What I Own For You
Everything a full-time CTO handles — technology strategy, vendor management, team oversight, architecture decisions — without the overhead of a permanent executive hire.
Technology Strategy
I evaluate where you are, define where you need to go, and build the roadmap to get there. No jargon — just a clear plan tied to business outcomes.
Vendor & Tool Selection
Choosing the wrong platform costs you years. I evaluate options, negotiate with vendors, and make sure you pick tools that scale with your business.
Team Oversight
Whether you have in-house developers, an agency, or contractors, I hold them accountable. I review their work, manage timelines, and make sure you get what you paid for.
Architecture Decisions
I make the technical calls that protect you long-term: what to build vs. buy, when to migrate, how to structure systems so they don’t collapse under growth.
Process Design
I define how your team handles leads, deploys code, manages content, and communicates across tools. Better systems mean fewer mistakes and less wasted time.
Why Fractional Beats Full-Time
A full-time CTO costs $200–400k per year before benefits. Most small and mid-size businesses don’t need that. They need the expertise without the overhead.
Save $200k+ Per Year
You get the same strategic thinking and technical leadership at a fraction of a full-time executive salary. Pay for the hours you use, not a seat that sits empty.
Broader Experience
A full-time CTO sees one company. I’ve worked across dozens of industries, tech stacks, and business models. That breadth means better decisions for you.
No Ramp-Up Period
I’ve been doing this since 2011. There’s no onboarding curve, no learning period. I audit your stack, understand your goals, and start making an impact immediately.
Scale Up or Down
Need heavy involvement for a product launch? Light oversight during a quiet quarter? You control the engagement level. No awkward conversations about reducing a salary.
How the Engagement Actually Works
No retainer you can’t explain to your board and no invoice you can’t audit. Here is the shape of a typical fractional CTO engagement, start to finish.
Start With a Discovery Call
Thirty minutes, no charge, no pitch deck. You describe what’s breaking or what you’re trying to build. I tell you honestly whether a fractional CTO is the right answer — sometimes it isn’t, and I’ll say so.
Audit Before Advice
Before I recommend anything, I inventory what you already have: systems, vendors, contracts, credentials, who owns what. Most recommendations from consultants fail because they skipped this step.
A Roadmap You Can Read
You get a written plan in plain language — what to fix now, what to fix next, what to leave alone, and what each item costs. It’s yours to keep whether or not you continue with me.
Monthly Cadence
A standing check-in plus asynchronous access when something comes up. You aren’t buying a calendar block you have to fill; you’re buying someone who already has context when the question arrives.
Time Billed to the Minute
Every minute I work is logged and visible in your client dashboard as it happens. No rounding up to the hour, no mystery line items, no discovering at month’s end where the budget went.
Leave-Anytime Terms
No annual contract and no termination penalty. Documentation, credentials, and accounts stay in your name from day one, so leaving means telling me — not extracting yourself.
What the First 90 Days Look Like
The point of the first quarter is not to impress you with activity. It’s to make sure you understand your own technology well enough that the next decision is easier than the last one.
Inventory and Triage
I map every system, subscription, vendor, and domain you’re paying for — including the ones nobody remembers signing up for. Anything actively bleeding money or exposing risk gets fixed in this window. Most clients find at least one forgotten recurring charge here.
Stabilize and Document
Backups verified, access consolidated, single points of failure identified. I write down how things actually work so the knowledge lives with your organization instead of in one person’s head — mine included.
Roadmap and Handoff Discipline
With a clear picture of the current state, we prioritize what’s next against your actual budget and calendar. You get a roadmap tied to business outcomes, not a technology wish list.
Who This Is — and Isn’t — For
A fractional CTO is a real fit for some organizations and an expensive mismatch for others. It costs both of us less to figure that out now.
A good fit if…
- You’re making technology decisions you don’t feel qualified to make, and the stakes keep rising.
- You have vendors, agencies, or contractors and no one internal who can tell whether their work is any good.
- Technology spend has crept up and nobody can explain what any of it does.
- You’re about to commit to something expensive — a platform, a rebuild, a migration — and want a second opinion that isn’t selling it.
- You need someone who can talk to a board, a funder, or an insurer about your technology in language they trust.
Probably not if…
- You need forty hours a week of hands-on engineering — at that volume, hire someone full-time. I’ll help you write the job description.
- You want someone to approve decisions you’ve already made. I’ll tell you what I actually think, which is the entire value.
- The real problem is a staffing or organizational one that a technology leader can’t fix from outside.
- You need a single well-defined thing built. That’s a developer engagement, and it’s cheaper.
Common Questions
The questions that come up on nearly every discovery call, answered before you have to ask them.
More on Fractional CTOs
Longer reads on when this role earns its keep, broken out by the kind of organization asking.
Let’s talk about your technology.
A 30-minute conversation to understand where you are, where you want to go, and whether a fractional CTO is the right move.