Lamine’s New Gig

Born in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, Lamine Zarrad came to the United States as a refugee. His varied background includes service as a forward deployed U.S. Marine, advisor for Merrill Lynch, a National Bank Examiner for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and most recently, the CEO of Tokken. Now, Lamine is launching a new gig – Joust, an all-inclusive toolkit to help gig workers run their business.

Before starting Joust, Lamine founded Tokken, a mobile platform that offers banking services to cash intensive, un-bankable businesses with risk management in mind. Founded in February 2016, the Tokken platform was designed to provide integrated proxy banking and payment processing services to cash-intensive businesses, with a specific focus on the cannabis industry. Cannabis businesses are considered high-risk by most financial institutions due to the average daily volume of cash that exposes them to potential money laundering schemes. Tokken solves these problems by creating a virtual barrier to cash placement, excluding the use of cash in transactions and being compliant.

In August 2017, due to the political climate around the cannabis industry, the company decided to pivot and apply its offerings to a growing force – the gig economy, and that’s when Joust was born.

Joust, which is currently accepting applications for its private beta, offers freelancers a platform to send invoices and quotes, receive payments and manage their earnings. In addition, Joust offers invoice insurance for invoices up to $10,000 that can be purchased at the moment the invoice is sent. The invoice insurance is powered by Gestalt, the proprietary technology behind Tokken, that creates KYC (know-your-client) profiles, which allows Joust to assess merchants and underwrite in real-time.

Bottom Line: I’m placing Joust in the gig economy enablers ark instead of AND CO, as it’s already taken by Fiverr.