RentACoder (vWorker) named "One of the 100 Most Brilliant Companies" by Entrepreneur Magazine

Rent a Coder (vWorker) was named "One of the 100 Most Brilliant Companies on our Radar", by Entrepreneur magazine.

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Text version: The man behind 285,700 programmers Ian Ippolito saw the potential of crowdsourcing. Now Rent A Coder is raking in millions. Do businesses hire actual employees anymore? Maybe not. As employment numbers plummeted, more than $24.7 billion of outsourced contracts were dished out in the fourth quarter last year--up 8 percent year over year, according to TPI, a sourcing advisory firm. Much of that growth is the result of crowdsourcing: Instead of paying for full-time employees, employers are tapping into the online community of hungry freelancers. Marketing, public relations, research, design, legal services--all can be handled quickly and affordably through crowdsourcing sites. One of the first to latch onto the opportunity was programmer Ian Ippolito, who launched Rent A Coder back in 2002. His Tampa, Fla., site connects businesses with a global freelance market of programmers, and today, an astonishing 136,837 buyers and 285,700 coders from all over the world make up the Rent A Coder marketplace. Posting of work requests is free, but Rent A Coder takes a 6-percent to 15-percent cut of the final transaction. In 2008, the most recent data available, revenue was $2.4 million--more than double what it was in 2004. This year, Ippolito expects $3 million and will rename the site vWorker.com--for virtual worker. Ironically enough, Rent A Coder has become a company that hires its own employees. For now, it has 12.