Elance? Odesk? There are a fair number of players in the "find a dev to solve a one-off business problem" space. The issue is that this is a market for lemons[1

Elance? Odesk? There are a fair number of players in the "find a dev to solve a one-off business problem" space. The issue is that this is a market for lemons[1] on both sides - for business owners with problems, it's hard to verify that the entrepreneurial devs can actually implement a solution, and for the entrepreneurial devs it's hard to weed out problem clients. Someone who solves or even slightly mitigates either of these issues will have a viable business. I know that for the "ensure the dev is competent" side of things there are many consulting companies that live and die by their reputations, but generally these don't usually scale up beyond a certain size, and when they do their reputation deteriorates. I am not aware of any businesses that attempt to solve from the flip side and weed out problem clients (if anyone is aware of such a service, I would be interested). As if that wasn't enough of a challenge, if you do manage to connect quality devs to quality clients, there's the issue of sufficiently monetizing that relationship: you can charge a finder's fee or similar when you first connect them, but once a client finds a dev they like they will probably stick with that dev. So in that business you can lose business because you match people too poorly (and they leave because you can't help them) and you can lose business because you match people too well (and they leave because they've now found somebody they trust so they don't need your services anymore). [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons