gig-economy
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Zego put insurance on the clock. Now it wants to watch you drive.
Zego won delivery drivers with cover that clocks on when they do. After an expensive retreat from fleet insurance, it is betting on phone data, safer driving and a much bigger audience.
Rota Put the Staffing Agency Inside the App
Rota began by filling last-minute hospitality shifts. The more durable business was the machinery behind the marketplace - software that lets employers, agencies and workers arrange an unruly week from the same screen.
Relay Cut the Apps Out of Delivery - Then New York Repriced the Ride
Relay gave restaurants a clever bargain: keep the customer, rent the courier. Its rise, acquisition and New York exit show both the power - and the hard limit - of unbundling food delivery.
The Empty Shift Is Qwick's Whole Business - and It Fills One in 30 Minutes
A Charleston startup called Gigpro merged with its better-funded Phoenix rival, took the rival's name, and built a marketplace where a short-staffed restaurant can post a shift and have a vetted bartender walking in before service.
Buckle Raised $106 Million to Insure Uber Drivers. It Survived by Becoming Insurance's Plumbing.
The Atlanta startup wanted to be the USAA of the gig economy. When the rideshare math refused to cooperate, it traded a consumer dream for a quieter, colder business - renting out its insurance license to other people's ideas.
Latin America's Freelancers Needed a Home. Workana Built One, Then Took It to Asia.
Founded in Buenos Aires in 2012, Workana turned a region full of remote talent and no dedicated marketplace into the largest freelance platform in Latin America, with more than two million professionals and a growing outpost in Southeast Asia.
The Delivery App That Lets the City Name Its Price
MRSOOL made a Saudi habit - asking, bargaining and helping - into software. Its open request-and-bid model explains how a simple errand app became a regional logistics network with nearly 15 million customers.
The $5 Gig Grew Up. Now It's Teaching the Robots to Ask Permission.
A marketplace born on a $5 promise now sits at the center of the AI-and-work fight - and it is trying to hand the paintbrush to the people, not the machine.
How a Stanford Class Project Became the Way America Gets Dinner
It started as a phone number taped to a flyer on a Palo Alto campus. A decade later, DoorDash carries more than $100 billion in orders a year and is quietly rebuilding itself into the plumbing for local commerce.
FirstWork
FirstWork is a San Francisco-based, YC S24 enterprise AI company building autonomous agents that automate workforce operations for frontline and seasonal labor. Its platform handles document verification, credentialing, continuous compliance, and worker onboarding inside a company's existing systems, cutting time-to-hire and onboarding by up to 80%. Founded in 2024 by Vardhan Kapoor (ex-Remitly, Deliveroo) and Shubham Choudhary (ex-Deel, Rippling), FirstWork raised a $5M seed round led by Gradient and serves staffing, logistics, delivery, and care companies including Deel, Job&Talent, Relay, and Wonolo.
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.
Moove
Moove is an African-born global mobility fintech that finances vehicles for gig-economy drivers who are shut out of traditional bank lending. Using alternative, revenue-based credit scoring built on ride-hailing and delivery earnings, Moove lets drivers on platforms like Uber lease brand-new cars and pay them off through a share of their weekly income - a 'drive it, own it' model. Founded in Lagos in 2020 by Ladi Delano and Jide Odunsi, it now operates one of the world's largest managed ride-hail fleets and has become Waymo's autonomous-fleet operations partner across major US and UK cities.
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.
Workers Benefit Fund
Workers Benefit Fund is a New York-based, mission-driven company that closes the benefits gap for gig workers, freelancers and independent contractors. Acting as a PEO-style solution for the gig industry, it builds the technology, outreach infrastructure and partnerships that platforms, labor unions and public institutions need to connect non-traditional workers with health, wellness and financial benefits. Its flagship work powers the Drivers Benefits program alongside The Black Car Fund, which has enrolled tens of thousands of New York for-hire drivers at no cost to them.
HyperTrack
HyperTrack is a San Francisco developer platform that turns a phone's raw location signal into structured, usable data for the people who move goods and staff shifts. Founded in 2015, it started as live-location APIs and SDKs for delivery and fleet apps, then shifted toward workforce automation - planning, assigning, tracking, and verifying work for gig and shift labor. Its building blocks power staffing marketplaces, field-service tools, and last-mile logistics operators, and the company says its software touches over two million gig workers in the U.S. alone. In short: HyperTrack sells the plumbing that lets other companies know, reliably, whether the work actually happened.
Wonolo
Wonolo is an on-demand staffing marketplace whose name stands for 'Work Now Locally.' Founded in 2013 out of Coca-Cola's Founders program, it connects businesses that need workers for warehousing, delivery, merchandising, event staffing, and general labor with a pool of more than one million registered workers ('Wonoloers'). Employers post shifts that can be filled in minutes, and workers browse and accept nearby gigs through a mobile app with fast payouts. The company has raised over $200 million in venture funding and is used by thousands of companies across the United States.
illuno
illuno is a Plano, Texas technology company that runs an on-demand marketplace connecting businesses, schools, houses of worship and event organizers with fully certified, off-duty police officers. Working like a ride-share app for policing, it lets a business post an event and have local officers claim the shift within minutes, while illuno handles compliance, insurance, scheduling and payments. Backed by Mark Cuban Companies and co-developed with input from the Fraternal Order of Police, the platform reports a 99% fill rate and roughly 24-hour turnaround versus an industry norm of 3-5 days.
Poplin
Poplin is a nationwide app-based laundry marketplace that connects households with vetted, background-checked local 'Laundry Pros' who pick up, wash, dry, fold, and return laundry - typically within 24 hours - for about $1 per pound with free pickup and delivery. Founded in 2018 as SudShare by father-and-son duo Mort and Nachshon Fertel, the company rebranded to Poplin in 2023 and now spans 500+ cities and 8,000+ zip codes, powered by a network of over 100,000 independent Laundry Pros who work from home using their own washers and dryers.
Swipecast
Swipecast is a New York-based fashion-tech marketplace that lets brands, designers, photographers and stylists discover and book models and creative talent directly, bypassing traditional agencies. Founded in 2015 by former hedge-fund manager and modeling-agency owner Peter Fitzpatrick with developer Matthias Wickenburg, the platform pays talent 90% of their fee (versus the ~67% left after agency commissions) and settles payments within one to two days. It has served clients like Estee Lauder, Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Victoria's Secret, Nike and Vogue across cities including New York, LA, London, Paris and Milan.
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.
KarmaCheck
KarmaCheck is an AI-driven background check and credentialing platform that makes employment screening faster, cheaper, and more accurate. Founded in 2019 by LinkedIn co-founder and founding CTO Eric Ly, the company combines real-time identity verification, criminal and credential checks, drug screening, and occupational health into an API-first platform that plugs into the ATS, HRIS, and HCM systems staffing and healthcare teams already use. In 2025 it launched the industry's first MCP server, letting AI agents run verifications through plain-language prompts.
Wingspan
Wingspan is a New York-based payroll and management platform built specifically for the 1099 contractor workforce. It automates the full contractor lifecycle - onboarding, W-9 verification, background checks, same-day payments, tax withholding, and automated 1099 filing - and now ships that stack as an embeddable, white-label API (Wingspan Embed) for HR, HCM, and PEO platforms. The company has processed more than $3 billion in contractor payments and counts Teladoc Health and CRU Group among its customers.
Yoshi Mobility
Yoshi Mobility is a Nashville-based automotive services company that brings car care to the vehicle instead of making the vehicle come to the shop. What began in 2015 as on-demand, at-home gasoline delivery has grown into a full suite of mobile services: preventative maintenance and tire work, AI-assisted virtual vehicle inspections, and mobile EV charging. Backed by General Motors Ventures, Bridgestone Americas, and ExxonMobil, the company serves fleets, rideshare and car-sharing platforms like Uber and Turo, and Fortune 100 customers across all 50 states.
Argyle
Argyle is a consumer-permissioned verification platform that pulls real-time income, employment, and asset data straight from the source - payroll systems and bank accounts - through an API and no-code console. Instead of faxed pay stubs and HR phone calls, lenders, background screeners, and tenant screeners get instant, direct-source verifications covering roughly 90% of the U.S. workforce. Founded in 2018 and headquartered in New York, the company has raised over $100M from Bain Capital Ventures, Rockefeller Asset Management, Mastercard, Checkr, and SignalFire.
Catch
Catch is a benefits platform built for the more than 50 million Americans who work for themselves and have no employer to hand them a health plan. It helps freelancers, contractors, gig workers and solopreneurs find, compare and enroll in health, dental and vision insurance, applying tax credits instantly so coverage costs less. The service is free to users. Founded in 2019 as a Y Combinator startup, Catch raised about $20M, was wound down by its original founders in early 2023, then bought and relaunched the same year by two operators who personally believed independent workers deserved a real safety net.
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.
Wag! Group Co.
Wag! Group Co. is an American pet-care technology company whose app connects pet parents with a vetted network of independent dog walkers, sitters, trainers and drop-in caregivers across thousands of U.S. cities. Founded in 2015 and now publicly traded (Nasdaq: PET), Wag! has expanded from on-demand dog walks into a broader pet-services platform spanning wellness and pet insurance comparison, premium membership, and pet food and treats.
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.
Clipboard Health
Clipboard Health (now branded as Clipboard) is a San Francisco-based two-sided marketplace that matches nurses, CNAs, and allied healthcare professionals with shifts at understaffed hospitals, nursing homes, and post-acute facilities. Founded in 2016 by Wei Deng, the company has grown into a healthcare unicorn with a 1,600-person team and a network of more than a million qualified professionals.