YouSaid · the spoken record

Aaron Krause

lines on the record: 121
first: 2026-03-16
most recent: 2026-03-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I'm enjoying washing the dishes and seeing it rinse clean. And I look at it and I'm like, oh my God, if it had a smile face on it, I could clean the silverware on both sides. And I grab a steak knife.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that night, I go to do the dishes. And I'm scrubbing around the kitchen with a regular sponge. And I see this thing sitting there. And then I remembered that texture change thing. And I thought, hmm, I wonder, you know, does that work in the sink? And so I made it warm and I started, you know, scrubbing some stuff. And then I made it cold. When I made it cold, it scrubbed all the burnt spaghetti sauce off the plate in two seconds. And now I'm going into my engineering inventing mode. And what I'm noticing now is that everything is round. Pots, pans, plates, coffee pots, muffin tins, casserole dishes, they're all round. Why are we using a rectangular sponge with edges? Because this is getting all the way to the sides of all these things. And it's a perfect shape.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct the cold air was changing the sponge into a harder textured sponge and the harder it got, the better it scrubbed. And then when I took it with all this dirt and muck in it, I would put that back into the warm water and it would go completely soft and I'd squeeze it and everything would rinse out of it. I did all the lawn furniture and held it up and looked at it, and it looked like I hadn't used it. It was brand spanking new”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Literally squished down like a regular sponge. And I took it out and squeezed it a bunch of times. And I was like, well, it's what I have. Let me try it. I started scrubbing with it. And it started cleaning. And it was pretty good, but it was 50 degrees out. And so the longer I had it out, the harder it got. It started to crystallize in my hand.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it scratches things really easily. And I'm scrubbing this furniture and it's taking the paint off. And she's out there watching and she's like, you're scratching the paint. What are you doing? And I was like, oh, shoot, I can't use this. What am I going to use to scrub this stuff up? And I remembered this box of rock hard scrubbing things at the office. And I thought, you know, I'll bring a couple of those home. And so I brought two or three of them home. And I made a bucket of hot soapy water because it was 50 degrees out and I didn't feel like working in cold water. And I had never really experimented with hot and cold temperatures with this sponge. It was always in the back of the factory scrubbing my hands with cold water. So I dunked it into this bucket of hot soapy water and it went completely soft.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's exactly right. Like they're sitting in the box collecting dust every once in a while. I probably grab one over the years to clean my own hands, but they last a long time. So I wasn't pulling a lot of them maybe one or two a year. In 2011, my beautiful wife was nagging me to clean the lawn furniture. It was going to be spring soon. And, you know, the lawn furniture sits out there and gets all like moldy and gets allergy on it and stuff like that. So I started out using a traditional sponge. You know, it's that yellow stinky sponge and it's got that green scour on the back.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, they were our biggest customer side of business, not our only customer, but our biggest. Interestingly enough, one of the products that wasn't selling was the sponge called a scrub dye that was sitting in the back that no one had wanted. But we were selling the aprons and we were selling the conditioning brushes.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Several requirements that we had to achieve in order to get paid out our full earnout. And some of them were that we had to hit a certain sales number and combined. Like of my new products, we had to sell this amount or I didn't get paid out millions of dollars. And that's where I learned the frustrations of working for a multi-billion dollar conglomerate. It's mired down in red tape and politics and it was extremely frustrating for someone as entrepreneurial and ADHD as me. And so there was parts of it that I loved. And then there were parts of it that were extremely frustrating for me.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So you hit the nail on the head. They knew I was starting a new business because they were already a customer of it. And so I was running the same factory for them and under the same roof, I was running a totally separate company called Innovative Accessory Products. And it was probably the most incredible deal ever because I don't have any issues anymore. Like all I had to do was run the business. I didn't do the marketing. I didn't do the sales. When the machine broke, it was their machine. I called them up and said, your machine broke. It's not my machine anymore. And it's going to cost, you know, this is how much the new motor is. But I had to go and fix the machine, make sure that the place was operating. And I had to transfer all the knowledge to them in year one and year two. And I had...”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm glad you said that because I have a lot of passion around that's my reputation. And I felt like they bought this business and they did pay a huge multiple. I mean, Very, very double digit multiple for this business. And I was like, I'm going to prove to them that they got not just what they bought, but every dime of it. And I also had a consulting contract.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As a consultant, and when you're acquired by a company with a prestige of 3M, it's life altering. And I was so proud to work with that company and go to headquarters. And then I learned a lot about how corporations actually function, like big corporations. And I can't tell you how valuable that is to me now that I'm running a much larger organization.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the entire markets just began to... Collapse, and you know, we were completely insulated because we had sold the company and I had a contract with 3M to keep working with them.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“3 a.m. And he says, Oh my God, you are the luckiest guy I ever met. And I said, Why? Because I sold my company to 3M. And he goes, no, because I'm reading a memo from the CEO of 3M and it says shut down every acquisition the world's coming to an end. And that was September 1st, 2008.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And on Monday morning, I come into the office and I get a call from the lead M&A guy that we've been doing the whole deal with.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just to make sure it was real and We had a great time that weekend. We went out, did a bunch of great dinners and exciting.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, this is the craziest thing. I signed the papers, the money transfers, I literally go from not just paycheck to paycheck because some weeks I didn't get a paycheck to a multimillionaire. Immediately, and it's the most shocking I spent all week at opening up my bank account and just looking to make sure it was real.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I thought it was kind of trash too. Nobody wanted it. Sitting in a box collecting dust. Of course they're not going to buy that. And I think at one point they were like, you know. We're not paying you for it if you want to leave it in the deal, you know, sure, we'll take it. And I was like, no, if you're not buying it, we're taking it out of the deal. I'll start a separate company. I'll make an accessories business and I'll sell my accessories to someone else.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And here's why the company is worth this kind of money. And the patents were like the most important, right? Because you get a patent for a set period of time. You own the exclusive rights that you have a monopoly and you can make your killing in that period of time. And so I'm like, well, I have a patent on this brush for the next 15 years. And they're like, yeah, not interested in that brush. You can just minus that off of the deal. Oh, you thought that brush was worth a million dollars, Aaron? Minus $1 million. Oh, this apron, really cool idea. By the way, not interested. Minus a million dollars. What's this thing scrub daddy for cleaning hands? What are your sales? Zero. Yeah, minus that off. They went through and carved out five items and said, not interested in any of them. And they went through this list and literally showed me the math and said, okay, so we're taking these out. And here's the number you said you'd sell the company for. And we're taking those items out of the deal. Those are valuable. And you agreed on that price.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Asset you have. And so I have to go through a list of everything, the desks, the computers, the patents, right? Every piece of equipment. And I have a patent on this thing called Scrubdaddy. I got a patent for the next, you know, 15 years for this hand scrubber. And I'm going through a list of all of these things that I have patents on. I have a patent on a brush that has an ergonomic shape that helps you clean the buffing pads that I invented called the edge conditioner brush. And I got a patent. I patented an apron that has Velcro cord holders. So when you're buffing the car, the cord doesn't fall and get wound up in the machine that's spinning at 2,000 RPM.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We started getting into that depths of what that number was going to be. And they were like, Aaron, you need to justify, we have a board, we're shareholders, we're a public company. You need to justify literally every like.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hung up and they called back and said, We got disconnected. I said, No, we didn't. The conversation's over. Goodbye. And the business guy called me up and said, Aaron, I don't understand what happened. I said, I told you do not come with that number. I'm not interested. If you're going to base it on EBITDA, there's nothing to talk about. Because, you know, our business is just getting off the ground. I'd rather keep going. And I'll take all of your market share. And then we can talk about a multiple then. So he said, Aaron, what if we doubled the number? And I said, not even close. He said tripled the number. I said, you're getting closer. He said, triple the number and we'll buy some of your accessories. We'll make a contract to buy accessories from you as well. And I said, okay, now we have a conversation.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I told him if you do that, the conversation is over and I'll hang up on you. And the day that we had our zip code meeting, they called me up and I had forbidden them to talk about EBITDA. It had to be about the value proposition of what I was bringing them. And I get on with these finance guys. And the guy goes, so Aaron, based on EBITDA, and I hung up.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No. 3M and I had a very contentious negotiation and due diligence. The major sticking point with 3M was the price. I distinctly remember this. They have this thing called the zip code conversation. It's when you get to the point with 3M that they're going to buy your business, that they throw out a number and you see if you're in the same zip code and if you're not in the same zip code, the conversation's over. And I told them from the gecko guys, I know our sales aren't anything huge, but I'm not selling the company on our sales or our EBITDA. I'm selling the company based on a technology that's going to change the entire industry that I own the patents for the next like 15 years.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I let them negotiate themselves. I said, like, what happens in the case that a company buys me? And they said, we want this amount of money paid to us and we want 12 month supply at a locked in price. And then if that happens and you get bought out, we'll let you down.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm pretty devastated because I know this is the future of the company and it needs to be sold to 3M. But I'll say this. I didn't have a deal with 3M. I had nothing. They had expressed an interest and I saw the interest and I needed to be able to have the ability to do that. But I also needed to keep running my business as if it would never happen. I start looking through the contract. There's got to be some way out of this contract. So I said, listen, guys. We need to renegotiate this contract because it's really egregious. Like you have the worldwide exclusivity on a product. You have this in perpetuity. And for minimums that are not even 1% of the market share. Like none of this is fair. And in that negotiation, I just need to find a way to make sure there's a clause that if someone wants to buy me, there's a way out. And the way out.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes. And they came down and I toured them around my factory and they see this machine that I built, this fully automated machine that makes buffing pads. And I watch the three M engineers' eyes blow out of his head. And he was like, where did you buy that? And I said, I didn't. I built it. He was like, You're kidding me. And I was like, no, I built it. He's like, could you build another one? I'm like, yeah, of course. And from that point, the discussions about them wanting to license our technology or, you know, use our buffing pad technology somehow turned into we want to buy the company.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was in perpetuity as long as they met their minimum requirements. And that was, that became a real major issue for us.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I was desperate to be honest. At that point, I had dumped a huge amount of money into this project and we needed to get sales out of it. I mean, I had put the company in a little bit of a financial stress point.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was not great. It was foolish and I signed a worldwide exclusivity for this technology for very, very low minimum quantities.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had created the first double sided buffing pad with a quick connect disconnect automatic centering reversible adapter. You'd snap it on and it was like smooth as butter. And I thought this was game changing and it was industry changing. And one of our customers. Who was a big chemical manufacturer in the detailing business, they saw the technology and they wanted the exclusivity for this system.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not only Lava soap, but these guys, you're talking to the wrong market. Like, they don't care about dirty hands. They would rather go home with dirty hands and spend $4 on a sponge. And so it died. It died right away. No one wanted it. I had made 150 samples. And I'm a bit of a pack rat. I always save things I'm working on. And I think, oh, I'll come to this, you know, one day later. And I spend money on these. So I can't throw them out with good conscience. So I put them in a box. I labeled it scrap. And I put it in the back of the factory.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's the problem. It's a really, we call it a highly engineered polymer, and it was made in Germany. So at the ship it across the ocean, then we had to cut it and shape it. And it was four and a half dollars.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And these are all my customers already. And that was it. We started trying to sell it and market it. And no one wanted it.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, we need a name, and we're sitting in the office, and I'm talking to one of my office managers, and he's looking at it, and it looks like a two eyes and some hair. It looks like a radical skateboard guy maybe. And it looks a little bit like the GoDaddy symbol, you know, like the GoDaddy symbol with those spiky hair. And he's like, we should call it scrub daddy. And I said, Oh my God, that is the best name ever.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it needed to be a little bit stiffer, and the pore sizes need to be a little bit wider, and it needed to be a little denser. So I contacted the company. I said, can you make this? Can you do that? And they said, sure, sure. And they sent me prototypes. And I made some scrubbers. And they were the best thing I'd ever used. And I love them and I use them every day. And then the light went on. What am I doing? I'm in the body shop industry. I'm selling to car washes and body shops and mechanic shops.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, really fun, yeah, and uh, so anyway, it works great. It's cleaning my fingers beautifully, and then I want to get underneath my fingernails. So I cut some ridges on the top of it so it would fit underneath my fingernails, but it was hard to hold it. So I cut two holes. And I put my two fingers in, and then the sponge stayed on my hand, and I could just power through my fingers.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then I could stick my finger into that hole and just spin it, and it would scrub your whole finger all the way around. I scrub my hands with it with regular soap, and it comes completely clean. By the way, I'm only using cold water because in the back of the factories, a lot of times you don't have a hot water heater. So you're just using cold water out of this really fun in the”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know every company in the world makes foam, so I send out a request to everybody. Send me the roughest, toughest foam that you have. And this company in Germany sends me this rock hard yellow foam. So I cut like a regular rectangular shape and I start scrubbing my hands with it. And it's hard to hold. So I cut a circle. And that was really easy to hold on to. And then I want to get my fingers clean.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Always karmacached, right? Because our hands are filthy, dirty. And I'm like a mechanic because my heads are like always under these machines and getting filthy. And I couldn't get them clean. And I couldn't use this soap anymore. I wanted to use my soap that smelled good and bubbled up and foamed. So I started experimenting with different materials. And then one day. I just saw the wall of foam that we make our buffing pads out of, and I was like, I wonder if our rough foam could scrub my hands. And I tried it and it didn't work, but it worked a little bit. The problem was I was using buffing pad foam, right? It's too soft. It's for rubbing on a car and not scratching it. I want something that's really going to scrub my hands.