Gigs: How Hermann Frank Went From Kids' Smartwatches to AT&T, Revolut and Klarna and a $73M Series B
November 9, 2026
TL;DR: Gigs is a telecom-as-a-service platform. It gives companies an API to launch their own phone and data plans, the way Stripe gives them an API to take payments. It was co-founded by Hermann Frank (CEO) and Dennis Bauer (President), went through Y Combinator's Winter 2021 batch, and has announced about $97M in funding as of November 2026: a $4M convertible loan, a $20M Series A led by Google's Gradient Ventures in 2022, and a $73M Series B led by Ribbit Capital in December 2024. No carrier would talk to Gigs at first, so it plugged into an aggregator with poor economics and sold to kids' smartwatch makers. That niche got it in the door at AT&T. Frank told the story on The Product Market Fit Show, where he said Gigs now powers plans for fintechs like Nubank, Revolut, Klarna and Cash App and wins over 90% of the deals it goes after.
A note on sourcing. Anything labeled "as he shared on the show" comes from the interview and has not been independently confirmed. Funding figures were checked against the company's press releases and press coverage (TechCrunch, Tech.eu, Axios) in November 2026.
What does Gigs do?
Gigs lets a company add mobile service to its own product. A bank, a fintech app or a device maker plugs into Gigs and can sell phone plans to its customers under its own brand. Gigs handles the carrier integrations, the eSIMs and the subscription plumbing. On the show, Pablo Srugo described it as "the OS for embedded telecoms."
The original pitch was simple. Gigs was building "Stripe for phone plans." Frank said that tagline carried the company's story for years, because people outside telecom could picture it right away. Several early Stripe employees joined Gigs for the same reason. It reminded them of Stripe in its early days.
Today, Frank describes three product lines, each at a different stage:
- Connected devices. Embedded service for devices like kids' smartwatches, then feature phones and smartphones. This was the first vertical.
- Fintechs. Phone plans sold inside banking apps. Nubank was the first customer here, followed by Klarna, Revolut and Cash App.
- Enterprise. A newer product that embeds phone plans into a company's IT stack. When a new hire is set up in the HR system alongside Slack, Okta and Gmail, a phone number is provisioned in real time. It is switched off when they leave. Frank said this product is in the early stages of product-market fit.
Who founded Gigs?
Gigs was co-founded by Hermann Frank, its CEO, and Dennis Bauer, its President. Both are named as co-founders in TechCrunch's 2022 coverage and in the company's funding announcements. Gigs started in Berlin and announced its Series B from San Francisco.
Gigs was Frank's second company. The first was called HyperMesh. Around 2018 or 2019, as he shared on the show, he decided to go into telecom because it had not been rebuilt the way other industries had. He pointed out that telecom has invested over $3 trillion in infrastructure in just the last 10 years.
HyperMesh tried to make wireless networks much cheaper, using only off-the-shelf hardware you could order on Amazon or Alibaba.
They went cafe to cafe in Berlin and offered to install a more secure Wi-Fi network. In return, the cafes gave them free internet access. Linked together, the nodes acted like a cellular network you could walk through a whole neighborhood on. Frank self-funded it.
"We had like over a million customers in the first year, mostly tourists that were just like roaming around the city. So we basically became the number one public Wi-Fi network in the city." — Hermann Frank, Gigs
He later clarified these were users, not paying customers. Trying to make them paying customers is what led to Gigs.
Frank calls himself the more technical of the two and credits Bauer with the operational side of the company.
How much has Gigs raised?
As of November 2026, Gigs has announced about $97M in funding across three disclosed rounds:
- Convertible loan: $4M. Raised before the Series A, per Tech.eu's September 2022 coverage.
- Series A: $20M (2022). Led by Gradient Ventures, Google's early-stage fund, with YC Continuity, Speedinvest and a group of angel investors (TechCrunch and Tech.eu, September 2022).
- Series B: $73M (December 2024). Led by Ribbit Capital, with existing investors including Gradient Ventures, Y Combinator and Speedinvest participating (Gigs press release and Axios, December 12, 2024).
Key stat: the Series B was $73M, led by Ribbit Capital, announced December 12, 2024.
Frank also said on the show that the kids' smartwatch business "paid for our seed in Series A." In other words, that first niche gave Gigs the traction it needed to raise both early rounds.
How did Gigs get carriers to work with it?
This is the core of the Gigs story. Frank came up with the idea around mid-2020. He wanted an API to put a device on a mobile network, the way you would use Stripe for payments. It did not exist. He and Bauer applied to Y Combinator at the end of 2020 and joined the Winter 2021 batch. They launched commercially at the end of 2021.
The problem was the carriers. Investors told him no carrier would ever allow it. For a while, that was true.
"So we kind of had to chew our way through it. Like the way we actually got our first deal done was not even with a carrier because they wouldn't talk to us." — Hermann Frank, Gigs
Instead, Gigs found an aggregator. Aggregators sign a deal with a carrier and then resell access to customers too small for the carrier to serve directly. This one was behind on its commitments to the network. Gigs plugged into the aggregator's existing integration. Frank said the economics were terrible and Gigs made no money on it. It also lacked many features. But it was enough for the first customers.
Then Gigs went to the carrier behind the aggregator and showed it what had been built on its network. The carrier had noticed something. The aggregator had been flat, and suddenly it was growing.
"So that got us into the door to get our very first deal with the carrier. And lucky for us, it was AT&T, one of the largest carriers in the world." — Hermann Frank, Gigs
Frank said it took "quite a while" to get that deal done and migrate off the aggregator.
For more on this kind of dependency, read startup platform risk and product-market fit for API companies.
