We’re on a mission to build a better system for restroom access, use, and cleanliness. At our core, we’re creating a way for anyone to tap and go at any restroom in the world. But more than that:  we want to curate quality restroom experiences.

Since childhood, I’ve had a phobia of public restrooms. Growing up outside New York, I often went into the city with my parents. My early encounters with public restrooms were awful -  smells, stains, biohazards. I never wanted to use them again.

As an adult, I’ve lived in cities around the world: Boston, San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Beijing, Dubai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Washington DC.

It was Tokyo that changed everything for me. It was the first place where clean restrooms were the norm. You could throw a rock in almost any direction and find a spotless restroom with bag hooks and a bidet. Dirtiness wasn’t tolerated, it was the exception.

Yedi was born out of a psychotic obsession to bring this level of cleanliness and convenience to the rest of the world. We started with a map. “Let’s help people find restrooms! That’s sure to work!”.

It didn’t. The data was stale. And after testing hundreds of thousands of locations, we found that about half the time the restroom was:

Back to the drawing board. We came to a hard truth: to make this work, we had to guarantee both cleanliness and access. That meant building our own lock, and replacing existing ones to let anyone tap in or get a code, while preventing unwanted messes.

We built a system that would reward businesses for keeping their restrooms clean, and give consumers the power to choose to pay for a clean restroom on demand. No more waiting in lines for an item you don’t need. No more guessing whether it’s a restroom you can use. If you see our sign, your bladder will be fine.

Worry not, customers still go for free!

Today, we are live in more than 60 restrooms. We’re grateful to our partners for trusting our vision - and to every restroom-goer who’s left these spaces clean.