We sat down with Fathhome founder and CEO Amir Khazaieli to learn how the company got its start and why its water-free smart washer promises a cleaner, greener world.
How did Fathhome get started?
Like many of the great technical advances, Fathhome started in a dorm room. I first started working on the problem as an engineering student at the University of California, Santa Barbara in part because I was an undergrad and hated doing laundry, but also because it turned out to be really interesting from an engineering perspective.
The fundamental challenge is that the past hundred years have brought incredible advances in textiles, like the quick-drying microfibers that you see in a lot of workout gear, but the methods we use to clean those fabrics haven’t kept up.
Based on the promise of my early research with waterless cleaning, I was able to connect with a committed team of advisors and co-founders. We’ve been fortunate to have found a lot of market interest and a lot of support.
We’re currently working out of Circuit Launch, an amazing space in Oakland dedicated to hardware startups. We’re now testing our waterless washing machine, called Mona, with a community of end users.