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I used to build all these machinery, all this new equipment. And I was the only one who knew how to fix them. I'd come back in the office, my hands were filthy, dirty. And I used to have this white keyboard that I would type on. And I remember looking down one day and seeing it was like covered in soot and grease. And I was like, geez, look at my hands. Like, I need a better way to clean my hands. And I started out using different kinds of soaps like lava or goje. Oh, lava.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we started, I'd say by 98, we were doing over a million, a million and a half. But I could see the writing on the wall. This was going to become multi million dollars. Like we were going to be selling these. There's tens of millions of pads sold every year. And it's not something that you would use or many of the listeners may use. It's something that's used in every car wash, detail, body shop. It's also used to polish marble, airplanes, boats, statues. It's a huge business.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the company name was called Dedication to Detail, which, by the way, my dad gave me that name. And then we bought this automated equipment. And then we needed to move into a serious warehouse. And so we rented our first 3,000 square foot real manufacturing site.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, the only thing I could think of was that I couldn't keep washing cars and doing this at the same time, and we needed to focus solely on this. And then we needed to focus on how to produce this more efficiently. And so we went to an automation company that makes robots. And they built me this robot that would cut a pad in 11 seconds with no one involved.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that was the first time I realized, oh my God, this is going to be big. We're not just selling to individual shops now. I'm selling to one of the manufacturers of car washing and detailing chemicals. And if this works, he's going to start selling this and distributing it to all of his distributors. And that's what happened. It took off immediately from there. And in three months, we were selling them all over the country. And so we knew right away this is the scalable business, not the car washing business.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we started out selling direct on through this ad we put into the magazine, but very quickly some of the distributors started calling us. And there's a local company in Philadelphia that's a manufacturer of car washing and detailing chemicals called RDEX. And I knew them really well because they brought me all my car washing chemicals. And so I asked to have a meeting with the owner. And I showed him our buffing pad. And he gave me a check for $10,000 on the spot and said, give me as many pads as I can get for $10,000.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That I work for And I said, Rich, I have this crazy idea I want to make this buffing pad. I showed it to him. He said, you know what? Come here every day after work when the shop shuts down around five o'clock and I'll work with you on it. And we spent probably two months together working on this. And he did it. He welded together a bunch of hand cranking machinery and with two cheap, I mean, a hundred dollar drill presses and a $200 bandsaw we created the first edge buffing pad and all my employees are in awe. They're like, dude, this is the best buffing pad. We have ever used. And I knew right away we had something real unique. And so I put some ads and some local trade magazines, not local national trade magazines. It was called National Car Washington and Detailing Magazine. And I put a full page ad showing the edge buffing pad.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm using money from the company. We're on a shoestring budget. I told you the car wash business is not making a lot of money. I had already borrowed another $10,000 from my dad for the patent. There was no money to do this, and I literally was at the verge of giving up, and then one day I remembered this crazy guy that owns a spiral staircase manufacturing company that he worked for.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, that shape can't be made. And eventually, I found this one guy, and he said, listen, you're going to need to build a piece of robotic machinery in order to make this happen. So I need like $100,000 up front. And then I'll try to make a piece of equipment to make this thing. Because what you're trying to do is you're trying to cut this flexible foam pad into a circle with beveled edges that meet at a perfect point in space. And there's no equipment in the world that can make this. So give me $100,000 now. If I make the machine and it works, it's another hundred thousand. And that's before we talk about how much each pad is going to cost you to make.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We did both. Remember, I had a business partner and he ran the car washing business. I didn't completely leave the company, but the only way to make this happen was there was no internet. I opened up what we call the yellow pages and I started looking up, you know, foam. Where do I buy foam? And who cuts foam? And this is where we find out why no one's done it. So I'm going fabricator to fabricator and I'm getting laughed out of people's offices. And remember, I'm a 23-year-old kid. Like, I don't know. People are laughing. You don't know what you're doing.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And every page that he flipped, his face got redder and redder, and he got angrier and angrier. And then he threw it down the table and said, let me ask you a question, Aaron. If you had a toothache, would you take a drill and start drilling your own tooth? And I was like, no. He was like, what makes you think you can write a patent? He's like, here's my recommendation. We file with the USPTO and we beg them to rescind your application and pretend they never saw it. And then I will write you a patent application. And I was like, okay. And we did that. And he got me my first patent.”
2026-03-16 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Scrub Daddy: Aaron Krause. How a Failed Experiment Became a Billion-Dollar Sponge · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT