Tagged: gig-economy
17 results
Sivo
Sivo is a debt-as-a-service platform that lets fintechs, neobanks and platforms lend money to their users at scale without raising their own debt capital. Founded by serial operator Kate Hiscox and part of Y Combinator's Winter 2021 batch, Sivo pitches itself as a 'Stripe for debt' - turning a debt facility that traditionally takes months to close into an API call. It has since expanded into instant payouts, embedded capital, and tokenized real-world receivables.
Global Mobility Service Inc.
Global Mobility Service Inc. (GMS) is a Tokyo-based FinTech and mobility company that gives people locked out of traditional credit a path to vehicle ownership. By pairing its proprietary IoT device, MCCS, with a cloud platform called MSPF, GMS lets lenders remotely manage and, if payments stop, safely disable a financed vehicle - turning driving behavior and payment data into a new form of creditworthiness. The model has extended auto loans to gig drivers, taxi operators and delivery workers across Japan, the Philippines, Cambodia and Indonesia who would otherwise be rejected by conventional screening.
Outsized
Outsized is a curated talent-on-demand platform that connects large enterprises and consulting firms with vetted independent consultants, subject-matter experts, interims and fractional professionals across Asia-Pacific, Africa and the Middle East. Founded in 2016 and focused on financial services, it pairs management-consulting rigor with deep industry domain expertise, handling matching, contracting, invoicing and payments so clients can staff transformation, risk, data and digital projects in days rather than months.
Mike Shebat
Mike Shebat is the co-founder and CEO of Traba, a New York-based labor marketplace that supplies vetted on-demand workers to warehouses, distribution centers, and light industrial employers. He started the company in 2021 after seeing, from inside a McMaster-Carr shipping floor and later Uber Eats, how often temp workers simply don't show up. Traba has raised roughly $46 million from Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures, and Shebat, a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, runs it on a famously intense in-office schedule.
Nick Abramovich
Nick Abramovich is the CEO of Workers Benefit Fund, a New York-based benefits platform that builds the plumbing between gig workers, freelancers, independent contractors and the government, union and private benefits they are eligible for but almost never enroll in. He has been running the company since 2019, when WBF acquired BeneStream, the Medicaid-for-the-workplace outfit he ran as President. Under him, WBF added Upward Finance in December 2024, extending the platform from healthcare enrollment into tax and earnings tools for gig workers. Before benefits, he was CEO of Synaptic Digital and CMO of Ditech Holding Corporation, with earlier stops at MetLife, MoveOnIn.com, and BizSlate. Columbia MBA, Tulane BS.
Dots
Dots is a San Francisco-based global payouts infrastructure company that lets marketplaces, platforms, and service businesses pay workers, sellers, and creators anywhere through a single end-to-end API. One integration unifies bank transfers, PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, and stablecoins, and bundles recipient onboarding, KYC/anti-fraud, and tax form collection so platforms can move money to over 1 million payees across 190+ countries without building payment rails themselves.
Sahil Hasan
Sahil Hasan is the CEO and Co-Founder of Dots, a developer-friendly global payouts platform that has processed over $1 billion to more than 1 million gig workers, creators, and contractors in 190+ countries. A UC Berkeley EECS grad with a CMU master's degree, Sahil spent time as a Research Engineer at Google X before co-founding Dots through Y Combinator's S21 batch. The company raised an $8.9M Series A in February 2026 led by DCM Ventures, is profitable, and growing revenue 400% year-over-year.
Uber
Uber is a global technology platform that connects riders, drivers, eaters, couriers, and shippers through a single app. What began in 2009 as a way to summon a black car in San Francisco has grown into a multi-sided marketplace spanning ride-hailing, food and grocery delivery (Uber Eats), and freight logistics (Uber Freight). It operates in roughly 70 countries and 10,000+ cities, serving more than 200 million monthly active users and completing over 13 billion trips a year.
Checkr, Inc.
Checkr is a San Francisco-based HR-tech company that uses AI and a modern API to run background checks at internet speed. Founded in 2014 by Daniel Yanisse and Jonathan Perichon out of Y Combinator, it processes screenings for Uber, Instacart, DoorDash, OpenAI and thousands of other employers - and lobbies hard for fair-chance hiring along the way.
