

>> Ajay Prakash: It is a reality. I mean, but I would separate out maybe the infrastructure available with the consumer, trends. You know, what you’re seeing on the consumer side is much, more preference towards convenience pickup and delivery, you know, having a trusted brand to work with. I think that. And laundry has. Has grown significantly, in terms of people finding a service to do that for them. On the infrastructure side, what you just said is totally true. You know, you have this element of people who are retiring and their kids don’t want to take over. There is no generational transfer. And so you’ve seen just over the years, actually kind of a steady decline in the number of dry cleaners. Laundromats haven’t declined as much because laundromats are still like, a good investment business. There’s people who will come in, and there’s cash flow. but, you know, Covid was actually, really hard on the industry. So Covid accelerated a decline in dry cleaners, for sure, because people stopped having weddings and events and going to the office and all that. and it just became harder because what happens is, in an industry that is built on foot traffic and, and, you know, location, location, location, you are paying high rents. And if you can’t have the customers come in to offset that rent, you know, the business model doesn’t work. And so, naturally it is happening. But there’s still, you know, there are still, a lot of dry cleaners out there. There’s still demand for the service. And so I think the customers, the dry cleaners and laundromats that are doing well are ones who have a kind of growth mindset on, you know, maybe we’ll implement technology, maybe we’ll add pickup and delivery, maybe we’ll add some of these services, and not, you know, just rely on foot traffic to come in.

>> Craig Gould: Is the nature of. Of these services changing? Because, I mean, I feel like, culturally we’re a lot less starched and pressed than we used to be. But I feel like at the same time, people are probably more likely not to want to do their laundry. Right? I mean, it’s unavoidable, regardless of whether someone is into A freshly ironed and pressed item. Do you guys see that? Because you probably have, you probably see both. Right? You know, those are, because those are two different services. The, the cleaning versus the, the laundry. Right?

>> Ajay Prakash: Yeah. So, so the dry cleaning and what’s called laundry and press would be what you would do at your typical dry cleaner. So, you know, button down shirts, suits, dresses, things like that. And then laundry, which we call wash and fold, is just your basic laundry. Towels, underwear, you know, T shirts, all that sort of stuff. So from a, a macro perspective, certainly dry cleaning has kind of had this, you know, you know, it’s not, it’s not a significant decline, but just kind of gradual flat to slight decline. And that’s been for years. You know, once you stopped letting people smoke in restaurants, there was, you didn’t need to clean your shirts as much. there’s a trend towards athleisure and lululemon and viori and clothes like that are coming out and, and people are wearing them more. Certainly Covid and working from home, has had that impact. And so there is that on the drykins side. And yes, laundry has picked up more and more people, I think seeing that they can outsource this and it’s not that different from saying, hey, I can outsource my grocery shopping, or a company like doordash can make my deliveries. And so I think laundry is a natural if you think about the things that are critical to your day to day that are super important and needs to be done well and take up a lot of time and, and boy, you’d rather be doing something else. I think, I think laundry fits in that and laundry. So I mean, it’s so complex in terms of the, the moving pieces and the like you said, different service types, the amount of hours it takes. And that’s why when we think about rinse, we, we think about it as the ultimate convenience. Because if we can solve this for you and make it something that takes a minute of your time, I think that’s, that’s where the magic is.

>> Craig Gould: You used the word earlier, trust. You’re having to develop trust with your customers, but you’re also having to develop trust with your valets. And are your valets, are they contractors or are they employee employees?

>> Ajay Prakash: No, they’re all W2 employees. We’ve done that from the beginning. I think it’s a great benefit for them. It makes it a much more attractive, job. And I think for us, the way we think about it is it’s certainly the right thing to do for them. It gives them employee protections, a number of, a number of benefits for being employees. We also find that our valets tend to be the best candidates, for operations roles. You know, interestingly, as you think about you look at the evolution of rins, we have people in senior roles, leading markets or, you know, central operations teams that, that started as valets. And so, there’s a number of reasons why I think it makes sense. But ultimately, if the valets are happy, they’re going to reflect better on the brand and represent the brand better. They’re effectively replacing the counter person, you know, you, as a customer, if everything goes according to plan, the only person you might see is your valet. And so we want that person to be someone who’s, invested in the, in the brand and the company and the service. And so, yeah, we’ve w2 them since the beginning.

