Argyle, the company that provides infrastructure for consumers to connect their workforce platforms to businesses, announced it has closed a $2.6 million seed round from Checkr and Bain Capital Ventures.
Businesses in industries as varied as lending, banking, insurance and healthcare are using Argyle's software to access their consumer's workforce data to better verify income and employment, monitor cash-on-hand in real-time and assess credibility to purchase products and services. With the consumer's consent, data points including earnings history, schedules and ratings are available from a variety of workforce platforms. In under a year, Argyle's Data Network includes platforms such as UBER, Lyft, Postmates, Doordash and Instacart amongst others.
"Over the last year, we've developed a close relationship with Shmulik and his team as they've built Argyle into a platform for workforce data," said Daniel Yanisse, Co-Founder & CEO of Checkr. "This partnership cements our commitment to helping consumers and companies evolve to the new ways we work while giving workers access to important benefits and services."
Authentication for The Future of Work An individual's work history has been the bedrock for businesses seeking to underwrite risk, issue credit and provide services. But the ubiquity of smart phones and "gig-work" have spurred a global shift in working habits making this increasingly difficult to do. From Walmart to Chipotle to UBER, workers are adopting multiple employers at once and shorter duration jobs. This pivot to shift-based work has created a huge amount of fragmented workforce data with no single system providing a complete picture of an individual's career.
Argyle provides a layer to solve this complexity for businesses. Through the use of the Argyle Plugin, businesses can give their customers a secure and convenient way to grant access to all of their workforce data. This source-based data allows businesses to provide better underwriting, monitoring and a tailored user experience. Data points tied to a customer's identity (e.g. name, driver's license), career (e.g. hours worked, jobs completed), finances (e.g. net income, tips, cash on hand) and reputation (e.g. ratings, reviews) are all available in real-time. More, Argyle normalizes the data sets at each workforce platform to make them easily digestible and actionable for a business.
"As the employment market continues to undergo seismic shifts and more Americans are freelancing than ever before, there is an increasing need for businesses to access uniform worker data reliably. Argyle offers a non-invasive tool for businesses to better understand customer work history and offer tailored solutions in the form of insurance, banking, benefits and other important work services," said Ajay Agarwal, partner at Bain Capital Ventures.
The New World of Data OwnershipUnlike legacy providers like Equifax, Argyle does not sell user data to third parties. Instead, Argyle puts control of workforce data back into the hands of workers and charges businesses for access when workers consent to their information being shared.
As new regulations - from Europe's GDPR to California's CCPA - are shifting consumer data rights, Argyle's offering provides a tool for businesses to benefit from these new standards while remaining compliant.
"We're creating a set of industry standards for companies to build their businesses on top of and are excited to see how new businesses tailored for flexible workers adopt and utilize Argyle. This round of financing will allow us to further build out the Argyle Data Network and build our product suite," said Shmulik Fishman, CEO of Argyle.
About Checkr
Checkr's mission is to build a fairer future by improving understanding of the past. Our platform makes it easy for thousands of customers to hire millions of people every year at the speed of the gig economy. Using Checkr's advanced background check technology, companies of all sizes can better understand the dynamics of the changing workforce, bring transparency and fairness to their hiring, and ultimately build a better future for workers.
About Bain Capital Ventures
Bain Capital Ventures partners with disruptive founders to accelerate their ideas to market. The firm invests from seed to growth in startups driving transformation across industries, from SaaS, infrastructure software and security to fintech and healthcare to commerce and consumer tech. The firm has helped launch and commercialize more than 240 companies, including DocuSign, Jet.com, Kiva Systems, Lime, LinkedIn, Rapid7, Redis Labs, Rent the Runway, Rubrik, SendGrid and SurveyMonkey. Bain Capital Ventures has $5.2 billion in assets under management with offices in San Francisco, New York, Boston and Palo Alto.
