From Hedge Funds to Household Innovation with Maria Cabral Menezes

In Episode 10 of Deal Flow Diaries, we sit down with Maria Cabral Menezes, founder of WashWise, to explore how one overlooked operational pain point became a scalable business opportunity. Maria shares how her experience navigating hospitality, entrepreneurship, and systems-building led her to create a company designed to modernize and optimize one of the most essential—but least glamorous—parts of the human experience. 

From building operational infrastructure to understanding the psychology of service, this conversation offers a candid look at what it takes to create a business rooted in efficiency, resilience, and customer trust. 

Join us as we talk about: 

•  Why some of the best business opportunities come from solving operational problems others ignore 
• Building a hospitality-focused company where systems, consistency, and execution matter as much as branding 
• The realities of entrepreneurship, including risk-taking, persistence, and learning to adapt quickly under pressure 
• How technology and data can transform traditional service industries 
• Maria’s perspective on leadership, scaling thoughtfully, and creating long-term value through operational excellence 
• Whether you’re a founder, investor, or someone fascinated by how successful businesses are built behind the scenes, this episode offers practical insights into identifying inefficiencies and turning them into opportunity. 

Deal Flow Diaries continues to bring you thoughtful conversations with founders, operators, and dealmakers shaping the future across industries. 

Follow Maria Cabral Menezes & WashWise: 

Instagram: @mariacabralmenezes, @getwashwise

Website

Tiktok: @washwise
 

Questions and comments; reach out to us at inquiries@dealflowdiariespodcast.com

Find out more about the dealflowdiariespodcast.com 

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If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a rating and review on Apple or Spotify or where ever you get your podcasts.

Recorded at The Newsstand Studios at Rockefeller Center.

Thank you for listening.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

DealFlow Diaries, where the dealmakers talk. A podcast that takes you inside the minds of the Titans shaping today's global economy. I'm Alexander Fairweather.

SPEAKER_01 0:17

And I'm Elaine Chamberlain. Together, we sit down with visionary founders, fund managers, and deal makers across private equity, real estate, fashion, tech, and beyond.

SPEAKER_00 0:30

Each episode, we uncover the untold stories behind their biggest deals, hardest setbacks, and boldest bets. Lessons in strategy, risk, and ambition you won't find anywhere else.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Smart, unscripted, unfiltered. This is DealFlow Diaries. Our guest today is Maria Cabral Menezes. Maria grew up across four countries on three continents, was legally emancipated in Brazil as a teenager, and spent the next decade building exactly the kind of linear, high-status finance career she'd been told was the goal. Then she walked away from it all to build Washwise, a CPG company solving a laundry problem so specific that no manufacturer on Earth had figured it out yet. She just closed her funding round, and today she's here to tell us what it actually costs. Welcome, Rhea.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

Thank you. Wow, that's probably the best introduction I've ever gotten.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

Love that. So tell us what is Washwise?

SPEAKER_02 1:35

Washwise is a company launching this summer with this idea that laundry has lived inside the washing machine, and our clothes actually spend 99% of the time outside of the washing machine. That exact insight came from honestly going at a huge speed in the world of finance, carrying around workout bags, going straight into, you know, the office with sweaty clothes, traveling out of a carry-on and having to try and rewear the same blazer a couple days in a row and not feeling super confident, overspending on dry cleaning, which I think a lot of New Yorkers can empathize with. At that point, I started really looking into the category and just realized no one has solved for taking care of our clothes outside of the washing machine.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

So before we go into here all about launching wash-wise, we want to go back to when you were younger and what it was like growing up. Can you tell us about your childhood?

SPEAKER_02 2:29

Yeah, absolutely. I was born and raised in Portugal. I was the oldest of four. Where in Portugal? Porto. Oh, okay. I'm like, really?

SPEAKER_00 2:39

Yes. My goal is to be in Comporta.

SPEAKER_02 2:41

So Oh, I love Comporta. It's literally mine and my husband's favorite place on earth. It's the best. I grew up there until I was 11. Then we moved to London when I was 11. Uh, it was our first time, you know, living outside of Portugal. We were there for five years, and then we moved to Brazil, São Paulo for high school. And this was all because of my dad's job. He was in finance, smaller banks, more domestic banks, but we kind of traveled wherever he went. We're just forced to adapt to the reality of a whole new country. I always felt like I had to put on a smile and be really brave about it because I was the oldest of four. So I never really felt like I had the opportunity to go through the waves of the emotions of just like losing all your friend groups every couple years. Our biggest, most scary sentence was hey, everyone, like let's all sit at the dining table. We have some news for you guys. Because we knew we were moving whenever my parents said that. But yeah, it was, you know, looking back also super exciting. And I have so many different friend groups, and I'm, you know, I think I'm pretty adaptable and just understand so many different cultures because of it.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

I want to go back to something that you mentioned to me off air, and that's the legal emancipation when you were 16. Yeah. Is that right? Can you talk to us a little bit more about that and what that looked like as a 16-year-old living alone in Brazil?

