A Startup Idea to Help Older, Laid-off Engineers

Following my three earlier pieces [Tech Layoffs For 2016 Projected To Be Deep – What Happens To 260,000 Highly Skilled Professionals In Their 40s And 50s?, Intel’s Layoffs – What Will Happen To The Older Workers?, Advice For Laid-Off Engineers], I want to brainstorm about some startup ideas that would be helpful in addressing the pain.

A large number of these engineers need retraining in an engineering domain that is currently in demand.

Many of them are, however, extremely skilled engineers. Perhaps they won’t be designing or verifying chips going forward, but they do have the intellectual horsepower to rapidly learn a new field.

What would be interesting is for new startups to create niche solutions to take a mid-career professional, and help him/her through this transition, all the way from selecting which domain to go into, designing the retraining program, followed by placement within that domain.

For example, there could be a company built around this transition in the field of Cyber Security. It’s a hot field, and providing a well-analyzed articulation of what the employers are looking for in that field, and how to acquire those skills, as well as connecting the dots with the right employers would be very exciting.

A similar solution could be designed around Data Sciences. Or Machine Learning. IT Architecture. Or Marketing Analytics.

For people with less advanced engineering skills, fields could be different. Ruby on Rails programming. Python. Database administration.

In fact, such a company could be paid by the tech companies that are downsizing to retrain their employees and be part of the outplacement process.

Let us say, a new startup can handle the retraining and placement of 100 employees, paid for by their employers, at $5000-$10,000 per person, that’s a $500k to $1 million revenue scope.

Let us say, there would be 100 such companies focusing on different niches, handling the retraining of 10,000 people.

That would mean, also, 100 entrepreneurs building $1M+ revenue businesses.

No, not venture fundable businesses.

But good, solid, revenue generating, value creating, profitable, sustainable, livelihood building businesses.

What’s wrong with that?

Alright! Let’s get started. I’d love to coach 100 entrepreneurs who want to build one of these businesses. You can take any of these ideas and execute on them, morph them, mash them up with other ideas of your own. If you want help with building any of these businesses, feel free to join the 1M/1M program. We’ll be happy to help.

Photo credit: Ray/Flickr.com.