> "People mostly aren't talking about how to design gig platforms well to benefit the workers."

that's not entirely true, although certainly under-considered. for instance, the freelancer's union [0] is concerned with worker rights and pay. my last startup (now defunct) also focused on this problem. so there are people who care, but it's difficult to get capitalholders to care.

[0] https://www.freelancersunion.org/

Would you be open to sharing more about your startup?

it began as a screening tool for the candidate pipelines of on-demand platforms looking for qualified workers, with the goal of better matching and placing workers with platforms (increasing conversion rates, in the parlance). wonolo[0] is an example of such a business that's still operating.

the wider ambition wes to create a liquid hourly labor marketplace that would bring near real-time bidding for chunks of hourly work (like "we'll pay you $100 for the next 3 hours of your time"). hourly work (not just gig-work, but whole swaths of the service economy) is notoriously opaque, which gives all the leverage to employers, and workers don't have the time or wherewithal to effectively comparison shop to maximize their earnings.

over time, complementary services (training/certification, social networking, insurance, financing, etc.) could also have been added to increase the usefulness of the platform.

[0] https://www.wonolo.com/

Thank you.

Those are very astute observations. I myself transitioned from low class work to software. It was mostly an avalanche of perseverance doused with barrels of luck. One of my main weapons was writing (still is, to an extent). A quite difficult challenge given that English is my second language.

I understand what you mean and maybe can somehow relate a little more than thr average HN user. Best of luck if nothing else.