SPEAKER_02 4:01

Yeah. So as a junior in high school, I actually had one of those moments where my parents were like, let's sit down. We have something to tell you. And I knew what was coming. And this was the first time my parents actually put it on me to make a decision. They said, you know, your dad is moving back to Portugal for a job. We're all going with him. We feel like we've brought you up with the skills necessary to actually stay back and live by yourself and handle this. They also knew I was so dead set on coming to school here in the United States and had worked so hard, as you guys can probably imagine, like in a completely different school system. There's just a whole other set of rules that you have to follow that you don't understand from SATs to subject, like there's so many things that just aren't part of our normal curriculum that I had been working so hard towards to be able to come study here. And they were um understanding that they were asking me to basically probably do another year of school going back to Portugal to be able to, you know, do the same subjects and the same curriculum, et cetera. So they gave me two choices. You can come with us and we will find a school that, you know, makes the transition as easy as possible, but you will likely have to repeat a year, or you can stay behind, but we will have to legally emancipate you because I wasn't going to like a boarding school or anything. So I had to literally go and rent out an apartment, make my way to school every single day. And they were living across the pond, you know? And I decided to do that. I was really dead set on coming to study in the United States. And I felt like I had worked really hard. I didn't want to move away from my friend group for once. I don't know if you guys went to the same middle school, high school your whole lives, but I never had that feeling of having like a group where I knew them for multiple different years. So I was like finally getting to that stage. I was like holding on to it very strongly. So I decided to do that. And it was a year and a half that was different, but exciting. And now looking back, you know, it's kind of weird that my parents allowed me to do that. I don't know if you guys would do that, but it's like I would.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

I actually had a similar experience. Really? We were just talking about this too. Like we really both grew up kind of like free reign artist environments. And when I had just turned 17, uh, we were doing some renovations on our house, and we had found another house where we were gonna go live during the renovation. And so basically the idea was like, okay, we're gonna move into this new house. So essentially, like I move into the new house, but then my parents never came. What? I know. And so then I ended up living on my own. Yeah, from 17. But I think it gives you so much. Like you just you learn independence.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

What do you think that taught you? That I mean, that's an intense amount of independence as a 16-year-old. What what are the lessons that you could take away from that?

SPEAKER_02 6:45

First of all, I think I when I came to the United States for college, I was light years ahead of some of my peers who were like drinking for the first time without their parents. You know, it was just, I just knew exactly what I was doing from laundry, you know, to any other chore. So that transition was really easy. But one of the things that my parents have always instilled that became really clear during those years is that privilege comes with so much responsibility. And that's something that I deeply believe. I think it motivates everything I do. Like if I have an opportunity to do something, it comes with the responsibility of like acing the shit out of it. You know what I mean? And there's nothing that turns me off more than someone who's given privilege and does nothing with it. So, you know, in a weird way, I had the privilege of staying behind and working towards something that I really wanted, which was coming to school here in the United States. My parents made it very specific. They were like, you're gonna go to the best finance school, uh, or else we're not paying because you're European and it's free over there, which is very surprising to a lot of Americans, funnily enough. I had that one goal, that one school that I wanted to go to. And I knew that it was a privilege to even have, you know, the choice to work towards it. And it came with the responsibility of surprisingly enough, not like going out and partying in this country by myself, which I think a lot of kids at that age would have completely taken advantage of. Absolutely. Um I was dead set I was probably the best behaved version of myself I've ever been.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

And what school did you end up going to for university?

SPEAKER_02 8:12

We're in undergrad. It's so funny looking back, it's like a little bit of a random goal, but I think for them it mattered because, again, the price is so different. You know, like here in the United States, you're just brought up believing that college should be that expensive. And in Europe, it's literally free. So, you know, I think there needs to be a really big reason for your parents to make that effort if you're European.

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Especially now, too. I mean, you see that with recent grads, it's like, you know, with that kind of investment, that you really do need to have clarity on the on the reason.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

I think that situation alone, right? Like the work ethic that it takes, the independence, the mental clarity that you had. I'm curious how you utilize both of those skills now and when you were starting off in the f in your finance career.

