YouSaid · the spoken record

Vijen Patel

lines on the record: 84
first: 2025-10-06
most recent: 2025-10-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And doing the math, if the average person spends $40 a month on dry cleaning and you get 25 users, that's it. Realize you generate a thousand dollars of revenue, you have to use to spend about half of it to actually get it cleaned.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, this was the huge benefit, but we were called an amenity. And so as a result, our pitch to all these buildings was you will now be able to charge higher in rent or keep people longer in their buildings. And that was enough for these owners to take a chance.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We did a lot of gorilla marketing. So, that same idea we had where we sat at a storefront and put a table down and talked to people. We did the exact same thing in the lobbies. Because what we realized in all the work we did up front is that the reason why everyone wanted to drop off their clothes with a known person is because they're dropping off what they love to wear. And that gives them confidence. And so ultimately when we realize the best tactic is it's not the lockers, but it was actually us setting up tables in the lobbies of apartment buildings and offices to say, hey, we're a dry cleaner. And this was really, I mean, guy, I think over the course of our entire entrepreneurship, I think I might have hosted a thousand events in lobbies of buildings. And that would be really where we'd convert.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hate to be in the buildings, and our big breakthrough movement guy was around the month eight mark. And I'll never forget this building. It's called 1225 Old Town. And at the time, this was the hottest property to be in. It had the highest rent per square foot. It had a bunch of users who were around the 20 to 35 mark. And we knew if we could get them, we could get any residential building in Chicago. And they said no for five months. And ultimately we were lucky, but we ended up having a lot of friends or friends or friends who lived in that building. And we actually had them incessantly email the property manager. And I think at the time of like the ninth email, she's like, all right, I'll meet. And guy, once you got 1225 Old Town, that's when the model started working.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We quickly found out that no one wanted to bring their dry cleaning to work. And that was when the light bulb went off, where we need to find the path of least resistance. And it ended up being, we soon found out, proximity to someone's wardrobe. In terms of not even in the buildings of apartment buildings, but also in terms of where we'd go in the apartment building, if we can be close to someone's wardrobe, we had a higher ability for them to become customers.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so, again, it was like some of these favors were like, all right, we got 10 leads from this engine, 10 from our family, 10 from like our friends. Specifically, guy, we thought offices were like where we were going to clean up. And we were completely wrong.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Start, we like we would just call like you know, family members and be like, Hey, do we know anyone who's in real estate and has an office building? And, you know, we get one meeting and they'd be like, all right, this isn't going to work, but you should meet my friend. And actually, another favor we asked was actually at Notre Dame. But we actually asked at the time the head of the endowment to say, hey, we're going to go do this idea. And he so kindly sent 10 emails to owners and developers in Chicago”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is where the edge in Chicago helped, but we, and actually, before that, we also started a storefront. So we needed a place to work. And we put lockers in the front and we use the back two-thirds as our office. And so that was actually our first location. And so in Lakeview, Lincoln Park. And then we started talking to office buildings and gyms. And we tried to get in as many office buildings as we could. We completely failed.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was convenience, but it was price on one item. And ultimately, I still think to this day, I don't know if people know how much they pay to dry clean a sweater, but everyone knows how much it costs to dry clean a shirt. Exactly. And that was the price we were incredibly focused on. All of our marketing said $199 a shirt. And actually, I think we start at $179, guy. Because we wanted to undercut to just get volume in. And I believe we had $5 for a dress. And that was enough justification on the price for people to take a leap of faith.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that at the end of the day, you know, you say all that, and that does sound painful, but it was still less painful than the alternative.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you're exactly right. They were simple. And we actually call them dumb lockers, but they were dumb by design because that brought cost low. They had a DigiLock on them. And you would just type a four-digit code and you'd turn it. And then the only other thing that would make it special was we put a number at the top. So each person, so say a certain building would have eight lockers. Four on the top, four on the bottom. Each of those would be numbered one through eight. You'd go, guy, drop off your laundry in this hypothetically office building, and you would just send us a text. And it would just be this one number, and you would just say the number three. And that would give us the signal to go pick it up. And we want to keep it as simple as possible.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We put all of our life savings into it. I had about $120,000 saved from McKinsey and private equity. And my co-founder did as well. And we were fortunate we raised like $100,000 of debt from our parents.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Chicago. No We did it at like main intersections, and we said, Hey, if we were to put a location at your office, would you use it? If we were to put one near your home, would you use it? And our initial hypothesis guy was that offices were actually the place to go. And we did the math that if we just get half a percent of people to use our service, we would have taken home two or three thousand dollars a month from each location.