Past winners of SIA’s annual “Shark Tank”-style contest have reported growth and some have even been acquired.

The contest takes place during the Collaboration in the Gig Economy conference. Five companies from the workforce solutions ecosystem make presentations before a panel of judges, who pick the winner. Companies taking part in the past have included everything from employer-of-record providers to online talent platforms.

Five more firms will compete at the upcoming collaboration conference, which takes place in Dallas this year.

Past winners recounted their experience after their wins.

Glider AI

Glider AI won the Shark Tank competition in 2021, and co-founder and CEO Satish Kumar said his firm was able to double its growth.

“Overall, it has a great impact of what we’ve achieved today,” Kumar said, noting the competition boosted awareness of its business.

The company has also evolved since the contest, and its AI-powered product suite now encompasses the entire recruitment funnel. This includes assessments, candidate outreach through a chatbot and AI-guided interviews, that can suggest technical questions enabling a recruiter without technical experience to interview a highly technical candidate.

It also has a purpose-built product for staffing firms focused on training recruiters faster so they can start producing revenue more quickly.

Glider AI works with contingent workforce program owners, MSPs and staffing firms.

“Our goal is to really augment the quality and the confidence in the hiring decision,” Kumar said.

Ascen

It’s been a growth story at Ascen since its Shark Tank win at the 2022 Collaboration in the Gig Economy Conference.

“We’ve grown a lot since then,” CEO Francis Larson said, adding the company has tripled in size.

Ascen provides employer-of-record and agent-of-record services for companies engaging contingent talent.

The company works with small and midsize traditional staffing firms as well as staffing platform firms with revenue that can be up to $100 million or $200 million.

Platform firms, especially, have been coming to Ascen over the past 18 months, Larson said. These firms have typically supplied workers on an independent contractor basis but many are transitioning at least some of their workers to W-2 employees, Larson said. It’s particularly true for light industrial firms that might supply workers to events such as golf tournaments or conferences. Clients are scrutinizing the classification of workers more, and Ascen’s technology enables hiring of W-2 workers on timeframes as short as mere days.

Wolf

Wolf, which provides a white-label online talent and staffing platform for staffing firms, won the Shark Tank competition in 2023. CEO Ash Barot said the firm experienced a sales boom with sales tripling in the first quarter of this year. The company’s pipeline of clients also expanded.

“I think it really was amazing being on [Shark Tank-styled competition],” Barot said.

It also helped build trust for the company within the industry. Barot added that everyone has benefited from being in the competition regardless of whether they win.

There’s no better platform for up-and-coming software firms to showcase their products and find out if their solution works for the industry, he said.

M&A

Several former Shark Tank winners have been acquired.

Utmost Software, which tracks companies’ extended workforces, won the Shark Tank competition in 2020 and was acquired by Beeline in 2022.

2018 winner AllyO — an AI-powered recruitment platform — was acquired by HireVue in 2020.

This Year

This year’s Collaboration in the Gig Economy conference takes place Sept. 17 to Sept. 19 in Dallas. The Shark Tank-style panel runs from 4 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. Central time on Sept. 18.

The five finalists who will compete in the in-person competition have been announced.