Equifax's other database

Last week, someone pointed me to The Work Number, which is an amazing business I had never heard about before. The Work Number is a database for employment and payroll data, and customers primarily use it to verify someone’s employment.

Employment verifications are often required when leasing a new apartment, updating immigration status, or applying to a new job, and each time someone wants to check the Work Number database, they can purchase an individual’s employment and income information for ~$20.

However, the really interesting part of this business is that Work Number’s clients (including Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Wal-Mart, and 75% of the Fortune 500) actually pay Work Number for the privilege of sending weekly data on their employees’ work and wages to Work Number’s database.

The idea for these clients is that by having Work Number manage this data, their HR departments will not have to respond to calls and inquiries from lenders or potential employers, so they are saving a lot of time and money.

It also means that Equifax has a massive amount of data on one-third of the working population in the US, and this database is worth a lot. In 2017, the CEO of Equifax said that The Work Number is worth ~$9B.

What are other markets where you could build this type of business… where customers pay you to take their data, and other customers pay you to access the data? Let’s talk about your ideas! 😊

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