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So to me, this is a math equation. You're exactly right. We did research and we said, hey, the average person spends about $40 per month. So how many people do we need to get to use our service so that we can just make money? And actually before that, even guy, we set up a table on sidewalks. And before we spent any dollars on actually any of the piece of equipment, we would just survey people.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So move back to Chicago 2013 and was so excited to be back home. And I think at the time there were like five to seven PCs. And we pitched them all. And the general feedback was like, hey, you're building a nice small business, like lifestyle business, I think was the right word, which like still hurts my soul when I hear that. And so all of them passed. All of them passed. But ultimately, guy, I was having so much fun. It was the first time in my career where I was just having a blast. And I think Drew and I confiding each other and said, hey, there's something here. And it was a lot of belief like this is worth it. But it was incredibly discouraging. In fact, it got to the point where after we actually launched an investor came back and said, we do want to invest with you. At that point, we were just so sick of, you know, hearing no, we're like, we're not going to take on any investment.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And ours was as well, except the difference was that we realized because we had a for-profit, like we just were so focused on a private equity lens of like, hey, we need to make profit. And so we were just dogmatic about what we eventually call the unicomics. And we put the math on like a rinse model or some of these other models like Washio. Like, how are they going to make money? And we did the math and the max transactions you could do with a pickup and drop-off service, which have been the true Uber model, was four to six transactions per hour. And then we realized with our model, we could do 26. And so that was the real unlock as we're, you know, pitching these investors like, hey, like this thing will make money.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So at that time, the Uber for X movement was wild. There was Uber for everything. And that was the Washio pitch. That was the rinse pitch. And it was part of the picture.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ultimately, we had advantages there. Drew is from Chicago. I am as well. We had some relationships with real estate owners. Drew specifically did that would help us get some early wins. But this was a hard business. And as we thought about who to hire, who we could surround ourselves with, we had a tribe. We had a community in Chicago that we didn't have in San Francisco.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He was in Chicago, actually, and this is hysterical. I'm probably the only founder ever who moved from San Francisco to Chicago. We decided to start this in Chicago.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Drew and I went to Notre Dame's together. And when I was going to start this, one of the biggest issues in this idea was just how hard it was going to be. It's a giant flaw. And how is some private equity guy going to all of a sudden turn into a dry cleaner? And so we knew that I needed a co-founder, period. And quickly through some conversations with friends, I realized Drew could be that person. Literally, we did an MBTI test early on, and we were the exact opposites, which I loved because we were different personalities, but we had a common kind of similar value system. And then we dated, right? We dated like we were friends, but we weren't the closest of friends. And getting into Noam over three or four months, I realized we would have different strengths that could complement each other.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. It's a less efficient model, and our solution was more convenient relative to them having to wait for a driver to come. They could just go down, throw it into a locker, text us, and go on with their day.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So funny enough, Ajay, who's the CEO of Rint, we both approached and created dry clean businesses in the same month and had many common friends who said to each other to talk to each other. And so we actually, and he's still a friend, we actually got coffee in 2013 to talk about it. And it was great because we made a connection. And we didn't talk again for three or four years, but he went down a different path, which is pickup and drop off. And I went down the hardware path. Yet we did research. And to your point, Washio was the big one, but I did not, we never made contact with him.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Would say overwhelmingly, you know, every nine out of 10 people we'd say is, hey, why are you doing this? And in fact, I remember calling my mom and telling her I was going to start this. And she cried. And she said, you're doing what? Like you're leaving private equity to go start a dry cleaner. And it's not something that any, you know, traditional private equity firm would ever look at doing or a venture capital firm. You know, they would have looked at way sexier ideas. But what was fun about that experience guy was that by being so vulnerable and telling everyone about it and telling all the reasons we'd fail, we actually sat on that feedback and then just started thinking proactively about how to mitigate those failures.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was but it was 20. And by tech guy, we were referring to SMS. I mean, it's funny. One of the biggest pieces of feedback we would get is actually from people who say they love going to their dry cleaner. And we'd ask why. And the simplest response would be like, we like pointing out where stains are and any specific detail request. And so our solution to that was actually not even tech. It ultimately became tech. But at the time, it was actually put a pen and paper on the side of our locations and a sticker roll. And so tech was actually not part of our DNA.