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A matchmaker for the modern age: There’s now an online marketplace where poor college students studying engineering can find temporary projects that people need to get done.
Borrow an Engineer, which officially launched on Tuesday, is a website where entrepreneurs, companies and people with engineering coursework under their belt can all come together and help out one another. And it could be a major game-changer for Boston’s startup ecosystem.
Throwing engineering students a bone
Zach Herbert, founder of Borrow an Engineer, was once an engineering student himself. He graduated with a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Boston University in 2014, and college served as inspiration for his site.
“In school, I was surrounded by talented engineering students, who were doing amazing projects in their free time,” Herbert told me. “They were building apps and websites, constructing their own rockets and 3D printers, but they weren’t getting paid for it.”
“They also weren’t working for real companies, so when they graduated, they had no real work experience to show as they were looking for jobs,” he added.
Although Herbert thought about this phenomenon during his time in college, it wasn’t until he first played engineer matchmaker that he decided to turn it into a business.
He heard about a data recovery company in Boston was required to have a mechanical engineer create a 3D rendering of a mall kiosk proposal. The small business didn’t have a mechanical engineer on staff, nor was it going to hire one. Herbert connected the company with his friend - a mechanical engineering student - so it didn’t have to hire a firm to make an expensive mall kiosk mock-up. Not to mention, his friend got paid for the project.
That was all months before Borrow an Engineer came into existence. It gave Herbert the final push to make a website - for which he naturally had to borrow his engineering buddies to do. Even though the site officially launched yesterday, Herbert had recruited 300 students, so Borrow an Engineer was ready to go as soon as it was live.
“They’re not just from BU,” Herbert said. “About 150 of the engineers I pre-registered were from BU. I had my friends reach out to their networks, so we have a lot of local engineers from Boston - at MIT and Northeastern. But we also have engineering students in other parts of the country, like Georgia Tech.”
It's already making matches
In just its first day, Borrow an Engineer has had 50 engineers officially sign up. Given how many people are in need of engineering help, that’s promising for the matches that could be made.
“There’s so much work that needs to be done. Most small businesses, startups and entrepreneur need an engineer for a small project rather than a full-time employee,” Herbert said.
“I’m really excited to see how the Boston startup community responds to it.”
Traditionally, these entities find themselves in a dilemma. It makes no financial sense to have an engineering firm handle temporary projects, while other freelancers they can find online aren’t based in the U.S. The latter option, although fiscally responsible, poses a problem because there’s no way to meet up and hash out the details of a project.
Borrow an Engineer makes these options of the past totally irrelevant. Businesses, startups and individual entrepreneurs are able to post projects they need to have done for free. They have to provide details about the project, such as timeline and budget (flat-fee only). From there, engineers interested in completing the project are able to submit proposals, which the poster can accept or reject.
At the same time, people who have a project can peruse the site’s wealth of engineers, look at their profiles and see if any in particular catch their eye. They can then ping specific ones to if there’s interest in working on a project.
Only once there’s a match and the project is complete will the website charge the poster’s credit card and deposit the money in the engineer’s bank account. For the services, Borrow an Engineer takes a 15% cut off of every project.
Not everything's about the money
Money aside, Hebert emphasized that engineering students and grads benefit most from the site because it gives them experience. With each project, they have the chance to build a professional portfolio of their work and have a taste of real-world engineering experience.
“Engineering students will gain a strong familiarity with working on real projects, which is so hard to teach in the classroom,” Herbert began.
“In my own academic career, that was always the major gap: experience,” he went on.
"Students will gain a strong familiarity with working on real projects, which is so hard to teach in the classroom."
Moving forward, Herbert, who will also be attending Harvard Business School next fall, is planning to grow Borrow an Engineer on his own. He’s hoping to gain traction and start generating a profit before he even thinks about bringing investors into the equation. But, in a city like Boston, Borrow an Engineer shouldn’t have much trouble catching on.
“I’m really excited to see how the Boston startup community responds to it,” Herbert said. “There are so many startups with non-technical founders that can now hire engineers to do their projects. They won’t have to stress about taking on someone on a full-time basis when they can’t afford it.”
“It should open up opportunities for people who don’t have engineering knowledge, but who have great ideas,” he said.
Image via Zach Herbert.
