A San Francisco startup that is working to take the quarters out of laundry day has extended its seed round with an additional $4.5 million.
Tumble raised $2.5 million one year ago, and the new funding brings its total funding to $7.2 million. The company says it has also raised an additional $1.5 million in venture debt from Western Technology Investment.
The latest round was led by Hivers and Strivers and also included Array Ventures, Western Technology Investment, the PenFed Foundation, Zag Capital and angel investors including Twilio board member Richard Dalzell.
CEO Scott Patterson founded the company in 2019 to modernize laundry in shared facilities that typically use coin-operated washers and dryers like student, military and multi-family housing developments.
The company retrofits washers and dryers to make them "smart" with features like automatic locking and in-app payments, and it shares the revenue with property managers.
The shortcomings of quarter-based laundry machines is particularly felt in San Francisco which is in the midst of a multiyear-long coin shortage with banks often restricting the amount of quarters customers can withdraw. This is compounded by the fact some machines charge as much as 20 quarters per load.
In October, Patterson told me he was aiming to expand beyond the Bay Area to Southern California in 2022.
Other competitors in the laundry-related space have focused on pickup and delivery services for items to be laundered offsite. They include NY-based WashClub, S.F.-based Laundry Locker (acquired by Mulberrys in 2018) and Los Angeles-based Washio (acquired by Rinse in 2016).
A Pennsylvania startup called Washboard launched a quarter subscription service in 2014 and charged customers a 50% markup. It shut down within a week.