SPEAKER_02 9:02

Yeah. You have to be so dead set on a goal because I feel like early years in finances, I'm sure you know you guys have either experienced or heard of, are tough. And a lot of it, I think people tell themselves that it's oh means to an end.

SPEAKER_00 9:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:16

I think people go into finance and those early, you know, whether it's sales and trading or banking years, knowing that it's a means to an end kind of situation to like literally level up into different roles later on, whether that's VC, private equity. So it is rough. Those years you just know that you're doing it for specific reasoning. But yeah, I mean, you know, the first couple years in college, I I interned. I try to understand every single avenue that there was in finance, decided that I wanted to be a trader, was really dead set on it. Started at JP Morgan for a year, and then went on to trade at Citadel for three years. And I think that's what it taught me is to just be really focused, laser focused on goals, but also just the proactiveness that you need to have when you're living by yourself in an unknown country and that you need to have to even just survive and not be fired at Citadel, I think was very similar.

SPEAKER_01 10:03

Yeah. I mean, what'd you say, three years at Citadel?

SPEAKER_02 10:07

Yeah, just over three years.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

It's a long time to be there.

SPEAKER_02 10:09

It's a long time. Like you have to multiply it by like a hundred.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 10:13

You know the turnover rates. It's yeah, it's it's a rotating doorbell.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

So did you think that you were always going to be in finance, or what was that jump to realizing that perhaps there was a different path for you?

SPEAKER_02 10:26

I always thought I was gonna be in finance. I think there's two types of entrepreneurs. There's entrepreneurs that just find something that's deeply wrong with a topic and decide to pivot and fix it. And then there's people who are just born with it and are likely serial entrepreneurs, and like it's really more about what they bring to the table than the idea they bring to the table. They just love building. I was not one of those. I was definitely someone who came up with an issue, uh, really deeply felt it and wanted to solve it. And that issue was really this mindset around our lives have changed so much. We're working out more than ever, we're traveling more than ever. When we do, we're carrying, you know, a carry-on, likely trying to rewear the same item multiple days in a row. We're wearing more polyester and nylon, athleisure wear, lounge wear, and we are reselling and renting out our clothing more than ever. Yet, you know, the actual trends around laundry haven't changed. We're just innovating the detergent, the format of the detergent, the fragrance of the detergent, when in fact there could be products out there that help you take care of that, you know, day in, day out. And that's why we're launching the reset spray, which is basically dry shampoo for clothes this summer. A spray that odor neutralizes, wrinkle reduces, actual cleanses with detergent, all in one bio-based spray that actually feels like a personal care item.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

It's something everybody needs. Can you tell us the moment when you were saying, okay, this needs to exist and I'm going to bring this to fruition?

SPEAKER_02 11:48

I was having a conversation with a friend about how what I so-called my chair drope was just so big every single week. I had a chair where I don't know if you guys feel this. Whenever you take a piece of clothing out and you're unsure whether it's too clean to wash, but too dirty to rewear, you just kind of there's a place in your room that you just pile those on.

SPEAKER_00 12:07

I have that.

SPEAKER_02 12:08

Yeah, I think it's all the way. We all have it. We all have it. And the reason why we pile those up is because there's this lit level of paralysis, you don't know what to do with it, you feel bad, you're like, wait, these jeans touch the subway, so they shouldn't really go back into my closet, but I shouldn't be washing them every single time I wear them. So I was speaking to my friends and I was like, I just wish there was a product that I could just quickly, you know, reset my clothes and wear it a couple more times. And they were like, You mean like dry shampoo for clothes? I was like, exactly. That's exactly what I mean. And that really initiated the thought process behind like, what how do we emulate that fresh off the washer feel, right? What are the functionalities that there needs to be? Okay, it needs to wrinkle or juice because that's partly a reason why we wash. It needs to actually wash like any kind of body oils. Um, so it needs to have detergent in it and it needs to also neutralize odors, right? It can't just mask. I think that's a lot of the negative feedback that a lot of other fabric sprays have out there. It's just this idea that it just masks. And we wanted it to be bio-based because a lot of the ingredients associated with the industry right now are actually like super toxic and under a lot of scrutiny. But we don't just want the formulation to be very different. We want the form factor, you know, bring in the success of like Grazia and Grunes. We want the form factor to be extremely different and something that resembles more a personal care item and not a household cleaning item. Right. So those were the two differentiating factors we really wanted to bring to the table.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

