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Whether by choice or necessity, the share of workers who are self-employed or toiling in the gig economy continues to grow. And with it, tools to manage all the attendant accounting and job-finding burdens have been scaling up too.

Startups are taking a leading role. Over the past few quarters, venture investors have poured hundreds of millions into companies with offerings aimed at freelance and gig workers. Top focus areas include platforms for finding work, accounting tools and apps tailored for specific industries.

Using , we assembled a sample of 35 companies funded in roughly the past two years. Collectively the group, listed below, have raised nearly $800 million to date.

Most of the funding centers around two themes: Finding jobs and managing finances. We鈥檒l explore each of these areas in more detail below.

Job platforms

We鈥檒l start with startup job-finding tools, many of which have become fairly niche-oriented.

The biggest fundraiser on our list is San Francisco-based , which focuses heavily on the hospitality industry, matching employers with short-term, seasonal and temp-to-hire workers. The 9-year-old company picked up , bringing total funding to over $148 million.

Rival , another freelance hospitality platform, is also scaling up. The 7-year-old, Phoenix-based startup picked up . Qwick pitches itself to workers in restaurants, catering and event venues as a way to choose shifts they want and get paid fast.

Funding rounds also reflect the fact that gig work is a global phenomenon. Paris-based , for instance, picked up a last year to connect hospitality workers with jobs in France and the United Kingdom.

Meanwhile, Mexico-based , a service provider for e-commerce companies, has also been expanding its global footprint, snagging a in November to help with the task. The company鈥檚 offerings include a service to connect retailers with freelancers who can pick, pack and deliver orders.

Finance

Startups are also picking up funding for offerings focused on helping freelancers manage their money.

Among them is San Francisco-based , which bills itself as an all-in-one subscription financial tool for freelancers, covering services including company formation, accounting and payroll. Investors seem to like the concept, with the company last summer.

More recently , a French startup offering online accounts, payment cards and accounting tools for freelancers, landed a in November.

And, , based in New Zealand, raised for an accounting automation tool for freelancers, contractors and other self-employed workers.

Down market for deals

Like most startup funding sectors, freelancer-focused investment appears to be down quite a bit from the market peak a couple years ago.

Back then, we saw much larger rounds come to fruition, like the $500 million for Madrid-based staffing platform in late 2021. Freelancer-focused companies on the public markets were also flying high, with two of the leading platforms, and , once supporting a combined valuation of nearly $20 billion.

But while the peak has passed, freelance platforms and services haven鈥檛 fallen entirely out of favor. Upwork and Fiverr had recent market caps around $2 billion and $1.1 billion, respectively. Though beaten down, these are still big enough numbers to indicate investors see value. Both companies also continue to post growing revenue.

Up market for gig and contract employment

There鈥檚 little consensus on the total number of workers worldwide, and even in the U.S., that qualify as gig or independent workers. However, most studies concur that the number is on the rise.

As of 2022, an estimated 36% of working Americans identified as independent workers, per a . This marks a 25% increase from the last time they did an estimate in 2016.

Online gig work is a particularly high-growth niche, though, again hard to quantify. The recently that the number of global online gig workers ranges from 154 million to 435 million and is increasing rapidly.

For startups focused on independent workers, seeing their ranks swell looks like a favorable indicator. For now, however, it looks like investors are still cautious about shelling out big rounds until we also see some attendant growth in startup valuations.

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