Clyn, a software startup based in Phoenix, has been selected for the first cohort of Amazon Web Service’s accelerator program for female founders.
Clyn is an online platform that connects cleaning professionals to people who need help tidying up. Clyn is one of 25 companies picked to be part of the AWS Impact Accelerator for Women Founders, an eight-week program that kicks off this week.
The company was founded and is led by Diana Muturia, an immigrant from Kenya who has endeavored to bring Clyn to life for years now.
Muturia came to the U.S. to attend college — studying math and mechanical engineering — but had to drop out near the end of her studies when she could not afford tuition. After a stint of homelessness, a friend invited her to stay in Phoenix in 2015 and she’s been here ever since.
During those years, when money was short, Muturia modeled and cleaned houses to get by. She realized that she and other cleaning professionals spent a lot of time fruitlessly seeking new clients and dealing with discrimination.
“I started to see other cleaners in the same community and get to bond with them,” she said in an interview. “Their experiences were similar; It's not as though we're not smart enough or they're not hardworking enough. It's because society kind of pushed them to the corner because they're different. And so I decided I'm going to do something about it.”
Clyn startup connects cleaners with customers
She thought that if there were a way for cleaning pros to connect with customers online, then they could spend less time leaving cards on random doors or windshields and more time actually cleaning. The online profiles would also show customers that these cleaners have skill and availability.
For years Muturia worked on Clyn in the background as she started working in tech, first at Insight Enterprises and then at Cisco.
Muturia had been relying on outside contractors to help build Clyn, but they never delivered on their work. In 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, she was out of money and decided to change her approach to building the company.
“I've worked with contractors for a while, and it's not working out,” she said of her thinking at the time. “So I just have to sit down and learn how to code.”
With an understanding of code under her belt, Muturia was better able to communicate with developers. She brought on two part-time developers (both working remotely from Kenya) in 2020, and the company has been flourishing since.
Today the site has 2,000 users in New York, Texas, Florida and Arizona. These markets have popped thanks to online influencers in the cleaning space (so-called clean-fluencers) who found the Clyn app and started recommending it to their followers, allowing Clyn to expand without marketing expenditures.
Clyn founder heads to Bay Area for accelerator
Muturia said the Clyn team has five employees: Gilbert-based chief technology officer Joshua Bahr, three developers in Kenya and Muturia. She said they are looking to add more employees in the coming months.
Clyn had been a passion project for years, but Muturia is finally turning it into her full time gig; She left her job at Cisco last week to focus on Clyn full time.
Earlier this year AWS put up $30 million to start accelerator programs for underrepresented founders, the first of which was focused on Black founders.
Muturia applied for that program and did not get in, but she spent the intervening months prepping to get into the female-focused program. Muturia, and the other women founders, will travel to Amazon HQ in early October to start the program, work remotely for the majority of the course and close it out in San Francisco in December.
“What I want to learn from this is just how to scale. We want to really expand in Phoenix; Phoenix is home to us,” she said. “We've been busting our butts. We call ourselves roaches for a reason: We never die. But we really want to gain some wings and be a nice little bird.”
Clyn will receive $225,000 in cash and AWS Activate credits as part of the program, as well as mentoring, technical guidance and connections to potential investors.
Muturia hopes that momentum will swell heading into next year; the staff at TechStars, a well-known accelerator in Boulder, Colorado, have asked her to apply for an upcoming cohort as well.
