The cleaning services startup taking over Europe with Aleksander Lukashou

What got you started back into playing video games? Good question. Maybe I had just more free time. Finally. Yeah. Free time. You're a startup founder. You're you're, you've got a business. It's in multiple countries. What is the secret to having free time? Tell us, tell us Alexander. Well, probably is, you know, the secret is not doing everything yourself.

Hey everyone, Eric here with Innovators Can Laugh. I've been getting this reputation from people I mostly met through my newsletter or through LinkedIn as the person who tells dad jokes I don't know if that's a good reputation to have but since I'm a dad I won't take offense to it and I typically welcome all of my newsletter subscribers with a dad joke So I thought why not share one with my podcast audience of three Which will soon to be just one after I tell this joke But here it goes.

You guys ready? Okay. Singing in the shower is fun until you get soap in your mouth. Then it's a soap opera. How about that? Okay, everybody. Today we are chatting with Alexander Lukashow. He is Managing Director of CleanWell and CleanWell reminds me of TaskRabbit back in the States. This is a wonderful site where you can hire handymen or people to come and clean your shoes or just do odd jobs around the house.

And, uh, they've really expanded out of Poland. They've expanded to multiple countries. And in this conversation, we talk about what were some of the things they did to expand? How is it that they're getting a 2 cost per acquisition and Facebook in the Polish market? And what are the top services that people request the most?

Okay. That's it. Let's go ahead and jump right into the conversation with Alexander Lukashow. What got you started back into, uh, playing video games? Good question. Maybe I had just more free time. Finally. Yeah. Free time. You're a startup founder. You're you're, you've got a business. It's in multiple countries.

What is the secret to having free time? Tell us, tell us Alexander. Well, probably is, you know, the secret is not doing everything yourself. So in the beginning, when we started. I was doing basically all myself. So answering phone phones from clients, hiring cleaners. Like we had a team of four people doing that in, in three cities in Poland.

So that was tough. And now I finally can delegate that and play some video games. Okay. Okay. Now, when did you, when did you have this light bulb moment that says, Hey, I think this is, there's a need for this business. When did that happen? So the thing is I'm not a founder, so I joined the team. When they were fully operational in, in one city means.

But they were due to the political reason they had to move from, from Belarus to Poland. And then I joined the team. So basically I started when we started to, I started to work with them when we went to the EU market. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Now, why did you join? Why did you join the team, Alexander? So it was actually a team of my friends.

We knew each other before that, but it was kind of coincidence that I was finishing my project with other client in totally different subjects. I was, I was doing smart traders for the Swedish company. We were doing tracking of people in mines. Yeah, because I've got technical background, so I used to work with computer vision, with AI, even before that become, you know, so popular.

Yeah, I just finished the, the, the, the project was my client and I, I, I was not sure what to move next and they proposed me, you know, to become a managing partner, so I decided why not? It seems. Fun, cool. And it's a whole new business. Yeah, that's interesting. So when they propose you being a managing partner, is it, was it because you had a good grasp of the, the business operations or was there another reason?

Like, could you speak Polish fluently?

I can speak Polish fluently. I know Polish law. I know about Polish taxes. So, you know, it's a startup. The, these titles are not exactly showing what you're doing. So you, you basically at the beginning doing everything at the same time. So they proposed me to, to join the team, not, not became, became, you know, the CEO.

Okay. So where, what are you, like, how is it structured right now? Are you, are you CEO? And are you also have like, like a minority stake in the company? Yeah, I have a minority stake in the company. I wouldn't call myself a CEO because you know, I prefer managing partner because we're kind of equal. We're four people and two, no, we're five people and two are joining, I guess soon because they, they also helped us to, to, went to, to check, check market and other cities in Poland.

Yeah. So we welcome them to board. Yeah. And. Yeah, cool. This doesn't exist here in romania. And when I first moved here two years ago or three years ago now god time flies I was thinking god this service could really be used here because in the states they have a service Called task rabbit, and I think it was acquired by ikea and you can hire like a handyman to come do different things At your house or apartment.

