Sure, the latest initiatives from the Teslas, Apples and Googles of the industry tend to dominate the tech news space — and with good reason. Still, the tech titans aren’t the only ones bringing innovation to the sector.
In an effort to highlight up-and-coming startups, Built In has launched The Future 5 across 11 major U.S. tech hubs. Each quarter, we will feature five tech startups, nonprofits or entrepreneurs in each of these hubs who just might be working on the next big thing. Read our round-up of Atlanta’s rising startups from last quarter here.
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When it comes to building out a team, every company wants to be sure they’re bringing in people who are suitable for their prospective roles. However, while they take the time to look into each person’s professional background, those workers could miss out on other economic opportunities while waiting to hear back. After witnessing one such situation firsthand, Bryan Hobbs created Pruuvn to remedy this issue for companies and employees alike.
Pruuvn is a platform for credentialing workers and safely managing their data on the blockchain. Hobbs, the company’s CEO, has spent more than a decade working in project management and blockchain administration. His work often required frequent travel and even meant moving his family four times over the course of five years.
Hobbs’s wife, who worked in the education industry, was tasked with finding a new job every time they moved. At each job, her new employer would manually verify her work history — a costly and time-consuming process during which every school she previously worked at had to sign off on her new employer’s request for information.
This lengthy process also directly affected her salary. Since more verified experience led to higher pay, any experience she had that was unverified was not reflected in her wages, resulting in several thousand dollars she was unable to earn, Hobbs said.
Such was the impetus for Hobbs to help others avoid similar situations.
“In order to be an independent worker ... you’re going to need ways to quickly prove who you are and quickly prove the information about you.”
Pruuvn’s platform verifies a person’s work history and credentials once and then stores that information securely on the blockchain. Afterward, users can share that information as needed with employers, banks, financial services and others. The solution serves businesses, with a focus on those that require high worker volumes and operate within highly regulated industries. W2 employees, gig workers and contractors are all eligible to verify their information with Pruuvn.
“If you think about what’s going on with the future of work right now, everybody wants to be independent,” Hobbs told Built In. “In order to be an independent worker or someone who works for themselves, you’re going to need ways to quickly prove who you are and quickly prove the information about you. … So that’s what we’re doing [is] giving people control back of that data.”
Pruuvn was developed using Hyperledger Fabric, an open-source framework for building blockchain solutions. On this kind of network, companies with access to the ledger can view the same unchangeable data. This capability lets Pruuvn help streamline the process of screening, onboarding and monitoring compliance for new workers.
Since its launch in 2019, Pruuvn has come to serve five enterprise clients. It’s currently onboarding more companies to its platform and is on track to reach 100 percent growth year-over-year since 2021. Though the platform itself is industry agnostic, Pruuvn is currently targeting customers in the on-demand transportation sector that have contract-contingent workforces.
Going forward, Pruuvn is working to incorporate artificial intelligence and machine learning uses into its platform as it works toward becoming the largest data trust in the world.