So I used to travel, you both know this, a lot for in my last role. And I used to use dry shampoo on my clothes. Oh, you can. No, I didn't know you could do that. No, you can't. It ruins your clothes. But you still did it. I still did it because it got to a point where we were in a place for one day. I didn't have time to do dry cleaning at the hotels, and I just had to do it because there was nothing else I could do. I also would pack for a two-day trip and then we'd be gone for a month. And so my hands were tied, and I literally, this is going to save my life. Your product is like a dream product for anyone that travels a lot, for anyone that's on the go, that is spontaneous, that doesn't know.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

Or just if you're lazy, by the way. Totally. There's so many people are like, is there a specific type of demographic? And I'm like, I I do think there's mothers in suburban areas that still use dry shampoo. Like, they might even have the time to wash their hair more frequently. But if it can save you time, money, and it's efficient, like it's a no-brainer, right? It's just, it's all about optimizing and efficiencies. And I think that's why I bring a little bit of the finance into an, you know, an industry that has been very dormant, who has solved for like one size fits all. How can I find one pot? You know, Tide Pods are 30% of the detergents that are consumed in the US. This one pod that looks exactly the same, that solves exactly the same issue for everyone, is good enough for everyone, seemingly. And I don't believe in that, you know?

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Yeah. I want to go back to the journey of going from finance to an entrepreneur. Um, going from a steady paycheck, those golden handcuffs, to now you are figuring it out on your own. I think that there is such an identity shift, and I'd love to discuss all of that journey. What did that look like for you? How did you know that was a decision that you needed to make? And how terrified were you?

SPEAKER_02 15:35

I was really scared. You know, I had seen the CEO of Spanx essentially uh really emphasize to people that you should only leave. You can do two jobs at the same time for a really long time, and you should only really leave when there's you have no choice. And I felt like I had no choice two months into doing it at the same time as working at Citadel because it was just so, so, so intense. I think there's two questions here is when do I decide to leave? And what is kind of like the opportunity cost of leaving, right? And deciding to leave for me involved a feasibility check. If you have a great idea, I think there has to be a question around what is the biggest what if of that product or that company? And like, let's check that box before we decide to leave, right? For me, it was I have an idea of these two products that are seemingly very innovative, but you know, I can make them at home. I have a chemist that I've played around with and like we've created these products at home, but are these scalable? Can a manufacturer actually make them? And that was my feasibility check. So I spent many months having those conversations and making sure that if I was gonna leave, like this product can actually be made at scale. And then there's the opportunity cost. I think there's a lot of people in corporate America that have a dream of potentially leaving and starting something. And I always tell them the opportunity cost of doing it just keeps going higher. Not to apply like financial terms, but when you think about it, you know, with every single day that you stay in a corporate job, more likely you're valuing stability higher, more likely your pay is going up, hopefully. So the actual opportunity cost of staying a day longer is higher, right? So that decision to leave eventually becomes a lot harder. So I always say if you have the idea, you think it's scalable, you've done your feasibility check, today is better than tomorrow from your own standpoint of your opportunity cost, but then the opportunity cost of the idea, like you have to think, what if someone comes up with something similar? What if the world changes and your idea is suddenly just not as relevant, right? So I always say today's better than tomorrow if you're making that decision and you feel like you're in the right position to make it.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

So did you start fundraising in the last few months? Can you talk about that process?

SPEAKER_02 17:43

Yeah, absolutely. We started fundraising in March. So it's been roughly two months. It's been a very interesting process for someone who's never you're laughing at me. You're like, I knew it was gonna be hard. You have no idea what you were getting into.

SPEAKER_01 17:58

It is hard. And I think people don't realize how hard it is, but you've made it look easy. And like as your friend, I can say this. You have handled it with such grace, and you have made it look extremely easy from an outsider's perspective.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

Mentally, it's tough because, first of all, you go from an industry where you're so desensitized to numbers, you're like trading around billions of dollars, and you're like, wait, now I'm fundraising, you know, a couple million dollars. How how hard can it be? But it is very hard. There's this volatility, mental volatility that's going on inside your brain of just with every conversation you have, whether it resonates or not, it impacts kind of like your demeanor and your trust in the process. So you need to be super strong about it, especially like pre-product, pre-seed. You don't have much to hold on to. Like you're, I'm not, you know, sharing numbers with people, you know, saying, hey, the product's in market and this is the revenue that we've created. This is how fast we're growing. It really is an idea and a product. And CPG has become increasingly harder at these stages. I will say, you know, I think it was Steph Gorey from a way that recently told me 10 years ago, you know, D2C was the moat, like being the first one to actually create razors or luggage or sunglasses and do the whole D2C element of it was the moat and was differentiating enough. And right now, you know, anyone can pay $40 on Shopify and sell just about anything online. So VCs naturally are just a lot more skeptical investing on this stage. And what you're investing in this stage, and what you're seeing is people who successfully re-raise pre-seeds are doing it from family offices, angels, not so much VC.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Yeah. And I think it's a lot of founder-led belief, right? I mean, they obviously see something in you that is admirable and they believe in you if they're giving you hundreds of thousands of dollars and you've you've raised successfully and you make such a great point, which is so funny because I've spent countless hours on VC meetings, and I don't think it's waste of time because these are going to be capital partners throughout the lifetime of Washwise.