I, I used to hire them all the time to come do different things, you know, around my house because either I didn't have the tools or I just didn't know the skill. So any plans to come to the Romanian market? And then second question is where are you guys currently at right now? I know you've got a pretty broad reach, but how many countries are you in right now?

All right. So bad news. We are not going to Romania. Why not? What's going on? Uh, yeah, I mean, I will, I will answer that lately, but, uh, what, what about reach, so we are working on major cities in Poland, like six, I guess. Then we have Berlin, Prague, we have Bratislava, Kiev, and Riga. But those are franchises. So it's not like we operate them.

Regarding why we are not going to, to Romania is because we are looking for investment right now. And with that investment, we're planning to go further to the German market and, you know, open a few branches in German cities. Okay. How are you acquiring new customers right now? Like what are the tactics that have been working well as you go into these new cities?

I mean, the most effective one, it's advertisement on Facebook and Google. Definitely. Okay. But what are other companies doing cleaning services? They forget about it's search engine optimization. So it's, it's very easy to became on, you know, the, on the first lines in Google. Okay. Okay. And right now, like, can you share, like, what's the cost per acquisition, like of a new customer that you're getting on Facebook?

Yeah, well, in Poland, it's two euros, which is, yeah, about, well, let's, let's say it's two bucks, but A little bit more, just, just 2. That's it. Yes. Holy crap. Yeah. Okay. Well in Germany, it's a little bit different, so I guess it's about maybe eight euros, maybe 10. What is, what is the messaging? On the ad for like the Polish market to get a 2 cost per acquisition.

I, and what is the targeting that you're, you're doing here? This is phenomenal. Yeah. So, so I'm not sure that I can answer those questions because I'm not doing marketing myself, but the text on the ads, it's basically just the price of hiring cleaning person for our, and we're showing that it's really cheap.

It's cheaper than you can think about. All right. All right. I would, I would compare, I would compare cleaning services right now with the food delivery or taxi 10 years ago. Yeah, that is so interesting. Very, very interesting. And you know, cleaning can take a long time. My wife, she, she actually enjoys it and it could take her literally six to eight hours.

On a given weekend, but we we we actually have a cleaning person who comes every two weeks to help out with this because Obviously that's a lot of time. And when you look at the costs, the amount of time and amount of costs that, you know, money you can save from hiring somebody, then it becomes very, very attractive.

So I can see why that ad, uh, would be so compelling and get people to click on it because they also feel like, okay, I'm buying some time here, right? You know, exactly. It's like, it's going to save me time. And that is such a huge convenience. Now, what are like the top three services that people request the most is cleaning the top one.

Yes. Cleaning is the top one. The second one is whole story cleaning. And the third one is a, is a handyman. Okay, cool. Cool. And is that the same pretty much across all markets, you know, different cities, different countries? Yes. However, we don't really have a handyman in all, in all locations yet, but we are not cleaning company.

Yes. So we are, we are the platform. So, so the difference is we are adding new partners, new cities. And sometimes the services may differ. So in Warsaw, for example, we do have something related to car cleaning and we don't have it in other cities, but we might have some, we might have something related to shoes cleaning in Krakow next month.

Yes. It also depends on, you know, other companies presented in the city and if they willing to cooperate with us, because we can give them clients. And they can just provide the service itself. Alexander, you got to come to Bucharest. My, my, my wife's mom cleans my kid's shoes and I have a boy. He's six years old.

They're going to get dirty every week. They're going to get dirty every week, but she like cleans them by hand. And it's like, why I don't, as a kid, I never, I never had my shoes cleaned because you know, you're a kid, they're going to get dirty, but I would totally pay for that service just so that she didn't have to spend time cleaning my kid's shoes.

And I tried telling her she didn't have to do it, but you know, you can't really argue with grandmas. They're going to do their own thing. Right. Yeah. But you know, the thing is I can bet that there is a companies in Bucharest that are doing shoe cleaning, but you cannot find them. Because they have, uh, a website that are so ugly that you can, you can print that on cigarettes back.

