Wingspan Addresses Payroll Woes Brought by Gig Economy, Raises $14 Million from 186 Ventures and Others

As the gig economy grew bigger and bigger, Wingspan founders Anthony Mironov and Greg Franczyk, a former Google Cloud engineer who also was chief architect of The Washington Post’s digital platform, say they were convinced that it needed a new payroll system to cut out wasteful administrative costs.

“The shift toward a freelance economy was intended to minimize overhead and maximize flexibility, but it has also ended up creating an administrative crisis,” said Wingspan CEO Anthony Mironov, a veteran in investment banking and private equity, after the New York startup raised $14 million in a Series A round. “We built Wingspan to catch up with the Zeitgeist,” he added.

The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz. Other existing investors who participated in the round include Boston’s 186 Ventures, New York’s Distributed Ventures, San Francisco’s Long Journey Ventures, Michigan-based Ludlow Ventures, and the founders of Warby Parker, Harry’s, Allbirds, TubeMogal and Catalant. So far, Wingspan has raised $23.5 million from investors.

$1 Trillion Coming from Gig Workers

Today, one in three American workers is an independent contractor, and together these freelancers contribute more than a trillion dollars a year to GDP, Wingspan said, citing a 2022 study. However, there is still no system of record to integrate these legions of workers with businesses, and places a “wasteful” administrative burden on contractors and companies alike, say Wingspan’s founders.

“By rationalizing the process through workflow automation, Wingspan is freeing up time and effort for the pursuit of real, creative enterprise,” said Mironov. As Mironov told TechCrunch, Wingspan has built an “all-in-one platform,” consolidating several elements. This, he said, places Wingspan ahead of rivals who handle “bits and pieces.”

“The Wingspan team truly understands the myriad issues facing companies and independent contractors when it comes to timely payments and benefits accessibility,” said Andreessen’s general partner, David Ulevitch, who was previously an executive at Cisco. Ulevitch believes the “future of work is already here,” and Wingspan is ready to leverage that opportunity.

Wingspan’s software is free for contractors. Companies pay anything from $500 onwards, depending on size and features. Wingspan says its software can save companies $240 per contractor and 10 hours in time per week. With more than 20,000 members and hundreds of enterprise clients, Wingspan expects contractor payments on its platform to exceed $1 billion by the end of 2023.

186 Ventures Focuses on Early-stage

Boston-based 186 Ventures, named for light’s speed of 186,000-miles per second, was established in 2019 by Giuseppe Stuto, previously the founder of a video community called Fam, and Julian Fialkow, a former DraftKings executive and founding team member of a venture firm called Drive by DraftKings, in which the sports betting company is an anchor investor. Both serve as managing partners.