High Potential Startup #8: Traba
Flexible shifts on demand
At time of publication: Seed | Total Funds raised 3.6mn USD
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One labor friendly feature of the gig economy is the flexibility. You can switch on your app and likely get instant employment. While not very useful for full-time employment, they can be helpful in much needed additional employment during times of underemployment or to monetize available time.
These jobs are also useful for workers especially when there is no upfront investment required (like investing in a car for gigs on Uber) - turn on your phone and get a few hours of work and monetize some of your free time.
Traba is a marketplace app that connects workers with employers. It helps Workers find low-skill instant and short term blue collar work and Employers can find workers to fill understaffed shifts.
Employers want assured availability of labor for understaffed shifts. Traba claims to fill 100% of the staffing needs. Solving that will be a big deal for employers and eliminates the need to juggle multiple staffing platforms.
Workers can find open shifts on the app based on preferred location, type of work and preferred working hours.
Once workers apply to open shifts, employers see a recommended list of workers.
Once there is a match and the shift starts, Traba eliminates the need for paper timesheets and enables time tracking on the app.
Once a shift is ended, payout and time summary is shown and workers can rate the shift. Traba gets paid by employers based on shifts filled/completed.
One of the features I really like is the 2-way rating system. Workers can rate employers and employers can rate workers. This is a good way to build trust and incentivizes both marketplace participants towards positive behaviors. For example, I assume workers will rate a shift based on the work environment, managers, safety, pay and so on. Rating based on these would be a good signal for future workers if an open shift is worth taking up.
The company is headquartered and currently operates in Miami. It looks like currently there are a bunch of warehouse jobs on the platform. But there is a clear scope to expand the number of roles available.
Starting with warehouse jobs is a good move due to the increased warehouse employment and the continued growth powered by E-Commerce.
Source: BLS
The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts sectors with good job growth, many of which have a lot of blue collar employment with demand for shifts.
Source: BLS
Hence I think there is a lot of headroom for growth for a startup like Traba.
There are two types of defensibility/moats here. One is of course Network Effects. Also, Traba workers will have their entire on-app history stored including ratings, reviews, feedback, number of shifts, time worked etc. This is a very smart move to build ‘trust’ data and also to ensure switching costs from the worker side who will want to continue to take advantage of their employment history and ratings that increases further shift opportunities.
A potential adjacent opportunity for Traba in the long term is also to use this vast data of ratings, income, shifts etc. (built over hundreds of shifts per person) for credit modelling to enable low-cost short term loans for regular high-rated blue collar workers on their app.
Traba has a very good solution/product approach, large and growing market, good defensibility and an interesting adjacent opportunity and hence is a High Potential Startup.
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