{"id":2893,"date":"2017-01-17T14:43:21","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T14:43:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/shiftgig-raises-20m-more-to-connect-hourly-workers-with-open-jobs.html"},"modified":"2017-01-17T14:43:21","modified_gmt":"2017-01-17T14:43:21","slug":"shiftgig-raises-20m-more-to-connect-hourly-workers-with-open-jobs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/shiftgig-raises-20m-more-to-connect-hourly-workers-with-open-jobs.html","title":{"rendered":"Shiftgig raises $20M more to connect hourly workers with open jobs"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

The rise in on-demand services from the likes of Uber, Lyft and Postmates is fuelling a new workforce of freelancers in the service industry who\u00a0are not tied to single places of employment and can work hours that are more suitable to them. Now a similar kind of flexibility is finding\u00a0its way into the world of hourly work, too.<\/p>\n

Shiftgig<\/a> \u2014 a startup\u00a0that has built a mobile platform for hourly workers to pick up shifts at local businesses looking for staff to fill gaps in their schedules (Shiftgig=shift work<\/a>+gig economy<\/a>) \u2014 is today announcing that it has raised $20 million to scale up\u00a0its marketplace. This round, a Series C, includes a mix of new and existing backers \u2014 DRW Venture Capital, FJ Labs, GGV Capital, KDWC Ventures, and an affiliate of William Blair \u2014 and brings the total raised by Shiftgig to $56 million. The company is not disclosing its valuation but\u00a0sources tell us it\u2019s around\u00a0$150 million post-money.<\/p>\n

For now, this puts Shiftgig well ahead of two notable competitors in terms of funds raised for growth. Others in the same space include Workpop<\/a> and Wonolo<\/a>, both of which have raised under $10 million to date (see\u00a0here<\/a> and here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Shiftgig\u2019s\u00a0raise comes about a year after Renren, the \u201cFacebook of China\u201d, led Shiftgig\u2019s last round of $22 million<\/a>. Since then, the company has been seeing \u201csolid growth\u201d, in the words of Eddie Lou, the CEO and co-founder. Today, there are some 1,500 businesses and 15,000 workers using the platform, which has customers across all 50 states but with a concentration in about 12 cities. (The plan will \u201ccertainly\u201d be to use some of the funding to scale that out even more, Lou\u00a0said.)<\/p>\n

Today, Shiftgig works with a wide range of business clients mainly\u00a0in the food service, hotel, retail, logistics, warehouse, and experiential marketing spaces, Lou said. Interestingly, it\u2019s also been approached by Uber to use the platform but currently does not provide drivers among its staff, Lou said.<\/p>\n

The idea is that businesses connect on to the Shiftgig platform to fill any number of shifts. The marketplace accommodates both small businesses needing to fill one or a few shifts, as well as large events looking for 200 people. In all cases,\u00a0businesses pay for every shift worked, and Shiftgig takes a percentage fee, which varies depending on the size of the order and size of the client.<\/p>\n

There has been some scrutiny around\u00a0how thorough background and credit checks are sometimes for workers in the on-demand economy. In the case of Shiftgig, the company goes through its own set of qualification and vetting checks, which also change over time as businesses rate employees (termed\u00a0\u201cSpecialists\u201d in Shiftgig\u2019s marketplace) after each shift worked that ultimately result in reliability scores for workers.<\/p>\n

On top of those checks, Shiftgig also handles weekly payments to Specialists as well as their benefits: Lou said that the company is\u00a0compliant with the Affordable Care Act and insured with the appropriate worker\u2019s compensation policies.<\/p>\n

There is a lot of infrastructure in place today, but it wasn\u2019t always this way. Lou tells me that\u00a0Shiftgig\u00a0got its start in 2012 as a web-only social network co-founded by Lou along with Jeff Pieta (who is now Chief Growth Officer) and Sean Casey (who is now Chief Data Officer), connecting small businesses in the service industry with people seeking full-time and part-time jobs. \u201cWe were free to use,\u201d he said, which helped the platform scale\u00a0\u201cexponentially.\u201d (Free has a habit of doing that.) At its peak, it connected 1.4 million job seekers with over 30,000 small businesses.<\/p>\n

But in late 2013, the company had stopped growing virally, so it decided to turn on revenue. \u201cWe spoke to 25 businesses and many wanted qualified and vetted candidates and\/or workers for short-term periods,\u201d he said. \u201cBy listening to our customer\u2019s needs, we pivoted the business to an on-demand marketplace connecting businesses with people seeking short term gigs. This time, we built our new product leveraging a smartphone instead of a website.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new formula has clearly found a lot of traction with both customers as well as investors.<\/p>\n

\u201cShiftgig is the largest and best temporary staffing startup in the world,\u201d said Fabrice Grinda, co-founder of FJ Labs, in an email to us. \u201cIt\u2019s clearly going in the direction of history as more work is being \u2018gigified\u2019 as employers and employees both seek greater flexibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Shiftgig team continues to execute against its plan by winning enterprise clients that utilize its technology to connect with hourly labor,\u201d said Jeff Richards, Managing Partner, GGV Capital, in a statement. \u201cThe company is scaling across multiple verticals and proving that one platform can be winner take all.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunchIt\/~3\/_TQm1pEfOic\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The rise in on-demand services from the likes of Uber, Lyft and Postmates is fuelling a new workforce of freelancers in the service industry who\u00a0are not tied to single places <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-2893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enterprise-software","tag-enterprise"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t