Helping Those Who Help Themselves
Intrepid Company Relaunches as a Resource Marketplace
1.15.12
 |  | Along with founding ExitEvent and being on the management team at Automated Insights, I also own a consulting firm: Intrepid Company.
I know, everyone and their dog owns a consulting firm.
But this consulting firm never really looked like your average, everyday consulting firm. |
Now, after a whole lot of thought, we want to make it look nothing like your average, everyday consulting firm. But to do this, we're going to need your help.
I started Intrepid Company after spending years with startup technical services consulting firms. As the Internet started to dominate that space, however, I got disillusioned with the lack of those types of services firms to keep up. I also started working with and for RTP product startups and I quickly realized three things were going on:
1) Finding technical and even management talent was a nightmare for startups, because there's no single hub to the network. Finding a job at a startup was just as hard.
2) The large corporations I worked with wanted to run like startups. The startups I worked with wanted the momentum of big corporations.
3) The best work was at the startups because of how they ran. The best people were at the corporations because they could pay.
Being able to fill these gaps and teaching others how to do the same made Intrepid Company grow quickly. The year before I joined AI, we were just under $1 million in revenue. And I owe the success of the firm to three things:
1) My network, which allowed me to find awesome people and awesome projects to put them on.
2) An undying passion for all things lean, which gave the corporations the efficiencies they were looking for. It also allowed us to be able to work within the budgets of most startups.
3) Being able to manage a bunch, and I do mean a bunch, of smaller projects at once. Which meant I could string together enough work to keep everyone busy most of the time.
Once I went to join Automated Insights, which I couldn't have regretted even if it came with a daily punch in the face, I had to change my role at Intrepid Company. I own it, I can't (and don't want to) run it.
This made things very difficult for Intrepid Company.
But that difficulty was the mother of invention.
And that's where you come in.
Intrepid Company wants to break the rules of what a consulting firm does and how they do it. We want to pair supremely talented techies who have cycles to spare, whether that's 10 hours a week or 40, with forward-thinking companies who need work done and don't want to hire immediately, whether they're startups or corporations.
Boom!
There are all sorts of benefits. Techies, especially entrepreneurs, who want to make extra money or do something new or just have free time can put their time into something rewarding, mentally and financially.
You don't have to look for a job, you don't have to sign on with Monster (really? Monster?), and you don't have to start your own consulting firm.
Companies get great people with no overhead and a decent discount, quickly, with the option to start small and build a smart relationship.
You don't have to provide benefits and sick days. You don't have to post to Monster (really? Monster?), and you don't have to worry, because everyone on the other side is proven, managed, and better than what you're paying for.
Everybody wins because we go lean, with an emphasis on local, managed talent, and a disciplined and efficient approach to getting the right people into the right situation and keeping them there.
Two recent events made this viable.
About six months ago, Mark Andrews, who worked for me ten years ago at one of those product startups and then went on to other startups, came to work for Intrepid Company and knows the secret sauce as well as I do. He can run things now that I can't.
I had an opportunity at Thursday's Launch Day to run the idea by several techies and entrepreneurs. This is exactly what I did at the last Launch Day with ExitEvent, and the response was the same. Without question, everyone thought it was a great idea.
And since ExitEvent exploded right after that, I have the confidence that now is the time and we can do this right.
By the way, I need to call that event RE-Launch Day, as this is the second time I've come out of it with a reboot of an existing company.
Anyway, we're starting by getting to know the techies who would be interested in providing the help. If this is you and you're interested, go to the website and get some more detail, and then get in touch with us to get started. Keep in mind, we're going to ask you to work at a discount, but discount hours are better than no hours at all.
Once we have some momentum on the resources side, we're going to work on the project side. But don't hesitate to get in touch with us if your company has resource needs, we're just not proactively focusing on that right away.
So if you need help, we want to help you help yourself. And we think it can be done the right way.
Next Time: How we're completely the same, but totally different from oDesk and GroupTalent
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