Retirement and taxes, finally built for people who don't get a W-2.
How people work — and get paid — has changed. AI is accelerating the transfer of retirement from employers to the individual. Gigaverse: educate first, advise second, manage third.
Two-minute walkthrough of the shipping iOS build — narrated, with sound.
Quick facts
Owned distribution
5,465 drivers on our waitlist, all organic. Day-one users, no paid acquisition.
Regulatory path mapped
RIA package prepared, Plaid countersigned, custody partner in selection.
Product shipped
Android app live on Google Play, iOS in App Store review, web app live, AI Money Coach answering from real account data.
Why we're building this
I have spent fifteen years running delivery businesses alongside independent contractor drivers. So I have watched this problem up close for a long time.
A driver finishes a good week and has no idea what they actually made. Four apps paid them under four names that match none of the apps. Nobody withheld anything. No employer opened a retirement account. Every mile they drove was deductible and almost none of it got tracked. Then April arrives and the bill is a surprise — and the surprise is usually the reason the year ends with nothing saved.
The tools built for W-2 employees do not solve this. Monarch tracks a paycheck. Wealthfront invests a rollover. TurboTax shows up once a year, after every decision that mattered has already been made. None of them were built for income that arrives in fragments from platforms that do not coordinate.
Gigaverse reads the bank feed, resolves each deposit to the platform that sent it, tracks the miles against it, and turns the pair into the number that actually decides the year: what is owed, and what has already been earned back in deductions. Then it puts the difference somewhere it can compound.
We are starting with the 5,465 drivers on our waitlist, because they asked for this before we spent a dollar on acquisition. That is the wedge. The market is everyone who earns outside a W-2 — and that is a hundred million people who were handed responsibility for their own retirement and none of the infrastructure.
Derek Beckmann
Founder & CEO, Gigaverse
The shift
Americans who earn outside a W-2 job
Independents earning $100K+ (up 86% since 2020)
Private-sector workers with no employer retirement plan
Skilled knowledge workers now freelancing (28% a year ago)
How it works
Every gig on one screen
A week's earnings resolved per platform, every mile attributed to the job it belonged to, and deductions categorised off the card feed as they happen.
What you owe, and what you earned back
A live quarterly and annual estimate built off a Schedule C the driver never had to assemble — standard mileage weighed against fuel, tolls, insurance and repairs.
Both clips are screen recordings of the shipping iOS build (Expo) against the production API, on the seeded demo account described below.
Traction & projected unit economics
Drivers on the waitlist, $0 paid acquisition
Outside funding raised to date
Projected LTV:CAC — independent professionals (model, Y3)
Projected gross margin, Year 3 (model)
We are pre-revenue. What is built and signed:
- ✓Android app live on Google Play; iOS app in App Store review
- ✓5,465 drivers on the waitlist — organic, $0 paid acquisition
- ✓Live web app at web.gigaverse.ai
- ✓Plaid production agreement countersigned · Privy wallets live · Coinflow payments onboarding · brokerage/custody partner in selection
- ✓SEC RIA registration package prepared; SOC 2-aligned security policies; passkey MFA
Business model — educate, advise, manage
Phase 1 — Freemium subscriptions
100%Free · Pro $4.99/mo (unlimited AI Money Coach, auto-contributions) · Wealth Builder $9.99/mo (auto-invest, tax-loss harvesting). Live at launch.
Phase 2 — AI retirement advice
66%Advisory fee of 0.25–1.00% on PRActicle™ AUM once SEC RIA registration is approved (package prepared). Solo 401(k) / SEP for six-figure independents.
Phase 3 — Human advisory + managed portfolios
33%The Wealthfront model for the 100M who never got a 401(k): human advisors for Wealth Builder clients, managed portfolios, tax-loss harvesting at scale.
Payments, interchange, API & partners
20%Instant payouts (0.75% + $0.25), ACH ($0.25), debit interchange, developer/MCP API and partner revenue — modeled, secondary.
Why we win
Teaches, saves and advises — for irregular income
Monarch tracks a paycheck. Wealthfront invests a 401(k) rollover. TurboTax shows up in April. Gigaverse is the only one built for people who don't get a W-2.
A retirement account that follows you
PRActicle™: portable Roth IRA today, Solo 401(k) / SEP for six-figure independents, auto-saved from every payout, tip, invoice or sale.
Owned distribution
5,465 drivers on our waitlist — zero paid acquisition.
Why now
AI is the #1 stated reason for U.S. job cuts five months running; skilled freelancers jumped from 28% to 38% of knowledge workers in a year. The burden of retirement moved to the individual.
Team
Derek Beckmann
Founder & CEO
15+ years building consumer marketplaces and gig-economy operations across 100+ markets. Also runs Dragonfly Tech, a Chicago delivery company that works with independent contractor drivers.
LinkedIn →David Shastry
Head of Product
15 years in fintech product with a prior exit. Owns the product roadmap across the apps, the AI Money Coach and the retirement and tax experience.