SPEAKER_02 20:12

That's how I encounter it. But, you know, the people who have ultimately come on board have barely even tried a product. These are people who have the product is secondary to the idea, the founder. So I think it does speak to that level of trust that I really appreciate. And I've really focused on bringing on people who have what I like to call like a multiplier effect. When you think of, I learned about multiplier effect in like economics class. Like, you know, if you put one dollar of government spending, uh, it creates this multiplier effect for the consumer and the economy. And I really believe the same thing with investors. You know, bringing someone in even at a minimum check that has more than just cash to offer. They have this either know-how or doors to open for you for potential collaborations or partnerships. I mean, you're the perfect example, if I say so myself, whether it's someone who, you know, has founded like fitness studios where maybe, you know, the sprays can be at.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

Anyone who can leverage their positioning to emphasize your brands is someone that you want, right? 100%.

SPEAKER_02 21:15

So it's more than just dollars at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

And so I would like to go back to that founder-led belief that we discussed. I think there's something to delve a little bit deeper into. What advice would you give to our listeners that are starting something, they have to go raise pre-seed, pre-products. How do you build that trust with investors? And how do you build a relationship without it being salesy, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:45

You know, I have a rule when it comes to family, friends, and I guess investors as well that for the first five minutes of any conversation, I don't say the word wash wise. And it might seem like very specific and a little silly, but at the end of the day, I think. I think if you initiate the conversation with what you're going through in your business, which is a very big tendency, I think, for any founder because they live and breathe what they're going through, the conversation stays there. It doesn't go anywhere else. And a relationship has to be two ways at the end of the day. Like, you know, I need to have something to offer to my friendships, to my family and to my investors, other than just speaking about my business. So I make it a point. I'm like, five minutes, focus, ask about the family, ask about the friends, you know, like really engage and really deeply care what they have to say before I mention wash-wise at all.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

I think it's such good advice. And people don't take that advice as seriously as they should because people don't want to feel used or taken advantage of. They don't want to feel like they're being sold something constantly. They want to feel like if they're investing in you, then what relationship do we have? Yeah. Right. They want to feel that familial level trust, right?

SPEAKER_02 22:55

100%. And you also need to go into those conversations with this thought that what you're offering and putting on the table is just as valuable as the cash that they're offering and putting on the table, right? Like it's a privilege for anyone around you to also get to invest in you. You need to be really confident in that. It's not possible. There's days where I don't have that feeling within myself. But the reality is I walked away from a role at Citadel to build this, and I'm paying myself zero. So like I need to be very confident that what I'm offering to the table is just as important as the cash that they're offering to make it happen for me, you know?

SPEAKER_00 23:28

And that probably speaks volumes to your investors too. I mean, they see that commitment. So tell us the launch is this summer. You have your team that you're just building.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

Today's the first day, they're full time, which is crazy. I'm recording this podcast on the first day where my head of marketing and head of operations are starting. It's the beginning. It's the beginning, guys.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

The official beginning.

SPEAKER_02 23:50

It's the official beginning. There's been like a whole year of work, but it feels like it's finally becoming real, you know?

SPEAKER_00 23:56

So how are you launching this summer? What's the launch strategy?

SPEAKER_02 24:00

It's very digital heavy. So D2C Amazon, TikTok shop. We're launching with the spray first. We have a strong pipeline of other products that you'll be able to use outside of the washing machine, but this felt like the most intuitive, right? Like again, we've all used dry shampoo. Sometimes we've even put it in our clothes, apparently. Hold out. So it is very intuitive. We're starting with a couple of different partnerships from fitness studios to travel locations to hotels to members' clubs. Before we go to mass retail, we want to put the product in high-intent locations where you understand the problem and therefore you're introduced to the solution at the right time, at the right place, right? You know, a lot of investors will say something like: creating a new category is no joke because you need to create new habits as well. And what I always say is people are already pissed off when they're carrying around sweaty clothes or when they're traveling and have no better solution for it. So the place where these should be before they're at, you know, the targets and the Walmarts is maybe the hotel you were staying at when you were traveling, or is maybe the fitness studio you're rushing from in the morning to go into the office. So that's really the strategy for the first year. It's like high-intent partnerships with fitness studios, gyms, corporate gyms, right? Perfect transitionary moment hotels, et cetera. And then later on coming out with different formats to go to mass retail.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

I'm curious about the go-to-market strategy. And I think it's so smart. I think what you're doing is great. How did you come up with that? And what is your biggest lesson that you could provide for our listeners when starting a brand new product, a whole new market, and having to go to market with something in there's an educational aspect to it where you have to teach people what the product is.

