From Dropout to CEO: Diana Muturia’s Journey to Transform Cleaning

Dylan Silver (00:01.228)
Hey folks, welcome back to the show. Today’s guest runs Clean, a web-based AI cleaning management tool for rentals, boutique hotels, helping hosts and cleaning crews stay organized and efficient. Please welcome Diana, welcome to the show.

Diana, Clyn (00:19.947)
Thanks for having me Dylan.

Dylan Silver (00:21.802)
It’s great to meet you and to have you on the show here. I have a good idea of the business and I think it’s such a unique and niche tool to have, but for folks who may not have heard of you, what is clean?

Diana, Clyn (00:36.373)
Yeah, so clean is your cleaning crew’s smartest teammate for every turnover. So clean auto schedules, cleans, restocks supplies, spots damages, and verifies quality so you never need to do an in-person walkthrough again.

Dylan Silver (00:51.01)
And so AI is now, I think, taking over so much of real estate. And it’s honestly amazing to see. But I was unaware that you could do some of the applications that you’re using it for. How is it determining what’s low?

Diana, Clyn (01:05.781)
Yeah, so on the cleaning crew side, on their application, if you have a list of supplies that you usually have for your property, they can mark those as low. And once that is marked as low, on your side, you are able to trigger either a restock through Amazon or Instacart, and then it will be delivered to your door.

Dylan Silver (01:28.824)
So the cleaning crew goes into the clean portal and then they mark something as low and then the automation takes care of the rest.

Diana, Clyn (01:38.623)
Yes, so when they’re taking before and after photos, that’s something that they’re required to do in the checklist is to mark what supplies are low. Once that’s done, it will ping you on your host side and let you know that this needs to be restocked. And you can decide to click an order and it will be delivered to your door.

Dylan Silver (01:58.946)
Now, I think a lot of folks who are doing short-term rentals would be curious to see if this would be a fit for them. What are the advantages of going with clean versus maybe just having your cleaner text you, right?

Diana, Clyn (02:12.937)
Yeah, so.

know turnover is the most cumbersome part of short term rentals, right? If you have a disorganized turnover process, your guests have a really terrible experience. And one of the big things is on the cleaning side. So if the cleaner decides just to text you and say they’ve done the job, you don’t know really how to look at the job if it was done properly. There’s some small things of, you you want your property to look a certain way other than just cleaning and you don’t know if it’s done.

There are lot of advantages of that. Also, it is cumbersome trying to coordinate between guests leaving and the next guest coming in and being able to have a cleaner show up on time. So Clean automates the entire process. It provides smart scheduling up to a year out so you don’t have to schedule another cleaning with another cleaner. It gives you real-time adaptive checklists. So if one property

needs more attention than another, you have specific checklists for those and they’re reminded on that. So for example, if you have a property in Austin and another one in Dallas, Austin is obviously more dustier than Dallas and so you may want to have the cleaner change the air filter every three months. So instead of trying to constantly be able to constantly remind the cleaner, that AI checklist adapts with what you’re asking for. So it will add

in the checklist every three months to change the air filter. So there are a lot of advantages of using clean. It just makes your work so much easier so that you can just focus on giving guests a really great experience.

Dylan Silver (03:57.184)
Now, do you have a background in development, in mobile app, software? How did you get this together?

Diana, Clyn (04:06.677)
Yeah, so I’m originally from Kenya. I came here when I was 18 and I came to study math and mechanical engineering. And in my last year of college, my new math advisor said I don’t look like an engineer. And I found myself as a college dropout away from home and I was pulled into the cleaner’s world. And I realized that we all felt the same pain. We were not able to scale our businesses and it’s really cumbersome taking care of clients. So I decided, you know what, I have nothing left to lose.

me sit down and learn how to code. And so I built the first application. We did really well. We had about 3,000 users in the first two months. But since then, it has evolved. And now I have a team of engineers who are constantly iterating the SAS product.