So, I mean, that's what we do. We just, you know, we trying to collect people who can do great service. But they cannot present themselves the way it is going to be, you know, easy to order for a customer. How are you qualifying these service professionals? You know, like if, if somebody says, Hey, I clean really well, I can clean shoes really well, are you asking them to, to send like a before and after picture of some dirty shoes or something?

I mean, if it's possible, sure. But if it's, so the difference is if we're talking about clean in person, those are mostly individuals. So we, we have to train them. We have to, to go through the standards and everything. But if we're talking about the company, then of course it's a kind of risk for us. And, uh, I'm talking about the reputational risk.

So we, we look at the, I dunno, Google Maps reviews or Facebook reviews. We go in there physically and, and watch how, how the workshop looks like. So if everything is fine, then I mean, there is no reason to not trust those people. And do customers get the chance to rate and review the service people?

Absolutely. All the time. After every order. All right. All right. Fantastic. Now, what are some of the expansion plans? What are you really excited about in the next 12 months, Alexander, for the company? Yeah. So the expansion is the main expansion. It's a Germany. So we are thinking about, I don't know, Frankfurt, Munich, maybe, maybe other big cities in Germany.

I don't know. But it also depends on the current structure we have, because the plan is, is to build back office in Warsaw because you don't have to hire people in Germany to, you know, help customer service shouldn't be in Germany. Right. And it's, it's going to be cheaper and easier for us because we know how to deal with Polish taxes.

Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. So, but we are also thinking it's, it's a long planning horizon, but we are thinking about states because as you said, It's something very common in States to hire someone for this kind of jobs, but you have to look for those people yourself. Yeah. I don't know what other competitors are out there.

I know TaskRabbit in the States is the one that I went to, but I don't know if there's a lot more competitors, you know, in different cities, but I'm sure it's a big market, so I'm sure there's opportunity. What, what obstacles have you guys faced? As you're going into each, each new market and trying to grow the business.

Like what are some of the biggest hurdles been Alexander? Yeah, I think it's, well, it's kind of dumb, but it's a translation of the website. So even though we hire native speaking people to, to translate those, it's kind of difficult to get into the target. And people sometimes from different regions, they don't even look for the same, I mean, for the same service, they're looking with the different words.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, that was huge for, for, for example, for Germany. And I guess it is going to be the same for the, you know, we're going West. So now we're operating in Berlin, which is okay. And even I can say that. Well, a huge part of orders in Germany are from expats, so they are looking for the services in English.

Yeah. But it's going to be definitely different in Frankfurt, for example. Yeah. I believe that because I've, I've seen some websites of businesses that start expanding. And they hire somebody who can be, who can speak fluent English. And I, I read the text and I'm like, that shit, it just doesn't sound right to a native speaker.

It's a chat GPT. It's like, it is correct, but something is not, I mean, it's like a robot. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And there's been times just because I know the person and I'll just take a screenshot and I'll just like, send it to the person. You're like, Hey, you may want to try wording this, you know, this way.

Right. I, it's, it's probably one of like the most underused strategies that I think startups in Europe can do is hiring a native speaker to just go through their, their, their content, emails, you know, customer emails, anything that's customer facing newsletter, exact ads, everything, take a look at it.

There's probably not misspellings, but I guarantee you the way things, you know, worded sometimes, sometimes they don't make sense to us. Or we feel like oh, you know, this doesn't sound right so I can I can see and that that like you said even in Germany the different regions, you know, I I can definitely see that playing a part in the states in the south We refer to like a soda or a cola, you know, usually as coke.

We just say coke but in the northeast It's like pop or soda. So it's like very different, but it's the same thing. Okay. I mean, yeah, I heard soda, but yeah, well, soda pop, but our soda, you know, but in the South we usually say Coke. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Well, listen, I love your service and what are some of the things that customers get really excited about when they first start using clean the service?

I mean, everyone is telling about our website because it's so very to order. It's so very easy to order. You go there and you have like, I don't know, five clicks and that's it. So, and it's, and it's very user friendly and that's why we're different from other companies also. Uh, what else people are excited about?

