someone needs to become a "broker" for engineers. find startups the talent they're looking for in exchange for x% of that talent's salary/equity/whatever.
Yet if you've got no more than $1200/month to spend on rent- good luck with that.
Brokers for engineers (and bankers, traders) exist on the business model you described. They're called headhunters. They won't work for equity.
The real downside on that is that (as someone who has been one) headhunters have a hard enough time as-is getting their fee occasionally from clients. If working WITH headhunters seems to be a pain in the ass, try being one and keeping the client and prospect in-line with a model that you can actually get paid on is rather difficult.