> Surprised there is not much invest in this space There is - huge spike in demand for talent locally in the last 5-10 years as this business model started bec

> Surprised there is not much invest in this space There is - huge spike in demand for talent locally in the last 5-10 years as this business model started becoming popular. Also seeing smaller agencies being acquired by larger ones in some decently sized acquisitions recently. Initially the local IT sector was undeveloped, there were quite a few good engineers working in really poor condition, the only decent option was relocating to Western Europe. So there were experienced developers available for cheap, and, compared to India, Central/Eastern Europe is closer to US (some overlap in work hours), usually a much nicer destination to travel to for offshore offices (depending on the country, Croatia for example is a really nice tourist destination, good English level and the culture should be more familiar). So initially that higher quality talent got absorbed at below market rates (especially for US standards) and there were quite a few success stories and reputation builders. But now as this model expands competition is driving up the price locally as well - there just isn't enough people to outsource - they are starting to scrape bottom of the barrel talent, asses-in-seats, straight out of college Indian code farm model with all the problems that had. Also portals like toptal made it easier to skip these agencies and work directly for clients so now the agencies have to compete with that for talent. I think the peak for this agency model is behind us and I think the quality has started to drop (there were a few smaller agencies that built their reputation like I described above and had great success, they used availability of local talent to built respectable teams and getting hired there was a resume highlight, sort of like getting hired at FAANG on a local level. Nowadays they are hiring people they would screen out after an initial call and it's selling asses in seats, cashing in on built reputation)