>> Craig Gould: I’ve heard you say before that the CEO’s job is all about cash and culture. And you know, when you have a distributed, remote workforce like this, how, how do you earn those valleys, trust? How do you establish and distribute your culture?

>> Ajay Prakash: It’s, it’s hard. I mean, I think that’s, you know, as we continue to scale, that’s like top of mind for me. That’s my top priority these days is how do we, how do we navigate more markets and more people and and people who have different contexts. If you think about the challenges of rents, maybe above and beyond just the valets. You have a valet culture. You have a, in the warehouse kind of local operations culture, and you have a work from home culture. You have people who have been here since before COVID and people who came after Covid, people who were before we had more the money we have and after. And so the level of context is different. And so, it is a daily drumbeat in terms of focusing on culture, focusing on who we are and what we stand for at the start of a company. There’s the saying, culture comes from the top. And I think that’s very true. James and I wrote our core values in March 2013, and the core values have stayed consistent now for 12 plus years. and at the time, I knew the core values would be important just to have in terms of, hey, when times are tough and things are a little bit blurry, how do you guide the direction you go? But it’s become much more than that in the sense that the core values are used to determine, you know, whether someone is a good Fit. We’ll do it through the lens of the core values. And I think as the company scales, culture takes a life of its own. And so you have to make sure, number one, you infuse the appropriate values and the appropriate foundation, and then you have to really nurture it. And so there are things we do. I mean, number one is I am the final round interview for any salaried hire that comes to rinse, and James is the final round interview for any hourly hire. And so that’s an important piece of making sure that you have the right people on the bus. and I think that’s actually, you know, the 80, 20 of this is like, if you get the right people on the bus and you treat them well and, you know, you’re thinking about culture, you’re transparent, you’re open, you’re honest, authentic as you. As how you show up and you create psychological safety, then every level of the company will do that. And, and to the valets, you know, the valets don’t see me. They see their local operations team in each of the markets. And so we have to trust that that person that is representing the brand for the valets or representing the company has those values, infused them, has that belief in the culture, has that sense of psychological safety. And, you know, it is. It is really a daily, A daily drum beat. It takes work. And we built a culture of transparency. I’m very open and honest with where we are, quarterly all hands meetings. We have. We use slack to communicate. Channels are very open. You can be a local operator and have a direct line to me, and we can have a discussion about certain things. And so I, I think as part of the culture, I have to be on top of and keep a finger on the pulse on where things are going. And, and make sure, you know, we’re continuing to show up, authentically and honestly, but also creating the space for people to share their voice and, you know, for all of us to make mistakes. There’s no egos in the room. so it, ah, takes a lot of work. And that’s why. That’s why I say, I think as a CEO, once you have the cash in the bank, that’s survival. And this is about, how do you. How do you get to thriving?

>> Craig Gould: Hey there. If you’re enjoying today’s conversation, I’ve got something you don’t want to miss. Imagine having a daily dose of insights that can help you actively manage your climb to the C Suite. With MasterMove Premium, you can get just that. Our Premium content dives deeper into the strategic decisions, cultural leadership and innovation that top executives like you face every day. But the most valuable resources are those that help you find the next great opportunity in the C suite. As a master Move premium subscriber, you’ll get access to premium content, which includes my ongoing conversations with corporate leaders and talent acquisition, as well as C level executive recruiters. These premium episodes provide unmatched insights on executive search trends, candidate best practices, and specific job opportunities as they emerge. So why wait? Head over to MasterMove IE and become a member today. Now back to our conversation. I think I’ve heard you say that you utilize a, values test of would you be willing to tell your mom about what you just did at work? Because that’s kind of tied to integrity 100%.

