My Request for a Startup: Experian for Work
How credit bureaus, fintech, AI, and more provide the blueprint for how a VC-backed company can bring Open Work to the world
So far in Salt of the Earth, I’ve been exploring the high-level social, cultural, economic, and political tailwinds for my Open Work thesis, including the benefits to employees (career advancement, wider array of opportunities, and personal pride) and employers (recruitment, engagement, and retention).
More recently, I’ve been building conviction that the best way to bring Open Work life is by seizing a large market opportunity as a VC-backed company.
“Infinite” TAM that’s Winner-Take-All
Open Work can capture, store, and share data on any work task that…
Can be tracked digitally
Can be solely attributed to an individual employee’s effort
Has a clear metric for success/effectiveness
This includes workers in:
Transportation
Logistics
Food
Retail
Hospitality
Healthcare Support & Operations
Security
Janitorial
Manufacturing
Trades
Truckers
Military
This includes over 100 million workers in the US and around 2 billion workers amongst developed economies in US-allied/friendly nations across North and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
Whether it’s us directly operating internationally, or seeding and partnering with similar companies in other countries (due to geopolitical, national security, or execution concerns), Open Work is a global company.
Open Work could become as normal as 401ks and insurance, and ultimately replace resume and reference checks completely.
The world is already preparing itself with even more of the pre-requisite conditions for Open Work:
Most actions that happen in the physical work world can already be tracked in the digital world (ex. spreadsheets, GPS, the internet, software, mobile devices, cameras, IoT, and now artificial intelligence). AI and robotics will bring this even closer to 100%.
Service jobs are the only (foreseeable) sector within developed countries that has the potential to (re)create a broad middle class in the 21st century that is essential to a healthy democratic capitalist society. Services will only grow larger and larger as a percentage of jobs globally and domestically.
Zero-sum rhetoric surrounding jobs will dominate politics globally for the foreseeable future. While that noise will be loud, strong, and warranted in some contexts, Open Work will meet the emotional moment of what the political left and right want and need to believe about America’s core values (ex. hard work, meritocracy, opportunity) to maintain a functional society.
So, is the current TAM big? Yes. Because the network is the product and the world likely only needs one horizontal player to capture the lion’s share of it, it will be one of the most durable and defensible new businesses created.
More importantly, is this TAM growing? Yes, and the anxiety around the disruption of AI creates the perfect “why now?” crisis, especially since the technology has existed for decades.
Most importantly, how is this TAM “infinite”? There’s a lot of value in establishing this data platform that swallows a lot of the job matching market. However, the real prize is in all of the derivative products and new markets that can be built on top of it, and we don’t even kown what they are yet or how big they will become (ex. underwriting for loans, government benefits administration, research).
Take the business model from Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion
Imagine building a 4th major credit bureau with today’s technology infrastructure and pre-FCRA regulation, but for work performance data instead of lending? That’s Open Work. Again, the network is the product.
Take the distribution strategy from Embedded Fintech
Unlike at the dawn of the internet and web 2.0, the share of businesses today that are eager to transition to digital for their HR needs but still haven’t done so is pretty low. The Workdays and Gustos of the world have captured nearly all of the surface area, and it’s not a wise investment to try and feature-hack your way to a 10X better payroll experience that could unseat them.
Therefore, rather than burn money trying to break through the noise with a wedge product as a new entrant, many leading fintech platforms like Plaid, Bilt, Check, Clair, april, Finch, Column, Pinwheel, Merge, and Pipe who are backed by Thrive, a16z, General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures, Index Ventures, Accel, and more top investors have decided to embed instead of build.
It’s a win-win for both sides. The HR platforms need help with growth and retention via products (like networks) that they can’t create on their own to reinforce their position as the default option for their current customers, as well as all new businesses that emerge, and because there’s little product differentiation that matters to the end customers, the marginal embedded feature that catches a business owner’s eye can make all the difference. For the embedded companies, this strategy allows them to focus on their core product, reach scale much cheaper and faster, and have revenue and adoption that’s more durable.
This is the path to success for Open Work, too. Reporting to Open Work should become a new part of an employer’s HR platform, and the recruiting product should sit within their ATS.
My favorite embedded company today is Clair, and their team has created some great content explaining the current push for embedded fintech after pivoting away from their start as an independent app. I highly recommend their HR Technology Trailblazers podcast.
Take the positioning from Anthropic, OpenAI, and Gemini
The likely end-state for all of the foundation models is as a low-margin utility where the cost for superintelligence is very low. A lack of true differentiation for the vast majority of use cases and the absence of strong enough network effects means they will always have intense competition and pricing pressure.
I see the “credit bureau” model in a similar way, but because of Open Work’s network effects, it could function as a monopoly. Rather than exploiting that position by inviting market failure and regulation, data access for employees and employers should be cheap and easy like credit and background checks.
The real value should accrue at the application layer that leverages the work performance data platform. Just like the AI stack, it can have its own ChatGPT and Claude Code, but the bigger market opportunity exists in what Open Work creates and enables via APIs for external developers, not just what the company can capture on its own.
Take the cap table strategy from Industry Co-Ops
The airlines came together to build Global Distribution Systems (GDS). Real estate broker associations created the MLS. Visa, Mastercard, and SWIFT emerged from bank consortiums, and they’re coming back together to prevent collapse like SVB from ever happening again:
Coordination across competitors is hard, but shared ownership has led to successful infrastructure across a number of industries.
The best way to align the incentives of the company with the HR tech platforms with which it will embed, partner, and market this model to the world is by having those platforms have equity stakes in Open Work. It may be even better to not just eventually have them on the cap table, but to incubate the idea within one of these companies first and invite the rest of the industry to join.
Here’s a list worth starting with:
Workday
ADP
SAP
UKG
Oracle
LinkedIn / Microsoft
Indeed / Glassdoor
Gusto
Take the UX from LinkedIn, GitHub, Delphi, and Tinder
Even as an embedded network, Open Work will still need an independent app that lives with the employee for life.
The resume as a medium is long overdue for disruption, especially since every one of them reads the same with AI. Combining education and work history with a portfolio of real data could be the next evolution of how employees create and share a digital embodiment of their workselves.
I also see disruption on the employer side, too. Rather than a human or an agent reading a stack of resumes and cover letters, what if they could watch, listen, or even talk to a digital avatar of an applicant, and based on their impression, swipe right to advance and left to pass? What if the dominant motion becomes like Incredible Health where employers apply to workers, not the other way around?
Take the talent from Chime, Plaid, Handshake, and more
Open Work could inherit expertise in the following domains from the following companies:
GTM from top mission-driven companies (Chime, Clair, Guild, Coursera, etc)
Engineering from top data infrastructure companies (Plaid, Stripe, Snowflake, Databricks, etc)
Product from top employee app companies (LinkedIn, Indeed, Handshake, Scale AI, Mercor, Surge, etc)
Partnerships from top HR platforms (Workday, ADP, SAP, UKG, Oracle, Indeed, LinkedIn, Gusto, etc)
Putting all of these pieces in place is a challenge. Execution and adoption is the bigger one. If you’re interested in diving in deeper, please reach out.