There are now 75M+ gig workers in the US, a tremendously large and growing population with specific challenges and needs. Gig workers today have to navigate multiple tools and platforms, combined with their own gut sense of opportunity, to manage working life. This line of work has moved from a side hustle into a full-time job combining work across an average >3 platforms, plus other income sources, per gig worker. At Bow, we believe consumer software platforms are needed to facilitate this new way of working.
Tools like Rippling and Papaya are on fast growth trajectories with their modern HRIS systems for W2 workers. They provide quick onboarding, easy visibility into earnings and tax implications, and simple payroll regardless of where a worker’s based.
The answer for gig workers is Solo. Solo is a software platform for gig workers, providing a suite of tools to manage their working lives. Key modules include schedule planning/optimization, pay guarantees, tax planning, income/expense tracking, smart worker profiles, and certification/document management. There are plenty of opportunities to expand the platform with new offerings like financial services (e.g., checking, savings, cards, credit building).
The vast majority of Solo’s strong growth is organic: gig workers want to refer other friends who are also gig workers. Network effects are poised to catapult Solo’s growth further. As their user base expands, Solo captures more data, making earnings optimization and prediction more accurate. They gain leverage to negotiate stronger deals for their workers (e.g., insurance). Finally, they become an attractive way for gig platforms to source new workers.
When Uber rose to prominence in the early 2010s, I evaluated many companies building software for Uber/Lyft drivers, and concluded that there was too much platform concentration. Since then, Uber has grown tremendously, and yet the platform concentration has diminished—Solo integrates with dozens of different gig platforms today and is expanding their coverage. This was a big shift over the course of a decade.
Perhaps the most counterintuitive aspect of Solo is that it is the gig workers themselves who pay for the platform. Many platforms start with free and monetize with ads, financial services, or never get there—the fact that Solo has been worth paying for since the beginning is a testament to the utility their software provides.