I don't know, something like we, you can order same day cleaning. That's no, that's no one offers. That's pretty nice there. It can be difficult sometimes, but it is possible. No, that's pretty nice. I love the, the car cleaning one. I don't know if a person goes to your house. Or you got to take it somewhere, but that one is also very attractive.

You said carpet or car car, car cleaning car. Oh no. Then you have to go to the workshop. Okay. Because they do all the, all everything, not only cleaning, but also it's called detailing, I guess. Yes. Okay. Okay. Very, very cool. All right. What have you learned about helping, uh, to grow this business? Alexander.

And you mean about the business itself or what I learned about myself? Both. Both. Has it changed you in any way? Absolutely. So as a developer, as a, as a computer IT guy. I saw that I cannot work with people. It's just not my thing, but you know, after two years, uh, working with complaints, working with hiring and answering phone, um, I kind of miss it that I don't do that anymore.

So that was very surprising for me. Like that engineer on the show, Silicon Valley, the one who doesn't want to manage anybody. He's a developer and he's like, don't put anybody on my team. Yes, yes, exactly. I thought that I'm that type of guy, but I'm not, and I'm kind of happy. Yeah. After, if you haven't had like human interaction in a while, you kind of, you do miss it.

It's definitely true. Yeah. But well, I do have human interaction all the time now because I'm talking to investors, I'm talking to partners, to people who want to, to get a franchise from us, you know, for, for media. Yeah, like yourself, but it's, it's not that intense with the clients. Okay. What is the franchise model look like?

I mean, do you guys, uh, take like a certain, like, I don't, I'm guessing care two or 3 percent of like total profits or what I'm just. Can you give a high level idea? Yeah, the thing is it's not set up yet. So it's more like we're selling that to friends and people who we know because it's kind of easier to work with them and explain how everything works, but we cannot sell it yet.

We have to package it and, and, and later it will be available probably on the website. Uh, I don't know, it's not the priority right now, just those people were, you know, coming for us and begging to, to help them start business. Yeah, no, absolutely. This is a business like on day one, on day one, you can start getting customers and getting revenue in the door.

You guys already proven that I think, I mean, what, what, what is the projected revenue that you guys are going to do this year and how long have you guys been in business? Well, so we've been in business, I would say almost three years now. The revenue that's a difficult one. So. We're talking about all the revenue or Polish revenue, I guess you would say both, both.

So for Poland, I guess it's about 6 million euros and the total will be about 10. All right. Good, good, good. Good. Okay. And, and what markets were, are you going to stay in Poland? What's the long term plan for you? Are you going to move somewhere else? Well, I mean, again, are you asking about the business or are you, I'm asking about you, Alex.

Yeah. So I would like to go to state because I've never been there and I'm kind of a big fan, but also based on the music movies and, you know, things that you can see social media, but, well, I've never experienced that. So what part of the country? Well, definitely not Florida

because of the hurricanes or what? No, because of the people, because of the people. Okay. I mean, you know, the, the Florida, it's a state of mind. So there is a cool game that you, you go to the Google and you type your birthday. And then man in Florida and you, you've got some crazy news. You should try that.

I should try. So I try, yeah, there's no, yeah. So I'm, I'm kind of afraid what I can, I can find out that, but well, I will definitely go somewhere. I mean, Texas sounds good. Because, well, from what I heard, a lot of people from, from California now moving to Texas. So the, the startups, everything, like the environment is, is good.

It's very good for startups there. I think they're moving there for the cowboy boots. If you, if you ask me, I think they're like, shit, man, those, those are some cool boots, I want to wear a pair, you know, and, but no, no, Austin is a really cool city, definitely. And the Silicon Valley, they are very friendly. I think Texans are some of their fun, friendliest people that you could ever come across, but it's very hot.

So just keep that in mind. I think California would be a great place to start off at and stay there for a little while and see what you think. And then if you don't like it, you can always go somewhere else, you know? Yeah. Well, I mean, hot is not a problem. I just went back from Dubai. So kind of used to, to that.

Yeah, it's definitely like Dubai, very hot and humid. Okay, I've got some rapid fire questions for you, Alexander. Just give me the first answer that comes to your mind. You ready? Okay. What has been the most exciting thing that you've done in the last 26 days and boarding, I guess. What's that? Sandboarding.

