We’re proud to double down and co-lead GigSafe’s newest round of financing with Brand Foundry Ventures, backing the future of compliance, onboarding, and insurance for companies engaging 1099 workers.
David and I met more than a decade ago as classmates at Harvard. I had no doubt we needed to back him when he began his entrepreneurial journey, and we were thrilled to lead his Seed round in early 2021. In those first few years, David and the team built an extremely successful (and viral) consumer app, Para. It helped workers navigate available job opportunities and optimize their time to earn more—scaling to more than 150,000 users without spending a dime on user acquisition. Users raved about the product, and for a while, it seemed the company was unstoppable.
But after a few years of success, the gig work market shifted. Killer features that users once relied on for hours a day began to matter less, and our monetization efforts generated modest earnings but no breakout success. The clock was ticking on our cash balance and runway.
Instead of giving up, David and his co-founders—Val, Amanda, and Daniel—regrouped and dug deep into the years of knowledge and expertise they had built running Para. They discovered that employers engaging 1099 workers struggle to onboard, engage, pay, ensure compliance, and insure their workers. So they pivoted the entire company to build the all-in-one solution this industry sorely needs.
Thus, GigSafe was born. Today, GigSafe is trusted by modern delivery companies like Dlivrd, Red Wagon, and OTD Florida to power their core worker workflows and secure attractively priced commercial insurance policies through their high levels of compliance.
We’re grateful for the unwavering support of our co-investors, Brand Foundry Ventures and Rally Ventures, who also doubled down with us to help the team scale GigSafe to employers nationwide.