Jason Bucaro
Co-Founder & VP Partnerships
Built relationships with 200+ merchants and enterprise clients across delivery and logistics. Owns go-to-market and the gig-platform partnerships that put Gigaverse in front of earners.
LinkedIn →JC Harrington
Co-Founder & CTO
Owns the platform architecture: real-time earnings ingestion, the financial infrastructure behind instant payments, and the PRActicle™ retirement account system.
LinkedIn →Projected three-year plan
Assumption model, base case. We are pre-revenue; these are projections, not results.
Year 1 (Oct-26 – Sep-27)
Year 2
Year 3
Use of funds — $2.0M seed
WHO WE SERVE
The 100M+ Americans the financial system was never designed for
Gig work over-indexes among younger, lower-income, and non-White workers, and the data on their financial precarity is the best-sourced part of our thesis. Every figure below is attributed.
US independents (38% of the workforce); ~17M full-time
Upwork ’23 · MBO ’25 · BLS ’24
of nontraditional workers lack workplace retirement access
Pew Charitable Trusts ’24
gig vs non-gig “doing okay financially”
Federal Reserve SHED ’24
of Hispanic / Black adults have done gig work (vs 12% White)
Pew Research ’21
28–38 · ~$28–42k/yr net · Hispanic/Latina · Sun Belt metros
Higher yield on invested cash cushions ~36% income swings; auto-save builds retirement without willpower; mileage + quarterly-tax automation.
22–30 · ~$35–55k household · Black · urban/inner-suburb
Turns sporadic payouts into retirement contributions; AI coach = credible FinTok-style guidance; digital-first, no gatekeeping.
30–45 · ~$60–110k/yr · Asian American · coastal/remote hubs
Portable Roth auto-saving from each client payout removes “I’ll do it later”; deduction automation protects real dollars.
52–64 · ~$30–60k/yr · suburban Midwest & South
Restarts active contribution when every year counts; plain-language coach; reachable on Facebook/YouTube.
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Regulatory Tailwinds
Washington is solving both halves of the gig-worker problem at once.
Two distinct legislative pushes, one for payments infrastructure, one for portable retirement, are converging on the exact model Gigaverse was architected for.
Pillar 1, Payments infrastructure (USDC payout rail)
GENIUS Act
Created the permitted payment stablecoin issuer regime, the legal home for USDC, the currency we use to pay gig workers.
Digital Asset Market Clarity Act
Senate substitute by Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC). Authorizes banks to use digital assets, endorses stablecoins as “significant financial infrastructure,” preserves self-custody for financial inclusion.
Lummis-Gillibrand RFIA 2026
Sens. Lummis (R-WY) + Gillibrand (D-NY). Securities innovation framework for digital commodities, incorporated as Title I of the Clarity Act.
Three provisions that map to our payout rail
- §404Payment stablecoins endorsed; activity-based rewards permitted. Congress: “payment stablecoins represent a significant innovation in financial infrastructure that can strengthen the United States payments system.”
- §307Self-custody preserved as a financial-inclusion tool. Congress finds self-hosted wallets “expand financial inclusion and access for communities underserved by traditional financial institutions.”
- §401Banks authorized to use digital assets. Opens the bank-partnership channel for custody, FBO accounts, and treasury services.
Pillar 2, Portable retirement (PRActicle™)
TSP-style Portable Retirement for Gig Workers
A bipartisan push, Sens. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) + Thom Tillis (R-NC), Reps. Lloyd Smucker (R-PA) + Terri Sewell (D-AL), would extend Thrift Savings Plan-style retirement access to the 57 million Americans without employer-sponsored plans, including the entire gig-worker population. President Trump publicly backed the framework, the Wall Street Journal covered it as “Trump's new retirement plan idea”.
The TSP is the federal-employee 401(k), the same low-cost, government-administered plan with expense ratios as low as 0.04%. If extended to gig workers, it would be the single largest expansion of retirement access in a generation.
Saver's Match
Federal government deposits up to $1,000/year directly into qualifying retirement accounts for eligible lower-income workers, starting 2027.
You need an open, funded account at launch to receive it. PRActicle™ opens one automatically when a worker signs up.
Why this maps to Gigaverse
PRActicle™ already exists. We auto-open a portable Roth IRA for every gig worker who signs up and auto-save a percentage of every payout into it. We built the product the legislation describes, three years before the legislation. If Washington passes a TSP-for-gig-workers framework, we are the integration partner; if it doesn't pass, we still deliver the outcome.
- Already operating: portable account, follows the worker across platforms
- Saver's Match-ready: the account is open and funded before 2027 kicks in
- Either-way upside: legislation passes → bigger TAM. Doesn't pass → we're still the only product solving the problem.
Sources: Senate Banking Committee draft EHF26374 (May 2026); Wall Street Journal, “What to Know About Trump's New Retirement Plan Idea” ; SECURE 2.0 Act (Saver's Match provision, effective 2027). The Digital Asset Market Clarity Act and the bipartisan TSP-for-gig-workers proposal are not enacted as of May 2026. References are market-context only; Gigaverse claims no specific entitlement, subsidy, or revenue derived from any proposed legislation. Full disclosures →