Established by Founder and CEO Lily Shen, Trash Warrior, the only tech-enabled full-service waste management platform in the U.S, closed an $8 million pre-A investment. The round was led by AltaIR Capital.
Amino Capital, Operator Partners, Vermilion Ventures have also participated. Existing investors Primavera Capital, Sand Hill Angels, and 500 Startups followed the round. Trash Warrior graduated from the Spring 2020 batch of 500 Startups, a highly selective startup accelerator.
Trash Warrior provides a completely new business approach to B2B waste management in the US market. After making a waste management booking from trashwarrior.com, any business can get their waste headaches taken care of within several hours instead of several days. This on-demand high-volume waste management platform can be handled at the fingertips, without calls, nationwide, and cover all verticals of waste needs. The mission of the company is to improve the US recycling rate from 35% to 75%, making the USA cleaner and greener.
Trash Warrior is a managed platform that offers waste removal and dumpster rental services to all B2B customers, with the potential of highly customized enterprise solutions to nationwide clients. Clients book services using a web app at trashwarrior.com. Just like Uber, Trash Warrior’s 2 sided marketplace will match the best waste providers that can fulfill the request, taking into considerable of time constraint, sustainability, and pricing. Unlike on-demand platform such as Uber and Lyft, Trash Warrior’s providers are mostly businesses instead of individuals. Some of them are local and family owned, others can be a nationwide presence.
The company achieved $10M in annualized GMV earlier this year, and has had a high LTV since launching, which illustrates the huge demand for the revolutionary approach that Trash Warrior follows. Since its launch in Q4 2019, the company’s GMV has been growing 8x YOY. The tech platform has already attracted enterprise customers that use this solution nationwide. Among clients are well-known companies such as Amazon, Instacart, Imperfect Foods, Weee!, Tuft & Needle, Holiday Inn, Hyatt, Hilton, and others.
Founded in San Francisco three years ago, the startup now provides enterprise customers with full-service waste management across the U.S. The data-driven startup offers clients upfront pricing thus reducing unnecessary costs. From each completed jobs, Trash Warrior learns about the pricing and waste solutions from a vastly distributed provider market, and uses such data to improving the solution and pricing for its next jobs. Most of the data about the millions of waste providers and waste dumping locations is not readily available on any publicly viewable website – therefore, a platform that is able to collect and aggregate such data to make an informed decision about waste would be able to stand out in the competition not only for its pricing advantage but also for its sustainability impact.
The company plans to use its new funds to improve technology, hire the best talents and strengthen sales and marketing. Lily Shen: “Our main plans are to gain more enterprise B2B customers and deepen our sustainability and data transparency features. With the new funding round, we can scale up our customized offering in B2B waste management operations efficiently.”
Igor Ryabenkiy, CEO and GP of AltaIR Capital commented, “The US waste management market constantly grows although traditional tools and methods are mainly used. Trash Warrior invented an innovative approach to solving market problems, which ensured the company’s rapid growth. The team, led by Lily Shen is very powerful and capable of bringing new standards to the waste management market. We supported the startup from the early stage and today we are glad to lead the current round. We believe in the bright future of the company”.
About AltaIR Capital
AltaIR Capital is an international investment company, founded by Igor Ryabenkiy. The total amount under the management of AltaIR Capital is more than $600M. The company invested in more than 300 companies and is active in Productivity Tools, FinTech, InsureTech, Future of Work, and Digital Health. Among unicorns that AltaIR Capital supported in the early stage are Miro, Deel, PandaDoc, OpenWeb, Socure, and Turing. The investment company is the second most active venture capital company in Israel (PitchBook, 2019 and 2022).