Laundris Founder and CEO, Don Ward, has been recognized as one of Google’s Top 30 Black Founders in America to Watch in 2021 and is a recipient of the Google Startups’ Black Founders Fund Initiative. Ward was selected for this award from a pool of nearly 1000 highly qualified applicants and was accepted to the Google for Startups Accelerator program for his entrepreneurship in creating a solution that solves major challenges for the hospitality industry.
In celebration of receiving the award, Ward says, “I am very honored to receive this acknowledgement and investment from Google. Google technology has long changed our modern world, and they have historically invested in businesses that they view as innovative and visionary. The Google for Startups Black Founders Fund will have a considerable impact on the Laundris Corporation. This capital and support comes at a critical time and will be used to add technical, sales, and operations resources that will enable our team to scale in Austin and beyond.”
Google for Startups Accelerator for Black Founders is a three-month digital accelerator program for Seed to Series A technology startups based in the U.S. The accelerator program is designed to bring the best of Google’s programs, products, people and technology to Black founder communities across the U.S. In addition to mentorship and technical project support, the accelerator also includes deep dives and workshops focused on product design, customer acquisition and leadership development for founders.
“This award helps to change the narrative for black founders. Outside of the traditional views of being rappers or athletes, this shows that given ample opportunities, we can excel building technologies, products and teams that solve business problems,” Ward says.
Ward’s impressive work in developing Laundris and growing it to a profitable, successful business has helped position him as a leader and disruptor in the linen and technology industry, thus digitally transforming a $53 billion market. Currently focusing on linen services and technology, with the new Google Startups Funding, in the future, Laundris hopes to utilize a portion of the funds to further research and development, and technology platform development. The goal is to expand the current functions to not only enhance existing capabilities, but to also bring this game-changing technology to other departments and industries that can greatly benefit from a standardization of operational procedures and services as well.