>> Ajay Prakash: So, we have a series of core values, but the one core value that is my favorite and I think encapsulates everything else, is make mom proud. And so when we originally wrote that as an ode to James’s mom, who was super helpful as we were kind of getting everything started, but it was the idea that anything you do, how you show up, how you treat others, the kind of work you do, you’d be proud to tell your mom about. And the distinction I make for every new hire is it’s not you’d be okay if mom found out, it’s you’d be proud to tell her about it. Because that is actually a great way to think about how do I want to show up today? Because if I show up in a way where I’m proud to tell my mom about it, then I’m definitely representing Rinse in the right way and helping us build the culture and the brand that we’re trying to build.

>> Craig Gould: What have been some of the biggest challenges over the years on just maintaining consistency, maintaining the service quality level across a national brand. Because, I mean, it’s, you know, it’s one thing to do it, in Pacific Heights or whatever, right? But when you now have to make sure that customers in Dallas are receiving the same level of quality, how do you go about making sure that’s happening?

>> Ajay Prakash: it’s a very, I think intentional and methodical process from, you know, kind of building from the start. As you said, we started in three zip codes in San Francisco, Pacific Heights and around there. And at the beginning with startups, you do things that don’t scale. You just make sure that the core through line is that we wanted to create a great service and a great customer experience. Clean clothes delivered Back on time in a friendly, professional way. and so we did it in a way where it wasn’t very scalable upfront, but we were just kind of making it work. And early strategy sessions, we would say, hey, we just did 20 stops tonight. What happens when we get to 50, what’s going to break? oh, we did 50, what happens? We get to 100, what’s going to break? And we’d continue to systematically kind of say, okay, how do we make that more scalable? Whether it’s through people, process or technologies, those are the three core pillars. And as we’ve scaled, and this gets back to the idea that the barriers to scale are super high, we have invested a lot of time in the processes and the technology which is the backbone to navigating all these operations, to scale that quality, to scale that customer service so that you, as a new customer in Seattle or Dallas or Austin, feel that personal touch that we brought to that first customer in San Francisco when we started. That has been, that’s been core to how we build the service. And because for us, we know if we, if we don’t do a great job on your first order, you’re not going to give us another shot. And as a seven days a week service, we have to continue to earn our stripes on a daily basis. And so, a lot of it has been through thinking about how do you scale, you know, and also the steps. We started in three zip codes in San Francisco. We’d go zip code by zip code as we expanded and make sure we had the pieces. Then we launched our first market in 2015, our first new market, Los Angeles. And then we’re like, oh, wait, how is la? Are we following the same processes? Are we doing a good job here? And so, you know, as you continue to scale, the surface area of opportunity for technology to come into play, you know, the standardization of processes, the opportunity comes as you scale and you just have to stay focused and sort of see around the corner, like, hey, when we go to 20 markets, what’s going to happen when we go to 50, what’s going to happen when we go, when we’re global, what’s going to happen? We’re just trying to see around the corner and plan ahead.

>> Craig Gould: When you describe that, I would say that you’re focused on slow strategic growth, right? Your investors have to be on board for slow strategic growth. A lot of investors want to see some sort of liquidity event, you know, really short term, unless they share your vision for what the larger end game is going to be right. You know, if you are having to invest in high trust, high, level of quality, making sure that the logistics is taken care of in each of these new areas, there’s really no better way to do it than slow and strategic.

