Washio

AMA :)

@mrjmetz thanks for answering questions! When I was in college, I ran a laundry service that connected students with a local wash + fold laundromat, so I've always been interested in how you guys have scaled. - Have you found that wash+fold laundromats in your markets have significant excess wash+fold capacity? I'd think this would be necessary to sell them on standardized pricing (ex: "You would otherwise be making nothing during this time. We'll fill your excess capacity at x price.") Does Washio lead to increased machine utilization? Our experience was that wash+fold had high utilization and not much excess capacity. Volume discounts were generally disappointing, because increasing wash+fold capacity required at least one additional hire, even where there was excess machine capacity to accommodate. - How many laundromats do you need to sign up per user to get the right liquidity and turnaround time? Do you find that there are peak loading problems? - How far away are we from a world where all of the unused washing machine capacity OUTSIDE of laundromats is rentable? :) - I'm outside of your markets, so forgive me if this is a dumb question, but do you provide the ability to rate laundry providers? If so, do you see wide variations in quality across a single market? - Is there still a trust barrier to overcome for people when it comes to handing their dirty clothes to a stranger? For our service, we heard questions often from customers (especially women, for obvious and justifiable reasons) about who would actually see and handle the laundry. Thanks, and feel free to ignore any or all of these questions!

Hey @mrjmetz, Thanks for doing this AMA. I have a few questions. 1) How do you plan to differentiate yourself from other competitors? I know you guys have been posted on here before but it seems the only thing that's changed is your design. 2) Your app store description says pick-ups in 1 hour or less but the Product Hunt description says 30 minutes. Have you improved your pickup/delivery infrastructure to guarantee 30 minute pickups or was this a typo? I know FlyCleaners already had on-demand pickup. And YC-backed Cleanly already offered 45 minute guaranteed pick-ups. Is there a major difference between Washio and these competitors? 3) Where did you guys get inspiration for the new design? Did you guys do user-testing? (Looks beautiful by the way). As a recent transplant to the Bay Area, I'm excited to try you guys out.