For startups, cash is king. But at Chicago-based Cashdrop, it's also a design aesthetic.
CEO Ruben Flores-Martinez, using an in-house printer the startup uses to make T-shirts and other merchandise, printed a dollar bill sticker and slapped it on an office wall. It turns out, once you put one dollar bill on a wall, it's hard to stop.
"I just started piling them up and next thing you know, I had a wall full of money," he said.
Cash, both as wallpaper and referenced via neon signs with quotes like "Get Rich or Die Tryin'," is a fitting central theme for Cashdrop, which has created a contactless commerce platform for small businesses.
Its platform, founded in 2019, lets anyone create an online storefront in less than 15 minutes and facilitates contactless payment without handling cash or swiping credit cards. It also charges no fees to the business who use it.
The end users make purchases by scanning a QR code or a custom link companies put in their Instagram bio, on TikTok or elsewhere. It aims to be as simple to use as Venmo or Cash App, but with the power of Square or Shopify for the merchant. Cashdrop makes money by adding a 5% convenience fee per each transaction, which is paid by the customer.
Its goal is to help anyone quickly and easily create an online shop and start selling their wares instantly. More than 2,000 merchants are selling on its platform, from a 13-year-old in California selling slime kits with her mom, to Miami's Good Time Hotel, a venture between Pharrell Williams and entrepreneur David Grutman, who's also a Cashdrop investor.
The bulk of its customers are restaurants and upstart e-commerce merchants, but it also works with truck stops to help truckers easily pay for fuel, along with music festivals. It was the online payment provider for the recent Michelada Fest in Chicago, allowing people to purchase tickets, get scanned at the door, and order food and drinks right from their phone.
Flores-Martinez says Cashdrop is building a "digital commerce ecosystem" for merchants, allowing them to simplify their orders and payments all in one place.
"It didn’t make sense to us that you have to use a product for tickets, and a product for selling food, and a product for accepting credit cards," he said. "It seemed like a like of fragmentation. We really believe the future is to enable entrepreneurs that want to sell online to have one platform that can serve all these needs."
Cashdrop raised a $2.7 million seed round in August 2020. The startup has since raised another $12 million this year, which it plans to formally announce in the coming months, Flores-Martinez said.
The startup has around 20 employees, 14 of which work out of a colorful South Loop office that features plenty of artwork, neon signs, a photography studio and even a barber's chair. The company invites barbers who use the Cashdrop platform to come in and cut hair for its staff.
Flores-Martinez said its Chicago-based workforce is largely back in the office full-time and is fully vaccinated.
"For a high-growth startup in the early stages, remote work hasn’t fully worked for us," he said. "Building culture is one of the most important things at this stage, and it's really hard to do it behind a screen."
Flores-Martinez said Cashdrop has grown 500% this year and expects even faster growth in 2022. It plans to be at around 50 or 60 employees in the next year, he said.
