Codementor gets $1.6m to help startups hire ‘elite developers’

Weiting Liu. Photo credit: Codementor.

When Weiting Liu saw people using his startup in an unexpected way, he decided to embrace it rather than clamp down on it. Some users on Codementor, where programmers pay gurus for advice on their coding conundrums, “wanted to hire these veterans for freelance projects,” he says.

For Weiting and his team, that became the basis of a new platform, which rolls out today. The spin-off CodementorX has roped in its “top 2 percent” of mentors – “elite developers” who work freelance or moonlight from the likes of Google or Amazon, explains the Taiwan-born entrepreneur – so that startups of all sizes can get them to work on projects.

It allows startups to get expert input on building apps and services from the kind of people that they simply couldn’t afford to hire full-time.

Upending Upwork

Top developers in Silicon Valley are not only expensive, they’re difficult to find as they receive no shortage of job offers. One Californian startup caused a stir by straight up offering new hires US$1 million over four years. With six-figure salaries the norm, a startup with little or no funding can only afford an experienced dev for, like, a weekend or for a brief project. And that’s exactly what CodementorX has in mind.

Photo credit: spaxia / 123RF.

“Some fast-growing companies cannot grow as fast as they want because it’s difficult to hire,” he says.

Along with the new product, Weiting has just secured US$1.6 million in funding led by WI Harper, he tells Tech in Asia. Previous investors include Techstars and 500 Startups.

Usually they don’t do this for the money.

While some startups turn to what Weiting calls “traditional freelancing platforms” to find people to design logos or code a few things, the founder sees CodementorX as very different – the main divergence being that he wants to focus on only the cream of the coding crop.

“You’d never find them on Upwork or Freelancer,” he says cheerily of the experienced mentors. Only the top-performing ones are invited to be freelance coders.

But they won’t come cheap.

“Usually they don’t do this for the money,” counters the CEO. Rather, they take up the projects to stay sharp and to work with startups they genuinely find interesting – since they get to pick and choose from the assignments on offer. “They find it very rewarding to do do,” he adds.

Taiwan roots