Jonathan Perichon
Jonathan Perichon is the Co-founder and CTO of Checkr, Inc., a San Francisco-based AI-powered background screening platform he co-founded in 2014 with Daniel Yanisse. A French-born software engineer who discovered the gig economy's broken background check infrastructure while working at an LA startup, Perichon turned that frustration into a $4.6 billion company serving over 100,000 clients including DoorDash, Lyft, Coinbase, and Uber. A Y Combinator S14 alumnus who applied three times before getting in, he embodies the principle that persistence and execution beat credentials every time.
Melody McCloskey
Melody McCloskey is the founder and CEO of StyleSeat, the largest online marketplace for beauty, grooming, and wellness services, connecting over 350,000 independent beauty professionals with 10 million+ consumers across the United States. She co-founded StyleSeat in 2011 alongside Dan Levine, bootstrapped the company for 18 months before raising $40.7 million in venture funding, and has helped power over 200 million appointments while generating $12+ billion in total revenue for small businesses. A San Francisco native who studied French and International Relations at UC Davis, McCloskey built StyleSeat out of her own frustration with booking beauty appointments, turning a personal pain point into a platform that fundamentally reshaped how independent beauty professionals run their businesses. She is also an angel investor and Cleo Capital scout, focused on backing female-led startups at the pre-seed through Series A stages.
StyleSeat
StyleSeat is an online marketplace and booking platform connecting beauty and wellness professionals - hair stylists, barbers, makeup artists, nail techs, estheticians - with millions of clients searching for appointments. Founded in San Francisco in 2011 by Melody McCloskey and Dan Levine, it bundles booking, payments, marketing, and a client database into a single tool for independent pros, while giving consumers a discovery and reservation engine for local services.
Sumir Meghani
Sumir Meghani is the CEO and Co-Founder of Instawork, a San Francisco-based on-demand staffing platform connecting over 4 million skilled hourly workers with businesses across hospitality, light industrial, and warehousing sectors. A Stanford and Harvard Business School alumnus and Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow, Meghani built Instawork from a Y Combinator S15 startup into a $171.8M-funded company operating in 30+ markets across the U.S. and Canada, earning the EY Entrepreneur of the Year 2023 Bay Area Award and back-to-back Inc. 5000 rankings.
Wei Deng
Wei Deng is the CEO and founder of Clipboard Health, a San Francisco-based healthcare labor marketplace that connects nurses and other healthcare professionals with open shifts at facilities like nursing homes and hospitals. Founded in 2016 and backed by Sequoia Capital and IVP, the company achieved unicorn status at a $1.3B valuation after raising $94M in total funding. A Yale College and Yale Law School graduate, Deng pivoted through six to eight business models before discovering that flexible, on-demand shift matching was the key to solving healthcare staffing shortages. Known for her relentless persistence — she pitched facilities seven months pregnant — Deng built Clipboard Health into a platform serving over 5,000 facilities across the United States.
Hemkesh Agrawal
Hemkesh Agrawal is an engineer-turned-venture-operator who went from arriving in the US from India in 2019 to holding a patent, founding multiple startups, and becoming Head of Engineering at Redbud VC in Columbia, Missouri. A Board of Trustees Scholar at Michigan State University with a perfect 4.0 GPA, he co-founded UniServices (an Uber-for-odd-jobs platform for college students) and Village (AI-driven HOA management), and was one of only 15 selected out of 4,000 applicants for the Survive & Thrive entrepreneurship bootcamp at age 16. He bridges deep technical skill with startup hustle, embodying the rare builder who can go from Arduino prototypes to VC infrastructure.
Tony Xu
Tony Xu is the co-founder and CEO of DoorDash, the food delivery giant commanding roughly 60% of the U.S. market. Born Xu Xun in Nanjing, China, he immigrated to the United States at age four, grew up washing dishes alongside his mother, and turned that lived understanding of the service economy into a company now valued near $100 billion. He led DoorDash through its blockbuster 2020 IPO, the $8.1B acquisition of Wolt, and the $3.9B acquisition of Deliveroo, while also serving on Meta's board of directors.
John Zimmer
John Zimmer is the co-founder and former President of Lyft, the ride-hailing company he built alongside Logan Green from a carpooling experiment at Cornell into a public company worth $24 billion at its 2019 IPO. Known for his hospitality-school ethos and relentless focus on human connection over transaction, Zimmer spent 16 years transforming how Americans think about car ownership and urban mobility. After stepping down from Lyft's board in August 2025, he launched Yes&, a consumer company-builder focused on health, connection, and joy.