Idea: HalfTimer – Link employed developers with spare capacity to half-time positions

The economy is going full steam. The number of job openings is at an all time high [1]. Technology positions are particularly in demand, with hundreds of thousands of developer positions unfilled nationwide.

MVP: Halftimer.com places developers interested in long-term part time employment with companies looking for experienced development talent. We have found that experienced developers are willing to lower their hourly rates by up to 40% in order to secure a long term contract that is in addition to their full time job. This differential enables savings for companies that work with HalfTimer – a substantial competitive advantage in the staffing business. The initial MVP need not involve more than outreach to employers and developers via LinkedIn, to staff the first several candidates and prove the model.

Market: 5M full time technology professionals

Halftimer.com builds on a concept successfully used by my other ventures to tap an underutilized resource: experienced, full-time employed developers. Many developers, particularly at large corporations, are not fully utilized whether in terms of mental capacity or even time (this documentary details the situation at length). There are almost 5m individuals employed in development-related positions in the US today – if even 10% have excess capacity, this represents a pool of 500,000 potential resources.

Scoring (0-10 scale, up to 2 points per question): 6 points

1. Feasibility of MVP / Market Entry: 1.5 points

The HalfTimer concept exploits an inefficiency: most employers historically won’t buy limited hours for professional work. On the developer side, developers looking for additional freelance work find it difficult to consistently find small projects that fit around their day jobs. HalfTimer attempts to solve this problem, and Market entry is straightforward as this is just a new spin on existing staffing concepts.

2. Revenue Market Size or Eyeballs: 1.5 points

500,000 potential HalfTimers, with net revenue per resource at $15,000 = $7.5B/yr total addressable market. Put another way, staffing ~100 HalfTimers would generate 1.5M in net revenue (against roughly $6.5M in gross revenue), enough to run a profitable small startup. The crucial question: cost of acquisition of both employers and employees.

3. In a Growing Market? 2 points

The technology employment market continues rapid growth, and the core constraint remains supply – which is precisely the problem HalfTimer seems to resolve.

4. Difficulty, Barriers to Entry, and Competition: 1 point

Many existing players in the staffing space could potentially attack this idea, and technically there are no real barriers to entry. Gigster, Gun.io, TopTal, and FlexTeam are startups attempting to ease companies’ ability to find freelance talent – these are similar but not identical to the HalfTimer concept (startup competition bolsters the strength of the idea, as it confirms an idea is worth exploring).

5. Riding Hype or a Trend? 0 points

The gig economy has grown substantially, and HalfTimer represents an evolution halfway between freelance and traditional full time employment. But it’s not clear that concepts in this space have much mind-share at the moment.

[1] The JOLTS survey shows the number of openings to be at an all time high, even when compared to 2000 and 2007 on a relative basis.

Note: I changed the first scoring question to address feasibility rather than whether the idea is “transformative”, which seems to be an imprecise concept at best.