Dylan Silver (04:53.762)
So for those who aren’t aware, what is SAS?

Diana, Clyn (04:57.687)
SAS is Sales as a Service. it’s a subscription to a software. Did I say Sales as Service? Software as a Service. It’s a subscription to a software that helps you get your job done, whether it’s productivity. In this case, for clean, it is productivity for the cleaners and making sure that your stays are guest ready.

Dylan Silver (05:19.948)
Now, I want to pivot a bit here, Diana, and talk about for investors who may be managing this themselves and looking at scaling their business and trying to figure out what the right way to do it is and thinking, well, I’ve got so many different options. I could do property management. I could try to do it myself. Would you say that if people are looking at doing it themselves, this is a great tool for them? Or would you say if people

have a property manager that this is a great tool for the property manager too or for both.

Diana, Clyn (05:52.733)
It’s for both. We have clients and pilot users who have one Airbnb and we have pilot users who have up to 76 Airbnbs. So regardless of what needs that you have, we’re very good at automation. That’s one of our strengths, automation and integration.

Dylan Silver (06:12.568)
Now I want to ask you, because I know you’re in Austin, I’m in Dallas, is a lot of your clientele based out of Texas or is it really all over the map?

Diana, Clyn (06:24.289)
It’s all over the map. We’ve got clients in Texas, clients in North Carolina, clients in California, clients in the UK, clients in Kenya, clients in Australia. We really are everywhere.

Dylan Silver (06:39.746)
The international appeal, I think, of the short-term rentals is probably hard for lot of people who have never left the US to really understand, but it’s huge practically everywhere. mean, Airbnb is every, it’s almost hard to imagine, because you know it’s big here, but it’s big everywhere. The short-term rental, I bet, is big in Kenya there too, right?

Diana, Clyn (06:59.647)
Yeah.

Diana, Clyn (07:04.245)
Kenya is one of the leading tourist attractions in Africa and so we get a lot of people from all over the world who want to see the wildlife and they’ve realized that I don’t actually need to be in a hotel to go to see a safari or go do mission work. I can stay in an Airbnb in Nairobi and benefit from everything that Nairobi has to offer. I don’t need to be in a remote place. So tourists really love Airbnb.

in Nairobi and it has become a very good business for us.

Dylan Silver (07:39.426)
I think one of the interesting things talking about short-term rentals in other countries is the quality can be incredible. could also, you can vary, of course you can go maybe more cost effective, but some of the quality of these Airbnbs is astronomical, like better than anything that you could really even, I would say fathom. And so if people are scaling a business, maybe without borders remotely, so if I’m in Texas and I’m Airbnbs,

Diana, Clyn (08:00.352)
Yeah.

Dylan Silver (08:08.462)
throughout the world, right? I wanna have a tool which enables me to do that. I wanna pivot here a bit, Diana, and ask you, where do you maybe see the future going to with some of the AI and the cleaning and some of these tools? I know no one has a crystal ball, but where do you see maybe the next six months to 18 months looking like?

Diana, Clyn (08:26.817)
I think there’s going to be a drop of number of Airbnb hosts.

specifically in the US because the standard of quality and the demand from guests is going to be higher. But it is an actual advantage because those who are serious with having an Airbnb and giving guests a really great experience are able to really cash in for that. So even though there’s a short decline of hosts, the quality is higher and the payback is much higher too. In terms of the world, I think there’s going to be

more hosts too and I agree with the quality. For example, when I use an Airbnb in Nairobi, it usually comes with someone to clean the house every week, clean your clothes and cook for you. Sometimes it even comes with a chef and you really don’t break the bank. You pay the same amount that you would pay for rent here in the United States. So it’s definitely a switch, a lot of Airbnb growth around the world. But here specifically,

Dylan Silver (09:28.291)
now.

Diana, Clyn (09:35.363)
in the US, think it’s going to be more of quality over quantity. And I’m really excited about that because our tools are going to be what’s the staple for them.

Dylan Silver (09:47.552)
I think you probably get this quite a bit or maybe I’m the first person to say it up on a podcast here, but we’re going to start seeing more and more advanced robotics, right? And so I could see a tool like yours basically merging to where if things are low, it’s able to capture it. And then it’s able to do a lot of the cleaning in an automated way. I mean, we have the robot cleaners that clean the floors. We’re both in Texas. So I’m sure you’ve seen maybe QT, they have clean the cleaning.

A QT is done by robots. Have you seen this?

Diana, Clyn (10:18.751)
Yes, I have seen it. think robots will be very helpful for commercial public areas, commercial buildings. think there are some places we can automate with robots. But when it comes to short term rentals, people are very important.

Houses and apartments are so different in terms of how they are put together that you do need a human being to get in there and place it the way you’d like it. For other places like QT, public restrooms, in malls, you know it’s the same. Just clean everything, let it dry, right? But for short-term rentals, for boutique hotels, you do need that human touch.

Dylan Silver (11:04.639)
I’m giving it, this is it, I’m not a betting man, but if I was, I’d give it two years. Two years is what I’m saying. And then they’re gonna have highly tactile, what would you say, good dexterity robots where they can like do linens and lift and do betting and all this stuff. And I think we’re right there. And then with AI and all the competition, I think you’re in a tremendous business. And the way that I see more people getting involved is if they know that they can be hands off, right? I actually just had,

someone messaged me who I know who’s a dentist and this person reached out to me and say, I’m looking at getting into real estate, but it’s so complicated. And I emphasize it. I understand that completely because for someone on the outside looking in day job, it’s difficult to do all this. But if they know that they can kind of have a seamless process hands off where their main risk is their initial investment and maybe maintenance, I think a lot more people will get into it that way.

Diana, Clyn (12:02.485)
Yeah, I think, yes, real estate can be complicated and I know that for a fact, but I think also it just comes to education, Like podcasts like this educate people more about real estate. So if you stay close to the education, you’ll catch up, yeah.

Dylan Silver (12:23.662)
I want to ask you about maybe future plans for the business. also I know we talked a little bit before hopping on here. The business has grown and adapted over the years from where it started nine years ago was a cleaning service to now a platform where folks can automate their cleaning. Where do you see it maybe scaling to in the next maybe six months to 18 months?

Diana, Clyn (12:50.593)
So we’re going to get the preferred partner logo with Airbnb. We want to be able to

use Airbnb APIs to automate cleaning operations for people who are not using Guesty, HostAway, HostFlea. There’s some people who just can’t afford that. They’re just getting started. They’re testing the waters with SDRs. And so we want to be able to be there as they grow. And then once they start using platforms like Guesty, HostAway, Onores, who are partners that we absolutely love, they can just transition without having a problem. So that’s what we’re seeing.

ourselves do in the next six months.

Dylan Silver (13:34.882)
I think a lot more people are going to be getting into the space. Now it is going to be interesting because at the same time that you have people getting in, you also have regulation and you have people who may be from the old guard or the hotels of the world who are maybe not looking forward to it. But it’s going to be an interesting space and your tool can be used in all avenues. So the boutique hotels, right? So a lot of opportunity there. Diana, we are coming up on time here though.

Where can folks go if they maybe want to learn more about clean or maybe get in contact with you?

Diana, Clyn (14:10.196)
Yeah, so just go to clean.com, C-L-Y-N dot com. In social media, if you type in Clean app, you’re gonna find us literally everywhere. If you wanna get ahold of us, it’s just diana at clean.com. And you can find us anywhere. We’re very active on social media, especially LinkedIn.

Dylan Silver (14:32.216)
Diana, thank you so much for coming on the show here today and congrats on all your success.

Diana, Clyn (14:38.571)
Thank you Dylan, appreciate it.