>> Ajay Prakash: Yeah, I mean, I wouldn’t say slow growth. I think our growth has been pretty healthy. you know, strategic and methodical, for sure, makes sense. And I think part of this is when you. When you bring on investors, making sure you have the right investors around the table. And, and for us, you know, we knew going into this that this wasn’t going to be an overnight thing because it is so complicated to scale, and you had to make sure the pieces were in the right place. We’re, we’re at a point now where the operations and the technology are, are incredibly robust. And, you know, I’m confident we’re the most digitally advanced company in this industry. And so scaling and accelerating growth is manageable within our current operations because we know how to do it. But in the early days, you have to kind of make sure the pieces are in place. You can’t overwhelm the system that hasn’t yet been built. And so I think the idea of, supportive capital, patient capital, to a certain extent, especially in an industry like this, where we’re effectively creating the category, that takes a lot of work. And so. And then, you know, I think there’s also the element of COVID came along, and that was a little bit of a disruption for a couple of years where we were continuing to make a lot of progress. But from a growth perspective, that wasn’t the time for growth. but certainly we brought. We’ve had great investors from the beginning. You know, our series A lead, Javelin Venture Partners, has been on the board, for ten years now. Our series B lead for eight years, you know, our, Our, Series C and B leads, you know, for the last three, four years. So they are, I think they believe in the vision and the big opportunity here because it is a universal service and universal need. And our goal is to be that household name nationally and even globally. And so it takes time to come to fruition.

>> Craig Gould: Well, you. You just closed Series D. Typically that means that you’ve got two or three years of Runway to do some. Some big things, take some bold steps. Is it. Is it just, strategically expanding markets or is it M. Brick and mortar? Is it consolidating? Is it acquiring, like, companies? Is it expanding into B2B, like uniforms and commercial laundry and property Partnerships. I don’t want you to tip your hand for your competitors. But you know what are you excited about sharing in terms of what that vision is?

>> Ajay Prakash: Yeah, I mean, yes, we closed our Series D at the end of 2024 and it was a significant round. And we’re in a position right now where I look at that capital not as a Runway thing because our economics work and our margins are strong. And ah, for me this is less about Runway and more about it affords us the ability to make some longer term bets. So, you know, as you think about longer term bets, there we are. Our core business has been pickup and delivery of, laundry and dry cleaning direct to consumer. Over the years. We’ve actually, we have been scaling our commercial business and we have a lot of great accounts on that end. So we’ll certainly want to accelerate growth there and continue to invest in that, continue to evolve the product. But the way we’re thinking about it in terms of longer term bets is really evolving the core to powering all of laundry outside of the home. And so if you’re doing laundry outside of the home, we want to be influencing that or be part of that. And so that is certainly through our core business, certainly through commercial accounts, certainly, through some element of retail or brick and mortar, through technology. So there’s a lot of work we’re doing around that. and the nice thing about, you know, you kind of, as you build a startup, you have to earn the right to be able to take on certain investments or look at certain time horizons. And the nice thing about this round of capital is it is truly a growth round where we can start taking some of those long term bets. Where if you’re actually looking at a, hey, we have 12, 18 months of Runway or 24 months, there’s more of a capped view where you’re doing everything in service of the next capital raise. And the beauty of this raise is we can do things now in service of the long term vision of becoming the household name and not, not worry about the next capital raise in a, in a cap timeframe.

>> Craig Gould: You know, I know that you’ve dealt with this, over the years. I’m sure this is a topic that will keep on coming up, but that is, one about, mergers and acquisitions. How do you think about that? Buy versus build. And at some point you may actually be the target of someone. Right. How do you sort all that out? What decisions do you make when you’re looking at acquiring? What’s your thought about Possibly being someone’s target someday.

>> Ajay Prakash: Yeah, I mean, so when we’re looking at acquiring, there’s different forms, certainly that it can take. You know, we have historically done. We’ve completed eight acquisitions that are customer list acquisitions, over the years. And that’s been, you know, that’s been effectively, it’s a marketing exercise for us. We have a model, we have kind of a repeatable solution on how we do it. And and because it’s such a challenging space, a lot of companies will enter, not everybody will be able to scale. there’s been, there have been a lot of opportunities, there. We certainly also look at acquisitions, you know, as we think about, some of the retail offline solutions that we’re thinking about, there are opportunities there. And so we just, you know, we, when we’re moving forward, we’re making decisions with the data in front of us. You don’t want to take an acquisition lightly in the sense that there’s real post close integration work that has to happen depending on the scale of the acquisition. And so it has to make sense. It has to make sense within the bigger picture of how are we prioritizing our time and our bandwidth, which is limited and pretty lean in general. but we’re very thoughtful and methodical about that. as I mentioned, I used to work in private equity. So the idea of M and A is not, not foreign at all to me. and it’s something that we are thinking more and more about in this next phase. on the question of being, you, ah, know, an acquisition target, the way I think about it is that great companies get bought, not sold. We’re not looking at how do we exit. We never have really thought about the exit. We thought about building a company in the right way, having a company that’s fundamentally strong and really focusing on the vision of becoming a household name. If we can create a service that defines this category, that leads this category and becomes a household name, the rest of it can take care of itself. Whether it’s an acquisition, whether it’s ipo, whether it’s, we stay private and we’re just building a great company. I’m indifferent to the path. And as we think about it, we’ll make the decisions with the data in front of us. But the key for us is really to focus on just building a great business.

