Mar 9, 2021
Wrapbook: Modern Financial Services for the Project Economy
7x YoY Growth and a Series A from A16Z
Today, I’m excited to share a big milestone for Uncork portfolio company Wrapbook: a $27M Series A led Andreessen Horowitz. A16Z General Partner Kristina Shen is joining the board and her post does an excellent job outlining how Wrapbook’s digital financial services solution for the project economy, starting with the entertainment industry, is the easiest way for employers to onboard, pay, and insure their project workforces.
When I led Uncork’s seed investment in Wrapbook, I was drawn by the potential for the vertical SaaS + Fintech platform to form the foundational layer for a new professional community. Services like Venmo offer consumers digital identities to send money and receive payments with friends. Wrapbook enables similar digital identities for the project-based entertainment industry workforce (cast, camera operators, makeup artists, hair stylists, location managers, set designers, etc.) who are employed on dozens of projects throughout a year. While these entertainment industry professionals are W2 employees, their employment stints are often measured in days or weeks. Project employers need to onboard, collect time, pay wages, and offboard these W2s workers with the ease of a gig worker. Wrapbook’s digital profiles for each cast and crew member simplifies the process of starting work and getting paid because of the portability between projects.
The simplicity of this single identity obscures the complexity managed by Wrapbook’s platform: the thousands of union rules, collective bargaining agreements, federal and state laws, and industry norms historically managed by paper workflows.
Wrapbook’s digital profiles are the building blocks for a powerful identity network of project-based entertainment professionals. Today, 12% of Wrapbook workers have been paid by at least two employers on the platform. As more workers are onboarded and paid through Wrapbook, profiles will become the source of truth for a pro’s experience and their professional network. Over time, network density offers the potential to leverage the Wrapbook community and insights as to who is available in real-time to fill open roles on projects in a more systematic way than the current word-of-mouth norm.
One thing I didn’t anticipate would be just how timely Wrapbook’s digital platform would be in 2020. Predicting a shift to digital profiles and paperless workflows to address the complexities of production onboarding, payroll, and insurance was logically sound when Richard Kerby from Equal Ventures introduced me to Wrapbook CEO Ali Javid at the end of 2019, but COVID-19 became an unexpectant accelerant. Despite the extreme challenges faced by the entertainment industry during the pandemic - surges in LA and NYC production hubs, modifying in-person work for new safety standards, etc - Wrapbook’s revenue grew 7x year over year as its paperless, contactless, and easy-to-use solution helped productions get back to work safely and efficiently.
A huge congratulations to Ali Javid, his Wrapbook co-founders Naysawn Naji (Chief Product Officer), Hesham El-Nahhas (CTO), and Cameron Woodward (CMO), and the entire Wrapbook team on this important milestone unlocked through a powerful combination of vision, hard work, and strong execution. Shameless plug: the Wrapbook team is on a mission to increase the prosperity of the project economy through better financial services, fantastic to work with, and hiring candidates to join their remote work and Toronto office teams.
Apply at: https://www.wrapbook.com/careers.
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