There is an unmet need for developer helpouts

Chris Whitehead put together the simple website seekmentor.org where people can share their problems with software:

• In one sentence, what software-related issue would you like help with?
• What are the sorts of questions you would like to ask someone?
• What sort of experience would the ideal adviser have?

They can also offer to help out:

• In one sentence, what are your areas of specialism?
• What is you experience? A short bio and link to LinkedIn would be perfect.
• What advice to you think you can offer that would be useful for startups?

To get some traction, but Chris went around LinkedIn and his current contacts and found some people who needed help, and some who could offer it. He quickly found some willing customers.

The problem seems to be that people can get out of their depth, without people to talk to on a sustained basis about their technical challenges. It’s one thing to ask questions on Stack Overflow, but when it comes to designing a new product or building a team from scratch, for example, some advice could come in handy.

While there is plenty of existing competition, including codementor.io which comes up in a Google search, probably a small consultancy could be built up in this way.