>> Craig Gould: How have you made time to care for yourself? Because I mean a lot of folks are in and out of a startup. Take a gap year, find the next passion get back into it. But we’re going into, I guess year 13 will be right around the corner. And how do you, how do you manage your well being? How do you manage your own growth as a leader while you’re still in the thick of it?

>> Ajay Prakash: It’s a great question and it’s really challenging. So it has, it, it won’t just happen unless you actually invest time and effort and energy into it. And I think, you know, my number one piece of advice for any entrepreneur, founders building a company is that they have to be able to manage their psyche throughout the process because the ups and downs are inevitable. you know, I always, I told James when we started, you got to expect a punch in the stomach every day. you know, the stresses are inevitable. There’s so much pressure on your back when you’re building a company, when you’re when you’re, you know, the CEO of a company. And there’s other stresses that will happen. You know, competitors will do well, investors will say no, employees will leave. Health, issues maybe for others or yourself, financial stress, all this sort of stuff comes into play. So, so I think that the number one thing is having that mindset of being able to manage your psyche. Having a, a mindset of a growth mindset where everything can be a growth opportunity. you know, having that element of resilience. I, I like to, you know, I call it a run through walls mentality. You got to be able to run through the walls that are put in front of you. There’s always going to be blockers. and you know, everyone has to find their own way. I think part of it is, is being pretty ruthless with your time, making sure that you’re only focusing on things that matter. You know, I’ll say internally if it’s not, if it’s a hell yes or a no, right. You have to, you can’t limp into anything because your time is so precious. Managing your energy is really important. Doing things that drive energy, whether it’s with work or without work, you know, outside of work, exercise, meditation, whatever people have, I’ve actually found, you know, I’ve built Rinse alongside my family. So I started rinse January 2013. When I started working on it. I got married June 2013. We closed our seed round, our seed investment December 18, 2014. My oldest daughter was born December 21, 2014. So it’s all been in parallel. And I’ve actually found kids are an amazing forcing function. It’s very challenging by the way, it’s not easy to raise a family and, and a startup at the same time. But I’ve, kids have been a great forcing function for me to make sure that if I’m not spending time with them or my wife and it’s on rent, it better be something that moves the needle and something that is high impact. there’s no time to spend on things that are just, you know, kind of nice to haves. And so I think being super ruthless with the time and then you know, honestly the as you scale, what I have found is that my role has to evolve. Right? And I think it’s evolved from execution to enablement and acceleration. Right. Today I’m in a phase where enablement and acceleration is my main focus. and so you know that if I was executing across all these things that we had to do, I would, I wouldn’t have a minute to myself. I think, I think that’s the reality of a startup is that if you gave it 24 hours it would take it right away. And so I have to be really intentional about where I spend my time. but, but that as the company has scaled shifting my focus, always sort of recalibrating. You know, even with this capital raise now, there’s a lot of new things that have to be done and I, I, I kind of equated. I always think about the matrix where you know, he, he figured out how to slow the bullets down. That’s how it feels like the bullets are coming at you and it’s super fast and, and you have to figure out how to, how to actually have it make sense. and so I, I think it’s honestly like, it’s not easy. It is a daily drumbeat, just like culture in the company is a daily drumbeat. Being able to manage your psyche and manage your time and manage your energy. You can’t ever take your eye off the ball because the second you do, the startup will win.

