It’s not every day a pitch about a laundromat hardware and software startup lands in my inbox.
But when I heard last week that Cents had raised a $140 million Series C, it signaled a lot: that tech can generate predictable revenue streams in overlooked industries, that demand for laundromat businesses still outpaces supply, and that investors are widening their search for that hard-to-build cushion otherwise known as a moat.
It was a story I had to chase. So I invited Alex Jekowsky, the co-founder and CEO of Cents on Macro Talk ahead of the company’s news.
Cents is an all-in-one platform that helps laundromat owners update their operations and payments — and even tap into Uber and DoorDash to offer pickup and delivery. And though software drives revenue, Alex sees hardware as the key to moat.
“Marrying the physical and the digital world creates a moat and a retention strategy that is unlike what any feature can develop,” Alex tells me.
Below, in the transcript of our podcast — which I’ve fact-checked and linked to primary sources — you’ll learn:
How to sell SaaS to Main Street
What Alex sees as the next catalysts for growth (hint: taking cues from gyms and Amazon Prime Video)
Why his outbound sales team is smaller than his customer success team
His target annual revenue per employee
What made this round of financing different
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