Why did Gigs start with kids' smartwatches?
The first customer came through an advisor who sat on the board of a kids' smartwatch company. That company had a SIM card problem. Parents bought the watches on Amazon and put in whatever SIM card they had. Sometimes the SIM had a PIN that locked the watch. Sometimes the carrier locked the SIM to smartphones only. Either way, the watch didn't work, and parents blamed the watch.
Gigs fixed it by putting the SIM into the device at the factory. Parents activated service inside the parental app and paid right there.
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Subscribe to The PMF Show"You pay and instantly activated the subscription and it solved all their problems that 30-40% returns on these devices on Amazon." — Hermann Frank, Gigs
Key stat: as he shared on the show, kids' smartwatch makers were seeing 30% to 40% return rates on Amazon before Gigs.
It also gave the device makers a recurring subscription revenue stream. Gigs then worked down the list of other smartwatch makers. About a year in, Frank said, it powered most of the players in that market.
The market was small, but the pain was sharp. And because a watch is a secondary device, it was a forgiving place to harden a young product before powering someone's primary phone line.
"But it allowed us to build the very first version of Gigs and the API and integrations into carriers and paid for our seed in Series A." — Hermann Frank, Gigs
Key stat: as he shared on the show, the kids' smartwatch vertical is now a mid-eight-figure annual volume for Gigs, growing at about 150% a year.
Why do fintechs want to sell phone plans?
Once the device business was mature, Gigs went after fintechs. Nubank was first, as he shared on the show. Frank gave several reasons the fit is strong:
- They already do KYC. Telecom and finance are both heavily regulated. A bank already knows who its customer is and already holds a payment method.
- Both are wallet products. You don't leave the house without your wallet or your phone.
- It's a bill people prioritize. Frank said people pay their mobile bill before they pay rent, and it's twelve transactions a year.
- Phone financing. Carriers became reluctant lenders for phones decades ago. Banks want that lending business. Now they can sell the phone and the plan together.
- Loyalty. Frank said Cash App gives its plan subscribers Cash App Green for free, and Revolut in the UK lets customers pay their phone bill with RevPoints.
See also product-market fit for fintech.
Key lessons from Hermann's playbook
1. Pick a small niche with a sharp pain. Kids' smartwatches were not a $100 billion market. But a 30% to 40% return rate meant buyers needed a fix now. That niche funded the first two rounds and hardened the product.
2. Take the bad deal that gets you in the door. Gigs built on an aggregator where it made no money. The growth it created on that network is what got AT&T to take the meeting.
3. Don't call product-market fit too early. Frank thinks founders declare it much sooner than they should.
"But I think the natural inclination of founders is to think that they have reached product market fit way earlier than they actually have. You need to have repeatable sales targeting the same ICP. You need to launch that ICP. You need to retain them, right?" — Hermann Frank, Gigs
He prefers to think in terms of "vertical market fit," earned one segment at a time.
4. Borrow a story until you have your own. For years, "Stripe for phone plans" did the explaining. Frank also tells investors two stories at once: the next 3, 6 and 12 months in detail, and the much bigger end state if those steps go right.
5. Enterprise sales is statesmanship, not salesmanship. Gigs works every layer of a target company at once. Engineers talk to engineers, the VP of sales talks to the VP of product, and Frank reaches out to the founder.
"If you want to land an enterprise customer, multi-billion or tens of billions of dollars in market cap, what you need to do is you need to convince several layers in that organization that it's a great idea to partner with you. Many times, including the founders or the C-level. You need to get the operating team to like you. You need to get the developers to like you." — Hermann Frank, Gigs
He also tests intent early by asking the champion to bring in colleagues.
"So the quicker you ask the team you're working with to introduce other participants in the company, first, you find out if this is real and if this is serious. Second, it allows you to build those connections." — Hermann Frank, Gigs
Gigs also hires people who came up alongside its buyers, including many former Stripe employees, so the first call gets taken.
6. Stay in sales longer than feels right. Frank is a strong believer in founder-led sales. He said that once founders step out of deals, things slip, because nobody else can decide on the spot how much risk to take. Read more on founder-led sales and getting your first enterprise customer.
Listen to the full interview: Carriers wouldn't talk to him, so he started with kids' smartwatches, then landed AT&T, Revolut and Klarna and now wins 90% of deals.
FAQ: Gigs
Q: What is Gigs? A: Gigs is a telecom-as-a-service platform. Through its API, companies such as banks, fintechs and device makers can launch their own branded phone and data plans. It went through Y Combinator's Winter 2021 batch and started in Berlin.
Q: Who is the CEO of Gigs? A: Hermann Frank is co-founder and CEO. Dennis Bauer is co-founder and President.
Q: How much funding has Gigs raised? A: About $97M in announced funding as of November 2026: a $4M convertible loan, a $20M Series A led by Gradient Ventures in 2022, and a $73M Series B led by Ribbit Capital in December 2024. No valuation has been disclosed.
Q: Who are Gigs' investors? A: Ribbit Capital led the Series B. Gradient Ventures (Google's early-stage fund) led the Series A. Y Combinator, YC Continuity and Speedinvest have also invested, along with angel investors.
Q: Who are Gigs' customers? A: On the show, Hermann Frank named AT&T as Gigs' first direct carrier partner and Nubank, Klarna, Revolut and Cash App as fintech customers. Gigs also powers service for several kids' smartwatch makers.
Sources: Listen to the Full Founder Story
- Hermann Frank, Gigs — a second-time telecom founder who couldn't get carriers on the phone, so he built on an aggregator for kids' smartwatch makers, landed AT&T, and now powers phone plans for some of the largest fintechs in the world.
Last updated: November 2026
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