Washing laundry isn’t the sexiest of business models, but it does help us illustrate the unique nature of business-friendly Texas — and more specifically the growing number of startups making their mark in Dallas-Fort Worth.
Austin-based NoScrubs was practically made for lazy, overworked people (nobody in particular) who hate doing housework. For a nominal fee, the startup’s concierge model will pick-up and drop-off your unwashed clothes.
Entering the Dallas market has paid off big for NoScrubs, according to CEO Matt O’Connor, who first chatted with The Dallas Morning News over the summer. The startup recently expanded to Miami and Los Angeles ahead of an expected nationwide launch in 2026.
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“Since the launch earlier this year, we’ve seen Dallas outpace both of our other Texas market launches — Houston and Austin — by 35%, reflecting the pent up demand for our services in the area,” O’Connor told The News via email recently.
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“Dallas customers continuously have larger orders and are ordering more frequently than our other TX markets, and because of the massive growth we’re seeing,” which O’Connor pegged at a staggering 708% year-over-year as of October.
NoScrubs is the perfect example of the “Cowboy Capitalism” Sasha Richie writes about in her outstanding deep-dive into the qualities of D-FW startup culture. While it’s not Silicon Valley, North Texas’ entrepreneurial ecosystem is distinctive in its own right — especially in an era where every company is becoming an artificial intelligence company.
Branded bags from Noscrubs.com, a laundry service startup based in Austin.
Noscrubs.com / Noscrubs
That’s not an exaggeration. Bain data shows that the generative AI boom has sparked a gold rush of venture capital funding into those startups: the first half of 2025 saw more AI fundraising than 2024 as a whole, even as overall venture funding tumbled by 17% year-over-year. Software and AI are absorbing nearly 45% of all venture capital investments.
The Matrix-like tendrils of AI are burrowing into businesses both large and small — and even a laundry washing service like NoScrubs — which uses AI to process its orders — isn’t entirely immune.
However, the Dallas-Fort Worth venture scene is increasingly defined by a wide range of disruptors across industries — such as Colossal Biosciences, the de-extinction pioneer that’s trying to bring back the woolly mammoth.
Texas “everything from the space industry to synthetic biology. I think that as the financial ecosystem and privatized capital — from venture funds, private equity funds or family offices — gets more day-to-day exposure in those types of deals,” Colossal co-founder and CEO Ben Lamm tells Richie in an interview.
Lamm puts his finger on a very important point that we’ll be exploring in these pages in the future. The rise of North Texas as a major financial center is creating lots of wealth that’s being deployed across sectors, and the impact is just starting to be felt.
Stay tuned.