HR & recruiting

Airwork

Website
Founded 2022Origin source ↗Checked 2026-09-15

Overview

Airwork is an on-demand labor marketplace for premium blue collar workers. You can get an Airworker the same way you get an Uber, except instead of a taxi, someone shows up at your work site to work for the day.

Airwork fills 98% of shifts in 2 hours. We're currently live in 8 industries across Southern Ontario, Canada, and customers include Tesla, the Toronto Pearson Airport, and the CNE.

We're funded by YCombinator, Expa, Village Global, and SHL Capital.

Company description As recorded 2026-11-08
LinkedIn GitHub
HR & recruitingMarketplaceBusinessesMarketplace

Founders & team

Previously Litebulb Technologies Inc., Litebulb

Company history As recorded 2026-11-08

Gary Lin

Founder

Founder/CEO at Airwork. Former engineer at Meta, Nauto, Yelp, NVIDIA. University of Waterloo Computer Science 2019 grad. Proud husband and dad.

LinkedIn X
Founder profile As recorded 2026-09-15
4team members reported
Source-reported As recorded 2026-09-15

Founded 2022 · Source

Origins

4 months after graduating from the YC W22 batch in March 2022, we realized our business wasn’t going to take off, so we pivoted. Our team kept circling around the problem of Canada’s labour shortage. Every day we were seeing supply chain delays, emergency rooms backed up, and restaurants understaffed. Canada is one of the most educated OECD countries (56% of adults have post-secondary education), yet somehow within just 2022, worker satisfaction dropped 3%, commitment to work dropped 6%, and satisfaction with salary dropped 10%.We realized there’s a unique opportunity to build a marketplace that offers flexible work for workers and an instant workforce on demand for businesses. This marketplace would pay a premium to workers while saving recruiting costs for businesses. It would also allow workers to pick up shifts wherever they want, whenever they want, while allowing businesses to post shifts based on demand. We believe Airwork is building Canada’s future of work.

Founder account As recorded 2026-09-15

News & product activity

Sources & observations

Y Combinator

Profile depthverified profile
Website observationwebsite reachable
Last website check2026-11-11
Location · source statedToronto, ON, Canada
Pricing evidenceNo pricing page confirmed
Maturity: Not assessed · 3 of 6 areas documented

Source-based assessment · automated evidence rules

The latest capture is empty, blocked or a parked website.

Maturity is an evidence-based assessment, not a success rating. It may understate the current stage where evidence is limited. Coverage records documented areas, not a complete or independently audited company history.

Stage definitions
independent websitesource corroborationreachable websitedescriptive evidenceclassified market and modelsourced peoplesourced founding year
startup.observe Directory coverage · Sources & method