SPEAKER_02 25:47

Really deeply understand how people currently consume who you would consider either competitors or your industry to be. I spent countless days walking down the laundry aisle at supermarkets and really understanding that there's no category quite like laundry. I mean, I would compare it to as someone who's traded a lot of different companies, like, you know, airlines and potentially like phone carriers, it's so concentrated. You go down a laundry aisle and it's bright orange. There's nothing else on there. There's like three different products, huge amounts of them, and no diversity. So I knew for a fact that I shouldn't be on that aisle until there's already a clear association that Washwise is the innovator in the space. So that when you walk down that aisle, you recognize Washwise and you know what it is. It's not the type of product that's gonna pop up on an aisle and people are gonna, you know, get inquisitive, read the product. There's no brand discovery happening at supermarkets. So we knew we had to get innovative, and that had to be the last step of our go-to-market strategy. And where else can we show up where people actually have the patience, the bandwidth to learn about our products? Well, when the problem is happening, right? When you are sweaty or when you are traveling, or when your kids are, you know, have a smelly lacrosse bag, et cetera. So it was really honestly understanding my category really well. And one of the biggest advice I have, I actually made a TikTok about it recently, but use those deep research chat GPT reports. I think we've never had the ability to create HBS style case studies quite like date, like AI can do for us on such specific topics. You go through a HBS case study and maybe it focuses on one brand and how they did something and it doesn't, you know, 100% translate to what you're building. You can ask it a super specific question like, teach me everything about the laundry category, any innovation that has happened outside of the washing machine, the market cap, how it has changed, how people buy these products, et cetera. And it will go and scrape the internet and come back with a report that was perfectly made for you. I've done that so much to learn about the category I'm building in.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

We were just talking about it earlier. I mean, it's really incredible what we can all do today. And it just comes to it's it's about agency. It's just saying, okay, I'm going to do this. I mean, it really is, it's democratic. Things that we could never do two years ago now are possible.

SPEAKER_02 28:15

The access, right? That we all have. It's just about proactiveness.

SPEAKER_01 28:21

On the AI front, I'm curious about your everyday life. What does a typical day look like for you? How do you time block? How do you prioritize when you are taking meetings, trying to fundraise, while also perfect your products and ensure that everything is perfect for lunch?

SPEAKER_02 28:45

Yeah, such a great question. And I won't lie, a lot of the days I think, especially in this early stage, look so different. You know, I was given one set of advice from Jack Abraham, founder of Him's and Hers, great mentor of mine, that was write three things that you can't go to sleep without accomplishing in a paper, put it in a pocket, in your back pocket, and just make sure that you don't leave until those three things are done. And I try to live by that. I'm not gonna pretend I'm perfect. There's days where the third thing gets pushed out, but I try my best. Being a founder is literally radical prioritization. That's how I describe it. Like the to-do list is always gonna be endless. So if you can't like circle the three most important things out of that list, you're already losing. I still wake up really early, trader style. My husband is still in the finance world. So when he's leaving the house, that's when I'm getting my day started. I try to have like 30 minutes for myself every single morning. And then I write those huge to-do lists, circle three things that really matter to me and that I will not end the day without doing. And then I block and tackle. Like no day looks the same. I wish it did. Like I come from an environment where every single day looked very similar. I knew when the market was going to open, the market was gonna close. You know, there's days where my mornings are slower, but I'm answering emails until 2 a.m. And it was actually really hard to adjust to accepting that and being okay with that. But yeah, my days look very, very different. This last year was so much around product manufacturing and just getting the product to the exact stage we wanted it to be. And I can already see that changing so drastically to becoming like literally less than 2% of what I'm spending my time on. And it's scary. Like it's constantly, constantly changing.

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Speaking of manufacturing and product development, can you talk about that process and how many manufacturers you've been in touch with?

