In a city where the gig-economy hums with engine fumes, fast food runs, and Friday night rideshares, one new platform skips the grease and grabs the garments. NoScrubs, an Austin-based startup launched in Dallas, doesn’t ferry burgers or barhoppers – it whisks away laundry, returning it washed, folded, and warm to the touch within hours. For workers worn down by brake pads and backseat small talk, the quiet churn of a dryer might just be the sound of opportunity.
On July 8, NoScrubs officially launched in Dallas with $2 million in pre-seed funding from Initialized Capital and Frontier VC. Founded by Matt O’Connor, who helped launch Instacart in Austin, the company saw firsthand how convenience reshapes daily life. This time, his focus is laundry – a chore so familiar and often overlooked. NoScrubs picks up, washes, folds, and returns clothes in as little as four hours, beating the typical 6-to-10-hour or even next-day turnaround of most delivery services. For busy customers and gig workers – dubbed Scrubbers – the service turns an age-old task into a modern, streamlined exchange.
Services NoScrubs Offers & Its Appeal
NoScrubs hands people their time back. A basket of laundry disappears in the morning and returns before dinner. Shirts come back crisp. Towels, fluffed. Socks? Matched. And they all carry that warm, lemon-clean scent that says: someone else handled it – and did it right.
Plans start at under a dollar a day – cheaper than a laundromat or a bottle of Tide and a box of dryer sheets. Designed for overworked professionals, frazzled parents, students on deadlines, or anyone who’s stared down a week’s worth of laundry with dread, NoScrubs flips the narrative. “While many laundry services exist – both local and national – they’re all positioned as convenient,” NoScrubs CEO Matt O’Connor says. “But most are slower than doing the laundry yourself, which defeats the purpose.”
That contradiction stuck with him. At Instacart, he watched how tightly people cling to speed. NoScrubs, unlike most operations, uses a decentralized network of local laundry professionals, which means your clothes usually don’t travel more than ten minutes away. Instead of washing load by load like we do at home, Scrubbers run batches simultaneously – a lifesaver for families juggling three or four baskets. The result? Everything’s back quickly.
“For around a dollar a day,” O’Connor says, “you never have to do laundry again. Many people are already making that choice – and we believe many more will.”
How NoScrubs Works With Its Business Model & Tech Integration
It starts with a tap, maybe during your first coffee or halfway through a Zoom meeting. You open the app, schedule a pickup, and just like that, your laundry becomes someone else’s job.
Within minutes, a Scrubber – background-checked, trained, and ready – accepts the order. They pick up your bag and head to a nearby partner facility. First, they photograph and log each item, time-stamped, barcoded, and entered into the system. As the machines turn, so does the tech: tracking detergent preferences, fabric types, and even folding styles. AI-assisted quality checks catch wrinkled corners or slouchy stacks. Nothing goes out without a final inspection – and a photo to prove it.
“We’ve invested heavily in technology to ensure each order completes perfectly,” O’Connor says. “tailored to the customer’s preferences, and returned as quickly as possible.” The turnaround? Lightning fast. Most orders land back on your doorstep within four hours – warm, folded, and right where you left them.
And to Scrubbers? It’s a gig that breathes – no mad dashes in rush-hour traffic. No car seats, no drunk passengers, no drive-thru waits. Laundry, unlike food or rideshare, builds in breaks. “Compared to Uber or DoorDash,” O’Connor says, “there’s way less wear on your car. Scrubbers net more income, with fewer expenses and less stress.”
For many Scrubbers, work begins with a ping and a porch pickup. No honking or late-night bar crawlers. Just a canvas bag and a clear route. The appeal lies not just in the gig’s flexibility, but in its gentler texture – clean, quiet, and rooted in routine. With monthly earnings between $3,000 and $4,000, Scrubbers regularly out-earn delivery drivers – all without gas costs, heavy lifting, or rowdy passengers. Some work from home. Others use local wash facilities. Retirees, stay-at-home parents, and part-time students make up a growing share of the team.
“On average,” O’Connor points out, “people spend two full years of their lives doing laundry. It’s a massive time drain – something everyone has to deal with unless they use NoScrubs. We’re helping people reclaim that time, and that’s incredibly valuable.”
The Vision Behind NoScrubs & Its Funding
O’Connor joined Instacart when it was just twenty people. He helped build it into a logistics giant. Still, the climb exposed the rough edges of modern gig work: long shifts, burnout, and jobs stitched together just to get by. “Instacart was a formative experience for me,” O’Connor says. “That’s exactly what we’re aiming to do with laundry, which still doesn’t have a clear category leader.”
With NoScrubs, he envisioned something quieter – a gig economy that didn’t grind people down, but lifted them. A model that replaced friction with dignity. Initialized Capital led the pre-seed round and funded the company’s $2 million pre-seed round alongside Frontier VC.
“So far,” he says, “we’ve saved customers a total of 763 days of their lives – and we’re just getting started.”
For Dallas – a city built on speed and service – NoScrubs offers a slower kind of revolution. One that doesn’t burn fuel, but keeps the cycle moving. In a gig economy defined by burnout, maybe a washer is the new engine of possibility. Clean work. Clean pay. Cleaner clothes – back to your doorstep before dinner.
Book your first pickup with NoScrubs here!
