Cents
Cents is an all-in-one software, hardware, and payments platform for laundromats, dry cleaners, and shared laundry rooms, founded by Alex Jekowsky at age 23. The source reports $60 million in 2025 revenue (up 67%) with 80 employees, 99% customer retention, and service to nearly 7,000 apartment buildings. It grew from $700,000 to $60 million in four years and recently raised a $140 million Series C at an approximately $800 million valuation.
- •Bundling software, payments, and custom hardware into one platform gives laundry operators a reason to stay, which likely explains the 99% retention.
- •Roughly $750,000 in revenue per employee suggests the business relies on high-margin recurring platform revenue rather than labor-heavy services.
- •Choosing an overlooked, fragmented vertical like laundry let a young founder build a dominant position in a market larger software companies were not targeting.
- •Acquiring a hardware company instead of building everything in-house shows a deliberate shift to speed up hardware capabilities once demand was proven.
- 1.Pick a fragmented, under-digitized local-service industry and map every operational need, such as software, payments, and equipment, before choosing what to build.
- 2.Land a multi-location operator as an early anchor customer, then expand the product to fit the workflows of that customer's sites.
- 3.Bundle payments and hardware with the software so that switching costs rise and retention improves.
- 4.Buy or partner for capabilities that would be slow to build internally, such as hardware, once the core product has proven demand.
- 5.Keep fundraising terms flexible so that a high valuation does not limit future strategic or financing options.
Similar Companies
247.ai
$25.0M/mo247.ai, founded by PV Cannon in 2000, is an AI-powered customer service automation platform serving over 150 enterprise customers with $300M+ in ARR. The company raised only $20M from Sequoia (2003) and bootstrap, achieving 10% net profit margins while maintaining a 12-month CAC payback period and 100% net revenue retention. Despite a security breach setback around 2018, 247.ai has recovered and recently achieved 20% new revenue booking growth in their best quarter.
iCIMS
$13.3M/moiCIMS is a bootstrapped SaaS provider founded in 1999 that dominates the talent acquisition software market as the #2 player, serving 3,500 enterprise customers with an average monthly spend of $4,000. The company exited 2017 with $160M ARR and is targeting 25%+ annual growth while maintaining profitability, recently acquiring Text Recruit to expand into candidate messaging and recruitment advertising.
Zoom
$12.0M/moZoom is a freemium SaaS video conferencing platform founded by Eric Yuan in July 2011 after he left Cisco to build a next-generation collaboration solution. The company has grown to 850,000+ paying customers across individual, SMB, and enterprise segments, generating over $12M in monthly recurring revenue with approximately 100% year-over-year growth. Rather than focusing on customer stickiness or aggressive growth targets, Zoom emphasizes customer happiness and organic word-of-mouth acquisition, which has proven highly effective in driving viral adoption.
Madwire
$10.0M/moMadwire is a comprehensive SaaS platform for small businesses (1-100 employees) that combines CRM, payments, invoicing, billing, e-commerce, and multi-channel marketing tools in a single platform. Founded in 2009, the company has grown to $120M ARR serving 20,000 customers with an average revenue per user of $500/month, while maintaining strong unit economics ($3,000-$4,000 CAC with 3-month payback) and recently turning profitable with a focus on reaching 15-20% EBITDA margins. The company is exploring an IPO within 12-18 months without having raised substantial capital beyond an initial $7.5M.
SwiftPage
$7.0M/moSwiftPage is a CRM and marketing automation platform founded in 2001 that targets small businesses. Under CEO John Oshel's leadership since 2012, the company scaled from 60,000 customers with $26.2M revenue in 2015 to 84,000 customers today with an estimated ARR of $36M+, maintaining 1.5% monthly logo churn and a 6-7 month payback period with a sub-$500 CAC.