You have a startup idea you can’t build. Enter VentureStorm

It was in their tech entrepreneurship classes at the University of Maryland that twin brothers Tommy and Taylor Johnson first noticed what they call a “severe disconnect” between aspiring entrepreneurs and actual dev talent. Ideas were a dime a dozen in these classes, but students faced a significant hurdle in bringing on a developer to help them build whatever killer app they wanted to create.
But for the Johnsons, this disconnect spelled opportunity.
The brothers, who recently graduated, were both electrical engineering majors (their link to the technical side of the student body) also taking a minor in tech entrepreneurship (their link to the entrepreneurial, but not necessarily technical, side of the student body).
So Tommy and Taylor teamed up with a third cofounder, Tyler Denk, and launched VentureStorm, which is essentially a matching platform for non-technical, very early statge entrepreneurs and developers looking for projects. At first the matchmaking service was carried out in person, the brothers told Technical.ly, but then in April 2015 they launched a website.

VentureStorm 1.0 (so to speak) was only available to college entrepreneurs and developers with a .edu email address, and only matched people on the same campus. At this stage the team decided to take a 10 percent commission on any projects they successfully paired a team for, but they quickly realized that, with college entrepreneurship-level payments changing hands, this wasn’t a viable way to make money.
VentureStorm 2.0 expanded to include non-student entrepreneurs as well, and the financial model saw the entrepreneurs paying for access to the profiles of developers willing to complete their project. The price was higher for non-students.
VentureStorm 3.0 is the current version, officially announced via a blog post this past Friday. The new model is “freemium” — developers can (as always) use the platform for free and message entrepreneurs they’re interested in working with. If entrepreneurs want to message developers, however, they’ve got to pay for a premium membership.
Given that Tommy and Taylor are now working on VentureStorm full-time (Denk will also join when he graduates this winter), they’re hoping this model will allow them to successfully monetize the business. They’re also hoping it’ll be a way to scale to a point where they’re working with more small and medium enterprises as well as college entrepreneurs.
The team believes in the niche their company is filling — “now we need to get people who have money,” they said.
According to the Johnson brothers, they’re already making progress. Five months ago, they said, the average job posting was between $500 and $1,000. Now, they’ve seen their first six-figure offer. That’s quite a leap.
In the end, the Johnsons see VentureStorm as a way for student developers, whether they be fresh out of a Computer Science major or a coding bootcamp like General Assembly, to build real-world skills. There’s still a significant gap between what these students learn in class and what they will find out in the work world — but some experience building things could help make them more marketable to full-time employers down the road.
Of course, on the entrepreneur’s side, hiring a freelance student developer is a relatively cheap way to produce a quick MVP, or get help with your non-technical-yet-tech-enabled business.
In a world where entrepreneurship is hot and most businesses are tech-enabled, this is an intriguing concept.