By Claudia Loucks
Geneseo Current
Waterwerks is a pressure washing and window washing business founded by Geneseo High School students James Matthews and Alex Snyder. They take appointments by phone at 309-507-6816. Photo by Claudia Loucks
James Matthews and Alex Snyder are co-owners and operators of Waterwerks – Pressure Washing & Window Cleaning business they launched two years ago, just after their freshman year at GHS. The business is now a full-time operation, which they plan to continue after high school graduation.
It was just before school was out in the spring of 2023 when Matthews and Snyder were thinking about starting some type of business, “We just didn’t know what kind of business, but we knew we wanted to earn some money,” Matthews recalled.
The idea came to the two friends when Alex Snyder’s parents, who lived in rural Geneseo at the time, hired them to do chores, and gave them a choice of doing inside chores or outside chores.
“We decided to go with outside chores, and they told us we would be pressure washing the side of the house,” he said. ‘While we were doing that job, I talked to Alex about how my Dad had a large pressure washer and maybe we could use it and earn some money by doing pressure washing on other people’s houses.”
Even though they had the idea for their business, the young men weren’t quite sure how to go about selling their idea to prospective customers.
Snyder’s siblings did door-to-door sales and the two friends contacted them to find out more about how to sell their idea.
Their next step was asking James’ Dad if they could borrow his pressure washer, which he agreed to loan them.
It was the last week of school in 2023 when the two young businessmen learned that James’ Dad had found a client who would hire them to pressure wash their house…” It was our first job and it was in May of 2023,” Matthews recalled.
It was their first job and he said, “It was a big house and we ran into some problems, so it definitely was a learning experience.”
But they had no additional jobs lined up.
They contacted Alex’s older brother to ask how they could go door to door with their business, and Matthews said, “He gave us a baseline pitch so we practiced that for about three days and then we had the courage to begin. We knocked on our first door, it was in rural Geneseo, and they hired us.”
That first employment boosted their courage and confidence and they were able to capture two more jobs that would take care of their schedule for the following two weeks.
“Our business just kept growing,” Matthews said, and mostly as a result of door-knocking. “We worked all summer, either knocking on doors or doing the pressure washing work.”
Both Matthews and Snyder have played soccer at GHS, so they don’t usually schedule jobs during the school year, “but sometimes in the spring we will do pressure washing during the last few months of school, from late March to when school is out in May,” he added.
In thinking back to the their second summer as business owners, Matthews said there were many problems…”We had lots of trouble with equipment and trouble hiring employees.”
Waterwerks now employs primarily high school and college students…”We knew at the time we started that we could not hire adults because we didn’t think they would respect 15 year-olds as we did not have a business license or driver’s licenses when we started our business. Now we have both, but before Alex’s Mom drove us everywhere.”
This summer, 2025 and their third summer in business, the young entrepreneurs have grown their business to include a line of trucks, used for the business only; and they employ 32 people, high school and college-age (11 sales people and 21 technicians).
“We are pretty busy almost every day,” Matthews said.
When asked what was the biggest hurdle they had to overcome in starting Waterwerks, Matthews said, “In the beginning, our equipment kept breaking down. We have had to upgrade our equipment and have had to put all the money we had earned for ourselves back into the business to obtain better equipment. Currently, our profit margins are zero, all the money is dumped right back into the business to cover expenses. Insurance is a big expense and maintenance is too, so as of now we can’t take any salaries for ourselves.”
Their hope is that in just a few weeks they will have everything running smoothly and steadily and “maybe we can begin to take some income for ourselves,” Matthews said.
He is the son of James Matthews and Jamie Matthews, and Snyder’s parents are Marjorie and Mike Snyder
