Sure the latest initiatives from the Teslas, Apples and Googles of the industry tend to dominate the tech news space — and with good reason. Still, the tech titans aren’t the only ones bringing innovation to the sector.
In an effort to highlight up-and-coming startups, Built In has launched The Future 5 across 11 major U.S. tech hubs. Each quarter, we will feature five tech startups, nonprofits or entrepreneurs in each of these hubs who just might be working on the next big thing. You can check out last quarter’s NYC round-up here.
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The global freelancing market is a $4.5 trillion economy and the sector is set to continue growing, especially as the Great Resignation unfolds. With more workers leaving their 9-5 jobs and shifting to freelance work, the tech ecosystem is responding with solutions to make freelance work easier.
New York-based Archie is one startup in the space aiming to help businesses pay freelancers on time. Most freelancers are paid on a net 30, net 40 and even net 90 basis, meaning payments can be sent months after a project is completed.
In order to help businesses pick up the pace on paying its freelancers, Archie’s software works to streamline the entire process of onboarding freelancers, issuing contracts, paying freelancers and documenting the appropriate taxes.
“In the freelance world, an employee has 20 employers. No one really knows how to underwrite that,” Yunas Reguero, Archie CEO and co-founder, told Built In. “Today, the average process is very manual. What we’ve done is bring it all under one umbrella to help companies automate that process.”
To date, the startup has raised $4.5 million in a seed funding round from B Capital Group, Mac Ventures, Worklife Ventures, Day One Ventures and others. Since launching publicly in 2021, Archie has processed $15 million in payments.
I was able to take my experience as a freelancer and all the challenges on that side, and then couple it with my new experience as an operator hiring freelancers at scale to really recognize things were completely broken.”
When pitching for their seed round, Reguero and his co-founder, Cassandra Aaron were met with split reactions from investors. While some venture capitalists completely understood the problem businesses face paying freelancers, others didn’t. In response, Reguero and Aaron had investors search “net 30” on Twitter. There, they heard directly from freelancers about how difficult it is to be a company of one while awaiting payments from large corporations.
Reguero and Aaron built Archie together because they understand the financial setbacks both freelancers and business owners can face when managing freelance work.
Reguero was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He grew up around a lot of financial instability and upon graduating from college in the states, he sought to build solutions that prevent people from facing financial setbacks. Aaron, on the other hand, grew up in South Africa and spent time as an experiential marketing freelancer alongside managing thousands of freelancers in her role as a creative strategist at Milk.
“I was able to take my experience as a freelancer and all the challenges on that side, and then couple it with my new experience as an operator hiring freelancers at scale to really recognize things were completely broken,” Aaron told Built In. “That’s kind of how the whole thing came to life.”
As the startup grows, Archie has plans to hire and expand. By the end of the year, the startup hopes to scale its 14-person team to 20.
