The Arrived Workforce Connections app is “white labeled,” meaning it can be branded with the logo of any client company.

Fresno’s Arrived Workforce Connections has been acquired by Australian-based talent and sourcing platform LiveHire, completing a deal that started earlier this year and finalized this month.

Arrived Workforce Connections, which was founded in 2018 under the name gigRonin, sought to apply the gig economy to the staffing industry with its own app.

“There’s a lot of holes for a lot of positions,” said Tosh Cook, founder of Arrived Workforce Connections. “There’s still a lot of industry left to be impacted.”

Originally, the business focused on staffing hospitality positions and banquet catering, evolving and branching out over time.

 

“Whereas our first iteration was we were the employer and we were providing the workers, our second iteration post-COVID, what we pivoted to was a software platform as a service model, where we were providing our technology to contingent employers in a variety of industries,” Cook said.

LiveHire approached the Fresno company earlier this year with the hope of expanding their potential services, as well as their geographic footprint in the Western Hemisphere.

Cook said that the two companies share philosophical alignment and believes the acquisition will serve them well.

“As a company, you’re always in the market to hear offers, but I can’t say that we were totally engaged in trying to sell ourselves,” Cook said of the initial approach. “It really felt like a lot of alignment in terms of mission, to really address both the needs of workers and employers and to try and use technology to bridge gaps in the labor market.”

Cook himself will be stepping away from the company. LiveHire plans to retain some of the existing workforce including Arrived Workforce Connection’s CEO and former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Jenniver Byrne, who will assume a key leadership position at the company.

Cook said the staff and work done at Arrived Workforce Connection couldn’t have been achieved without investor and local community support and involvement.

“We’re very glad that, as a locally founded company, we were supported by local investors,” he said, adding that without that support, the acquisition would not have taken place. “For a Fresno-based company, it’s an important step in, and we’re glad to take that step.

Cook comes from one of Fresno’s old entrepreneurial families. His great grandfather Hans Cook emigrated from Denmark in the late 1800s and worked his way across the country on the railroad.

Hans Cook won enough money in a poker game to buy a farm in Clovis and was one of the first grape growers in the area, according to Tosh Cook’s 2019 Business Journal Executive Profile.

His grandfather Einar Cook manufactured farm implements on Shaw and Peach avenues in the 1950s and was one of the largest employers at the time. His dad Jerry Cook was the founding CEO of Grundfos Pumps, and today develops commercial real estate with Tosh’s brother Todd Cook.