SPEAKER_02 30:42

Hundreds. Literally hundreds. There's another product that we will speak about very soon that is very different from anything that's out there. There's nothing quite like it out there. And something I didn't know that I learned about the United States is like something like maybe 95% of CPG products are made at these contract manufacturing locations that make a lot of different products for different brands. So these contract manufacturers hold a lot of power because they know that you need to literally manufacture with them to get something done. And they obviously prioritize doing the same product over and over. So if you're trying to create a lipstick in a different color, you can go to the same place where like Maybelline and L'Oreal produce their things and just ask, hey, I just want this shade to be a little different, or I want you to include this ingredient. Very easy. When you're asking them to create something from scratch based on, you know, testing you've done at home, but materials and processes that they don't typically work with, they become very unhelpful really, really quickly. And they need to really see the full vision of how this is going to grow for it to be worthwhile for them. So we treated them almost, which is hilarious, but we treated them like VC calls. Like we were pitching these contract manufacturers. This is how big this can be if you really make it work with us. Because one thing is having something made at home that is usable and efficient, and another thing is scaling it to hundreds of thousands of units. So it took hundreds of calls. I think that process might have been even more stressful than fundraising. And then finally, we found one partner that really saw it. I think maybe sometimes at points they saw it more than us, honestly. They were so excited by it. They really saw the vision, the pipeline, they saw everything. And we've been reformulating this product with them for over a year now. And it's in really, really good, in a really good spot. But they're our biggest cheerleaders, which is hilarious.

SPEAKER_01 32:38

That's incredible. What's the biggest lesson that you learned during that process? Resilience.

SPEAKER_02 32:44

I'm not gonna lie, there were nights where I would go to sleep so frustrated, and I would tell my husband, there's no way I'm gonna do this. Like there's a reason why this hasn't been done. And he always used to say to me, the reason why it hasn't been done and how hard it is to take you to be able to do it is the reason no one else has done it. And it's the reason it's gonna be so hard for someone to copy what you're doing. He's so right, you know, like the harder it is to get to a product that you're super proud of, the harder it is for anyone else to come and do it after you.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

You talked about a few moments of just having maybe some lows, right? In in the mental health space. And as you know, I'm a big mental health advocate. And so I'd love to hear some advice that you might have for anyone listening that is building something from scratch or just building something in general. And the bad days are bad. It's hard. And I think you can be such a a mouthpiece for people who have gone through a similar struggle. So I'd love to hear what your take is on this.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

The biggest difficulty in my transition from corporate America to building something. And maybe you know, serial entrepreneurs don't have this bias, but I still associate mistakes with something extremely negative. And I think anyone who comes from corporate America, whether you're a lawyer or you're in finance or a consultant, like you're taught to believe that making a mistake will cost you money, might cost you your job, might, you know, put you at a disadvantage when you're compared to your peers naturally. So that was very ingrained in my brain. And the reality is being a founder is hundreds of decisions. There's no one telling you whether something was a mistake or not. There's only your intuition to feel like, was this a mistake? Could I have handled that better? I knew from the very start that I was gonna last zero days if I didn't start associating making mistakes and pivoting with something highly positive. So I started actually every single time I got I got that feeling of I could have handled that better. I've made this mistake a couple of times in a row, and I just think I would be better off handling it differently. I created this like mistake journal that every time I made a mistake, I forced myself to go and journal with this idea that hopefully one day, you know, not only will it help me in pattern recognition, but maybe it will help a founder one day, very far from now. But it created this association with I could have handled that better. Let me actually write down what it was, what I would change if I was in a similar situation and how I would express it to other people going through the same situation. And now I just associate making a mistake with like a time to reflect with myself, which I think is a much healthier relationship. And it allows you to actually like have an opportunity to pivot, right? And reconcile your thoughts and pivot.

SPEAKER_01 35:37

Absolutely. I also wanted to go back to something you know that I had a similar situation in pivoting careers. And when I left the legal field, I felt such an identity shift. I want to hear more about how did you handle that identity shift and what advice would you provide in similar situations?

