Yahoo<\/a> and Nexla, focuses on people working the \u201cfrontline,\u201d hourly jobs that she says are the norm in places like Fresno.<\/p>\n\u201cI want to build something for the people I grew up with, the people who work frontline jobs in Fresno,\u201d she told Fortune. \u201cAnd not just the people in Fresno, but the 80 million Americans working hourly jobs. It\u2019s more than half of the U.S. labor force. And globally, 80% of all workers are working these types of jobs. So, how do we apply technology to improve their situation?\u201d<\/p>\n
For Euston, part of the solution lay in flexibility\u2014technology that sets up a marketplace where workers can be matched with temporary jobs, adjusting their roles, schedules, and locations to better shape and control their workweek. Six years in, the platform now serves over one million users and employs 63 people.<\/p>\n
Now, the startup has raised a $23 million Series B, Fortune has exclusively learned. Rethink Impact led the round, with participation from returning investors Khosla Ventures and Reach Capital. Citi Impact Fund, GingerBread Capital, and Illumen Capital also invested. Simon Khalaf, ex-CEO of fintech Marqeta, also recently joined WorkWhile as COO. The startup has worked with vendors serving Taylor Swift\u2019s Eras Tour, the Super Bowl, NASCAR, the NCAA Final Four, Comic-Con, Edible Arrangements, Thistle, and Worldpac.\u00a0<\/p>\n
WorkWhile\u2019s rise signals that the gig economy is maturing\u2014but many of its long-standing controversies remain. In 2024, the company became tangled in a familiar legal battle for gig companies: it was sued by the San Francisco City Attorney, who alleged WorkWhile had misclassified the workers on its platform as independent contractors, denying them the rights and benefits afforded to employees.<\/p>\n
The case is part of the ongoing fallout from California\u2019s Proposition 22, the 2020 ballot initiative that classified most gig workers as independent contractors. In December 2024, WorkWhile agreed to a partial $1 million settlement and committed to reclassifying its non-driver workers as employees. Litigation over the classification of delivery drivers, however, is still ongoing.<\/p>\n
\u201cProp 22 is the law of the land and was upheld by the California Supreme Court, affirming this important right of drivers to work as independent contractors,\u201d Euston added via email. \u201cOur platform users have been very clear with us: they want flexibility. We respect our users\u2019 right to work flexibly and will continue to advocate for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Josh Queenan, a WorkWhile user the company connected me with, said he deeply values the flexibility the platform offers\u2014and that it\u2019s helped him transform his financial life. He told Fortune he earns an extra $5,000 to $6,000 a month, which he puts toward stock investments and is looking to use to buy investment property.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I want to cancel a shift, I just give a 24 hour notice, and press the cancel button,\u201d said Queenan. \u201cI have peace of mind, I know that somebody else is going to pick up the shift and that the company we work with isn\u2019t going to be screwed. That\u2019s a huge selling point for WorkWhile.\u201d<\/p>\n
For her part, Euston still regularly works shifts via WorkWhile.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt keeps you up at night, I want to make sure workers on the platform feel they\u2019re the center of WorkWhile,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s why we\u2019re at a startup. The whole point is to help people earn a better living and live better lives. If we don\u2019t put them front and center, that won\u2019t happen. That\u2019s why we try to work shifts.\u201d<\/p>\n
So, in some ways Euston\u2019s Party City days are long gone, and in others they\u2019re close\u2014lots of the shifts she works are similar kinds of jobs. With one exception: last year, she took a gig at the Eras Tour last year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy job was crowd control,\u201d Euston laughed. \u201cI was telling people \u2018you can\u2019t dance on the chairs.\u2019 And as the night went on, the moms got progressively more loosey goosey!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At 16, Jarah Euston landed her first job at a Party City\u2014on the better days, as the balloon…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[64,607,3828,1595,67,132,68,1594],"class_list":{"0":"post-2885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entrepreneurship","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-entrepreneurship","10":"tag-gig-economy","11":"tag-startups","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-venture-capital"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114722459190199333","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}