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct, and we thought our ideal customers would be bankers and doctors and people just who had longer hours that couldn't meet the dry cleaner hours.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“From the consumer side, the biggest one was the 24 7 access. And could you create something? And actually, there was like a little company at the time called Laundry Locker that kind of tried this out a bit in San Francisco. And the idea was to, hey, go here 24-7. I think you'd use like you'd get like a fob to try to get into the building, but you could then access it 24-7. But then as we dug in, we realized, oh my, not just could we create something that's more convenient, but this would actually allow us to eliminate half the cost because dry cleaners operate 15% margin businesses. And by the way, when you take out the salary of the owner operator, it's like 0%. And so, you know, everyone said, hey, why are you doing this? This is a low margin industry. But what we realized is that if we could get some 24-7 access or depot, you can get rid of rent and labor on site. And that all of a sudden allows you to operate at 40% margins.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dress formally, and I remember we worked long hours. And it was a pain point to go to the dry cleaner. And again, think back to 2012, 11. So dry cleaner was often frequently visited. And I remember the only time I'd be able to drop it off would be a Saturday. And that was just like, I don't want to go to dry cleaner on Saturday. I want to go see my friends. And then combine that with this analytical finance math background I have. And one of the best things you ever did is over those six months, over that six-month process, my eventual co-founder would fly out to San Francisco. And guy, we just, I just made an investment deck on it. Like, it wasn't even a startup deck. It was like, hey, how would I grade this startup? And it was like a 12-page deck, but we put this idea in front of anyone we could talk to. And you could imagine, you know, I think we talked to probably 100 people over the course of the six months.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Looked at what. I had a passion for moderately, right? Which was consumer and retail, and I had some edge on that just because I had spent five years on it. And then it was like, pick the least worst idea. And I'm going to write an idea of creating chai packets from India. And that probably would have been a better idea. Another one was dentures. But at the end of the day, there was something about dry clean that got us excited. Actually, to be clear, actually, now that I look back at it, our private equity firm was business formal. Like, I still to this day have all these suits and ties and shirts”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would think the answer is yes, but it wasn't. And the reason why was like I was in this private equity bubble. You know, all the private equity firms in San Francisco were in one building, in one maritime plaza. And then I kind of looked at starting a company as like a private equity guy. And I was like, all right, let me think through what would be a good opportunity. And there was literally zero to no dream. It was, all right, I need to find a highly fragmented industry, one that has low technology and no branding. And so like, by the way, the irony is that if you pick those three things up, you actually should result in taxis. As you know, I ended up with dry cleaning And so it was a different path altogether.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I realized, I mean, I was mediocre at private equity at best because, you know, good private equity analyst just needs to sit in front of a computer all day and just crank on models and decks. And I was here and I needed to be with people and create change and change the world. And that was the aha of like, oh my, I need to go put my money where my mouth is. Like I need to go be myself.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's correct, and I focus on consumer. And I'll never forget there were some of these brands, like, I don't know if you recall like Brookside, Sahale Nuts. And we had the opportunity to put investments in. And ultimately, we didn't get there because we were so analytical about everything. And the problem with consumer is that there's a bit of a gut feel relative to other areas that you can invest in. And so I ended up over two years not being able to do any deals. But I think sometimes about all those companies we could have backed in that basket, and it's probably north of worth more than $5 billion today.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it was interesting because we were the 2008 class. And everyone would have said, hey, you're going to be able to do these case studies with the NBA or do all these amazing things, travel around the world and everyone got there. And the economy had shifted. And everyone was doing cost cutting in Iowa or whatever it might be. And being from the Midwest, I was just incredibly thankful to have a job. But I think even to this day, our satisfaction level of like a cohort of business analysts was probably one of the lowest you ever had. And so we had, you know, among us 55 people, I think 30 of the 55 became entrepreneurs. Something around that number. But at the end of the day, the end of our work always culminated in a PowerPoint presentation. And so it just felt like there was something left to be desired.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Incredibly. And guy, I made $40,000. I had friends in private equity who at this point making partner and making a million dollars plus per year. I'm at one point calling my dad and saying, hey, dad, when this doesn't work out, if this doesn't work out, can I borrow some money so I can start again? Like not a business, but to start life again.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was invited in Nashville. It was raining, and I was walking to an event to sell dry cleaning. And I remember realizing, I don't want to do this when I'm 45 years old. We had been working for about 1,000 days in a row. We were open 24-7. And there was just such a toll that had taken on us from bootstrapping this.”
2025-10-06 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Pressbox and Tide Cleaners: Vijen Patel. The $1.99 Gamble That Built a National Brand · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT