It’s almost impossible to imagine a week without interacting with a gig worker, whether it’s getting your regular sushi order delivered after a long day, hiring a contractor to help meet work deadlines, requesting a ride to an event, or asking for help to build that new piece of furniture you swore you didn’t need directions for. As of 2019, 57 million, or more than one-third of American workers, were performing some type of gig or freelance work. (Source)
Making the Gig Economy Work for Its Workers
Fintech startup Moves is prioritizing the needs of gig workers by revolutionizing banking features specifically for the workforce from 20+ gig platforms. This all-in-one app for gig workers includes business cash advances to cover unexpected expenses, a spending account with no hidden fees, and income verification needed for rental applications or auto loans. One of the most revolutionary features Moves offers is the opportunity for its customers to earn and accumulate shares of the gig companies they work at via their Stock Rewards program. Their goal is to help shift ownership of the gig economy to gig workers and build a collective voice to drive change via the Power of Stock. As of December 2022, Moves tripled its member base from 2021, and its customers earned a whopping $150 million. It’s apparent that gig workers are deeply essential to their communities, and Moves has been a true advocate and changemaker in the gig economy.
In our sit down with Ben, we spoke about Moves’ goals and aspirations. Right now, they're working on solving the cash liquidity problem for gig workers but envision themselves solving other problems, like helping gig workers increase their earnings. He shared that a key part of being a gig worker is participating in “multi-apping” or working for multiple gig platforms on a daily or weekly basis. Moves can see themselves helping optimize this tooling and workflow to create more value for workers.
Intentionally Choosing to Implement Auth0
The first version of Moves was a cash advance application on a website, and through multiple iterations, it became a consumer app where customers could build a profile. This was the crossroads for them to determine whether they wanted to build an in-house authentication solution or if they wanted to leverage technology created by experts in the field. We call this evaluation Build vs. Buy. It was an easy and relatively fast decision for them because they wanted to spend as much time as possible learning and building the value Moves will be uniquely positioned to provide, and that was not authentication. They did, however, know of an industry-standard solution that their employees could vouch for.
Auth0 by Okta became a valuable solution for their team because it supports OAuth2.0, which helped with their third-party integrations. The features they benefit most from are using metadata in user profiles to control access to endpoints, email verification, password reset, the Auth0 dashboard, and more. Since implementing Auth0, the Moves team has saved months of time to focus on other business priorities.
Their deliberate decision to buy instead of build gave the team more time to think about the problems they’d solve for gig workers. “Stay focused on your product-market fit because everything else is effectively a distraction.” — Ben Carroll.
Join Moves and the Other 1700+ Startups That Benefit from Auth0
The Auth0 for Startups program brings the simplicity, extensibility, and scalability of Auth0 to qualifying startups – all free for one year. We are passionate about helping startups get their applications up and running while we take care of identity needs. So much so that we recently expanded our eligibility by increasing the funding limit to $5M, doubling our previous cap. If you have any questions, you can find us at startups@auth0.com or apply here.
A special thank you to Ben and the entire Moves team. If you want to discover more about the gig economy or are a gig worker looking for banking features, learn more here and sign up for their newsletter, the Gig Life.
This profile is the sixth installment in our series highlighting members of the Auth0 for Startups program. The Auth0 for Startups program began in 2020 and has since worked with 1700+ startups.