SPEAKER_02 35:58

My biggest flux in any conversation within, I think especially in New York City, where your job is everything, was saying, hey, I work at this hutch fund. I didn't have to say anything else. Yeah, exactly. I didn't have to say anything else. I was like, I work here, and there was an immense respect. Oh, she's smart. Like there was an assumption that people just made, and I was free. I didn't have to speak about work, I didn't have to speak about anything else because I had proven the box that I was smart, that I had accomplished something successful. And I no longer have that. In fact, what I'm trying to create for Washwise is that one day one of my employees will feel like it's a huge flex to say that they work at Washwise. So that was the biggest mind shift was no longer feeling like I could hide behind the success of a brand that I had worked for. Right. And the way I feel about it now is every single time I say I'm a startup starting a business, I now have to have a 20-minute conversation about what that is, why I did it, et cetera. And when you do it, good marketing. Good marketing, great marketing. But when you do it hundreds of times, at some point, some, you know, founders will say they don't get tired and they love it and it's exciting. It does get repetitive and does, you know, at some point I remember feeling like drained by it. Like, why can't I just say, guys, there was sometimes I would lie still and be like, yeah, I work in finest, because I literally just couldn't even fathom having to say the story one more time after saying it 50 times on investor calls that whole day. And now it just hit me like it's such a privilege to get to have people that are interested in what I'm building asking about it. I take a deep breath and I just say it, you know, for the a hundredth and first time that day. And I try to enjoy it. I try to remind myself to just enjoy it. But yeah, it's it's a huge shift. I've had to like really grow to be proud of what I'm doing and not hide essentially behind the success of someone else who's building a company that I deeply identify with.

SPEAKER_01 37:48

How do you judge your progress at this point as a founder versus how you evaluated your progress at Citadel or any of your finance roles?

SPEAKER_02 37:58

It's such a great question because, especially in the hedge fund world, you're mark-to-market every single second of the day. There's no gray area. There's, you know, a P ⁇ L in front of you and for your fund and you know exactly how well you're doing. The feedback loop is so real. When the market's open, you know exactly, you know, how well you're doing on your ideas. Not only that, but if I flipped long PayPal short square two months ago, I can go back to that exact day and say, not only was that a good idea, but that was a good idea by this much. Like I can tell you the opportunity cost of that idea. I can't do that being a founder. I can't hire person A over person B and two years from now tell you that that decision was better off than person B by this much. So I think you you learn to trust your gut so much more. I do think having observed very successful companies on the public side has helped me make those decisions pretty instinctively. But when they don't come very quickly to me, it's actually taught me to take a step back. And I have a great advisor who's told me actually in the worst of days where everything feels like it's imploding and you have to make a decision and it doesn't come obvious to you, take the day off, which is crazy, right? Yeah. Like I'm no longer in public markets. The market's not open. You know, if I don't make a decision, I don't make a decision. I can take a day, I can take a walk and come back and get more information, ask more people, and make a more well-informed decision. So that's one of the biggest differences in the feedback loop. It's much longer. You don't really know how to assess yourself. So you have to be so, so strong on your confidence level of the decisions that you're making.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

I love that. When was the last time that you trusted your gut making a decision with Washwise?

SPEAKER_02 39:46

The last time was choosing to launch with this product first. We always thought, and you know the other product, we always thought we were gonna launch with two products at the same time. We kept on getting feedback from a lot of people that there was really good reasoning behind launching with just one first and focusing the whole PR and social media moment on one product. And I just knew it in my gut that like it was the right thing to do. I couldn't defend it that well to investors. And I knew that if I can't defend it that well, like instinctually, like I know that I have to make a different decision here. And that was probably one of the higher risk decisions we've made in the last couple of weeks.

SPEAKER_01 40:24

Lastly, why do you love doing this? What is it about building washwise that you love?

SPEAKER_02 40:31

The path of a founder is a series of decisions. Like that's what we're doing at the end of the day, right? Like you're making hundreds of decisions to one day hopefully have a successful story. That's what you do as a founder. You're a decision maker. And I've always loved the process of making decisions. It's actually a class that I um guest lecture at Penn, just like biases and heuristics around making decisions. So I just geek out every day that I get to work making decisions and like every single day try to make better, more informed decisions without any human biases that I lead with. So I think that's my favorite part of the role.

SPEAKER_01 41:12

For anyone who wants to follow what Maria is building, where should they go? What should they search? And is there anything listeners can do right now to support Washwise?

SPEAKER_02 41:22

You can follow us on Instagram at getwashwise, TikTokwashwise, and our websites washwise.com. And what you can do to support us is we by the time this will air out, we'll have the pre-order functionality. So give us any feedback on the product. And if you have any big issues around the topic of doing laundry that you feel like aren't addressed by the current industry, let us know because we're thinking very innovatively around building for modern societies. And we are super excited to learn about any inefficiencies in your laundry habits. So reach out. And also, if you're just curious about what we're building and you want to get involved, just reach out. I'm always super happy to have a conversation about anything.

SPEAKER_00 42:10

And for anyone new to Dealflow Diaries, you can find every episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Audible. Follow us on Instagram and YouTube at Dealflow Diaries.