TinyProj Shuts Down, Users Sent To TechStars Grad GroupTalent Instead

TinyProj, a project marketplace started by Forrst founder Kyle Bragger is shutting down.  All 8,300 of the service’s registered developers and designers who used the site to find project-based work will now be transitioned over to GroupTalent, a recent TechStars grad.

Both companies have been building online marketplaces for project-based work since October 2011. With GroupTalent, the goal has been to help match companies with quality talent by curating the level of applicants accepted. Only 20% of all applicants get in, as determined by a filtering process done through manual review in combination with algorithms that rank the applicants based on open source contributions.

According to GroupTalent CEO Manuel Medina, his site serves the growing needs of startup founders to earn additional income while their own sites get off the ground. “The majority of our talent base are teams from startups who are bootstrapping,” he says. “Many are funded, many are from accelerator programs such as YC, TechStars, 500 Startups, and then there are those who are just getting started. Most of them are tired of ramen.”

He also hopes that companies will soon realize that they can find the talent they need, if they’re willing to look beyond the full-time employee. “Most companies think of talent in terms of full time, but there is a large and growing demand from technical talent for project-based work,” says Medina. “It turns out there’s plenty of available, highly skilled developers and designers looking for work- not full time, but by the project.”

Starting today, Bragger will begin transitioning the userbase of TinyProj over to GroupTalent. The users will be given access to all the projects on the GroupTalent platform, where budgets are currently running between $8,000 and $40,000.

For Bragger, the move will help TinyProj users benefit from GroupTalent’s scale and momentum, but will also allow him to focus on his 500 Startups-funded dev and design community Forrst.