Startups To Watch
It’s time to take out the trash — literally. Finance pro turned Airbnb guru, Cameron Lam has hosted over 30,000 guests. As he got into the Airbnb world, he was able to automate almost every step of the process … except for those pesky blue and green bins. Partnering with Jordan Garn and Travis Zappia, and combining their personal fields of expertise, this savvy crew built the Crew app — a smoother, techy way to automate trash valet for short term rental owners. Crew is a more sustainable model than other gig economy apps, thanks to the consistent nature of trash pickup schedules. With a niche market fit, Crew just hit $1 million in ARR July 2025. Cameron and the Crew are kicking trash to the curb — and helping gig workers as they do so.
I graduated from BYU in the finance program, worked at Intel in Arizona for a long time, and quickly realized that was not my thing. I’ve always been entrepreneurial but didn’t know how to get out of the rat race, so for me, the answer was investing in real estate.
In 2018, I bought my first house and did a house hack, having roommates paying the mortgage. Then, I got married and tried to convince my wife to move into the master bedroom with me … long story short, she made me get another house and we kept the first as a rental. We were cash flowing around $1,500 a month. Eventually I scaled my portfolio to 30 rentals, most of them being Airbnbs, and I retired in 2022. I thought, “All right, this is it. I’m retired. I’m going to play golf all day.” But then I got bored.
I had automated almost everything in Airbnb, but I couldn’t automate the trash cans. Cleaners didn’t want to come back just for trash day, neighbors got mad, and eventually I’d have to pay my handyman $150 to empty the bins, which he’d do reluctantly. In some cities you could lose your license for trash issues. I even tried to do all my trash cans at one point — and it took 65 hours in one week. I knew this was not sustainable. So my idea was basically to build DoorDash-like software for trash.
That’s where we came to Crew. I partnered with my buddy Jordan Garn, co-founder of Nectar HR. We launched in 2024 and Jordan built the app. Travis Zappia is also a co-founder and COO, and he brings deep expertise from running a team of 1,200 at Walmart for one of their biggest operations facilities.
We started with my own properties, then word of mouth. The real growth came when Convoi accepted us into their program. Jared Rodman said, “Why don’t you just start calling owners and telling your story?” That’s what I did, and we grew business to around $150k ARR in eight weeks. We then raised a $3 million seed round with interest from strong investors. And we hit $1 million in July. It’s been less than a year, and this thing is taking off.
How it works: Workers get trash routes and upload a photo of the returned trash and recycling bins to submit evidence. For example, take one guy in Arizona doing 30 jobs in one day. He’s going to make $144, and it may take him 3 or 4 hours. Currently we have around 700 active workers on the app. Our gross margins are 76-80 percent in a gig economy app at scale, which just doesn’t exist in gig economy apps that cap out around 25 percent margins. How many gig apps can you think of that actually have recurring jobs? We have an advantage because trash pickup happens every week at the same time.
Our software is amazing and makes sure nothing gets missed. A few months ago, we had 22,000 stops and only missed 11. Luckily, we’re not like DoorDash where if the order is missed, the food’s cold. If you miss a trash can, we can send our local teams out to empty the cans. Maintaining that relationship with the customer is the reason why we’ve never lost a customer due to service, and we now have almost 1,000 customers.
I’m a first-time founder. At the beginning, I didn’t know how to raise money, or structure a team the right way, etc. Through this process, I’ve learned a lot about the importance of selling. With startups, you hear horror stories of focusing on the product for so long, but then it wasn’t what the consumer wanted. That’s why sales is so important: if you can sell it, then you can build it.
I think the allure is how unsexy and simple the business is. Everyone can understand it. I want to focus on growing this arm, and I think we can get to 100,000 homes in the next four years and $50 million ARR, and that’s just with Airbnb. I think our bigger market after we build up density in these places is servicing residential.
“We have an advantage because trash pickup happens every week at the same time.”