Oh, sandboarding. Yeah. Yeah. Snowboarding, but on the sand. I mean, it's not very excited, but I mean, if you're. If your question was about like, no, no, no, no, that's, that's perfect. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, I mean, it's very excited because I'm doing snowboarding, but I was excited to try that and find out that it's boring and I would never do that again.

Yeah. Did you enjoy it? Yes, but the thing is that you enjoyed on the way down. And then you have, you don't have a lift, you have to climb up with the board yourself to the dunes. They don't give you a camo that you can put the board on the camel's back and you? No, no, no, on your feet. Okay, very interesting.

I don't know anybody who's ever sandboarded, so that's cool. Other question for you here, okay, if you had to instill one piece of advice, In your own child's mind, right? What advice would you give? I would say it's to act, to, to not be afraid to do whatever crazy idea you have in mind and just try it. I mean, the fail, it's not bad, but it's not to try.

Yes, absolutely. I love that. I totally agree with you. Okay. Last question for you. Okay. If you had to put a picture. Of a famous celebrity or actress or athlete on your phone, who would it be? Uh, uh, that's a tough one. Well, okay. Yeah, I guess maybe I have two options. So one of them, it's Dennis Rodman because well.

The great guy crazy, but still great. Yeah, you saw the last dance, right? The last dance Yeah, and also I mean he was dated what was his name? No, i'm yes also but But whatever. Yeah, I don't I don't remember. I know who you're talking about. She was painting the guitarist of that band Yes. Yes. Carmen electra.

Yes Yes. Yeah, so Yes. Yeah, so and about the the female Let's go with my crush. It's, it's a Tik Tok actress. I'm not sure that you have ever heard of that. It's Adriana Subotic. Yeah. It's like, no, but send me the name and I'm going to run this by my, my buddy Scott in the Netherlands. Cause he works with influencers and so he may be aware of who she is.

Okay. Yeah.

No. Cause he, I asked him the same question. And he told me a music artist, she wasn't very famous, but I think she was very famous on Instagram. And so he sent me the name, I looked her up and I said, okay, I can see why you would have her picture on your phone. Yeah. I mean, you can run the short game. Yeah, yeah, I'll run it to him through him and see if he knows her.

Okay, Alex, thank you so much for being on Innovators Can Laugh. Where can people learn more about you? My LinkedIn, because I'm posting there not things only related to clean whale, but also to my other activities related to computer vision, to AI. Yeah, exciting stuff. Yeah, no, I definitely agree follow alexander.

That's how I met him on linkedin He's posting some cool shit And for those listening, I will include all links in the show notes And if you enjoy this don't forget to hit subscribe. Okay until next week. This is eric signing off. Thank you so much alexander Thank you. Cheers. Bye. Hey everyone. Hope you enjoyed that conversation with Alexander.

Isn't it crazy how the cost per acquisition on the same platform can be so extremely different? I mean, 2 in Poland and 8 in Germany with the same messaging. So it just goes to show that, you know, some markets are much better to play in than others. And it also goes to show that. People really value their time and I use TaskRabbit simply because one I wanted to save time I didn't want to spend you know hours the entire Saturday working on something around the house I would rather spend that with my family and then two sometimes you just don't really know how to do that specific tasks and It just pays to get somebody to come in and do it professionally.

It reminds me of a story where I hired this kid to fix my doorframe and I think he did it for like 60. And I had gotten two other quotes from other professional companies that were easily going to charge me 1, 500 or around that amount. So, you know, handyman, I think that's the way to go, especially. When you've got a problem and it could be a simple problem, but maybe it can be fixed easily versus hiring those big companies.

So clean, well, feel free to check them out. I'll put the link in the call notes. Uh, what's coming this season. We've got a lot of great guests. We've got a startup founders from Romania, from Bulgaria, from the Netherlands. And we've also got a couple of people from the UK. That i'm really really excited about so if you haven't yet hit that subscribe button and feel free to tell others about it That's how we grow until then.