>> Craig Gould: But let me ask you this. I feel like a lot of my listeners are maybe in the corporate world. They’re trying to climb a ladder, a big corporate ladder that has lots of other people on it. What advice would you offer to someone who might be considering, you know, hey, I’m, I’m not sure if I’m going to get to the C suite on this ladder. I feel the longing to start something on my own and go out and take that risk. What, you know, to that person that is amongst the huddled masses of middle management or even the smaller huddle masses of upper middle management. And they have a longing to be more, or to be on a catamaran out on the adventurous high seas of entrepreneurship. What would you recommend to them or what piece of advice would you offer?

>> Ajay Prakash: I mean, you know, I think there’s a number of pieces, of advice I could offer. Generally speaking, I’d say in terms of making those decisions on, you know, how you spend your time and who you’re spending with, it’s the only thing you control, you control in life, right? So I think it is something to be very intentional with. I would, you know, if your instinct and your conscience is pushing you towards entrepreneurship, I think there is an element of, of listening to it. You know, I think in terms of life, everyone has to define their own success. They’ve just find what it looks like. But if it’s fulfillment and, and doing the thing that drives you, then certainly I would listen to that voice inside of you. But I also would say it is a very challenging journey and I wouldn’t limp into it. It’s not just for the faint of heart. It’s not a hobby. so if you are going to actually build something, you know, number one, you got to wait for the bells to go off on what you’re building. There’s a little bit of, you know, a lot actually of gauging excitement along the way. I got great advice early on where I was told, hey, you start building, okay, are you excited? Cool. Next week, check and see how excited you are. And then the following week, check and see how excited you are. And keep doing that. Because if you are not going to maintain that excitement through all the stuff you have to do to get a company started, which is not glamorous, there’s no way you can maintain it for the 10, 15, 20 years. You need to actually build a company. And so if you’re going to make that move from being at a company, you know, probably some job stability, benefits, whatever else you have, but maybe not as exciting or driving you. And you’re going to do start a company, you have to go in eyes wide open. You have to know that this is something I really want to do. I’m really excited. You know, the bells have gone off and this thing is just like it just. I keep thinking about it and I can’t get it out of my mind. That’s really important upfront. And then I think you have to maintain that element of you’re going to manage your psyche through the ups and downs and it’s not Going to be easy. You don’t start with a stable job. I mean, I didn’t take a salary for the first two years. We, James, I bootstrapped this thing early on. it’s not obvious that it will be successful and, and don’t do it because of the obvious, like giant exit that’s going to happen at the end because it doesn’t happen for most at all. And it’s, it’s certainly not promise do it because you, it’s not the destination, it’s the journey, you know, So I don’t know, I think, I think you got to listen to that voice inside of you. That’s probably the most important piece of advice.

>> Craig Gould: Yeah, I think for most, entrepreneurs there’s a whole notion of compulsion. You do it because you have to, you know, it’s almost like an itch. You have to scratch.

>> Ajay Prakash: One of the quotes from one of my business school professors that stuck with me when I was making the leap into entrepreneurship was, was related to that. It was that regrets for the things you do can be tempered with time and regrets for the things you don’t do are inconsolable. And so if that voice, if that voice is pushing you and you feel like you really have to scratch that itch, I mean that there’s no better time than now. Right? You have to think about it from that perspective.

>> Craig Gould: Jay, I really appreciate your time this afternoon. If folks wanted to keep track of you or better yet outsource some laundry, where is the best place, to follow you guys and take advantage of your services?

>> Ajay Prakash: yeah, I mean I would love for anyone who’s listening to try rinse. We’re@rinse.com you can download the mobile app. You want to follow us, you know, Instagram and other social media channels, we’re there. But you know, I think, I think for us, you know, we are in 10 major markets across the US we will be in more. the goal is to be a household name. If you haven’t heard of us yet, you will soon. So we’re we’re excited about the journey.

>> Craig Gould: Well, again, I really appreciate your time today, Jay.

>> Ajay Prakash: Thanks man.