Services → Fractional CTO
FIG. 01 — THE ROLE
A senior technical brain on your side of the table.
Not being able to evaluate code shouldn’t make you easy to take advantage of.
You don’t need a full-time CTO yet. You need someone who has owned outcomes before to sit next to you — when the vendor pitches, when the investor asks, when the architecture decision can’t be un-made. Rent the judgment until you can hire it.
$6,500/MO · 2 DAYS/WK EQUIV. · MONTH-TO-MONTH AFTER 2 MONTHS
You interview your CTO candidate before anything is signed. If it isn’t the right person, we haven’t started — and month 1 is fit-or-refund.
FIG. 02 — THE MANDATE
Not five services. Five decisions you stop losing sleep over.
Leadership is decisions, not hours. These are the five that sink companies when nobody senior owns them — and after each one, what changes for you.
- → DECISION LOG
“Is our architecture going to bite us?”
Architecture ownership
Every significant technical call goes in a written decision log you keep. Stacks stay boring, proven, and hireable-for — you stop wondering whether the foundation is sand.
- → HIRING SCORECARD
“How do I judge vendors and hires I can’t evaluate?”
Vendor & hiring decisions
Vendor pitches get a written verdict by Friday. Hiring gets job specs, screens, final-round interviews, and offer calibration — with you in the room, learning the questions.
- → SECURITY REVIEW
“Would we survive a security questionnaire?”
Security posture
Access control, vendor risk, infrastructure oversight — the discipline that turns due diligence into a formality instead of a fire drill you’re the last to hear about.
- → BOARD REPORT
“What do I tell the board?”
Investor-grade narrative
A monthly written technical report your board can actually read, and a technical story that holds up in a diligence room — because it’s true and it’s documented.
- → BUILD-VS-BUY MEMO
“Which AI vendors are lying to me?”
AI strategy
Where AI earns its place in your product and where it doesn’t — evaluation criteria, build-vs-buy verdicts, all in writing. Adult supervision of every AI pitch in your inbox.
TYPICAL WEEK: 1 DAY EMBEDDED · 1 DAY ON THE ROADMAP · OVERSIGHT OF ANY OMEGALOGIC BUILD WORK — INCLUDED, $0
FIG. 03 — THE BOUNDARY
What this is. What it isn’t.
- [✓]A named senior leader — the same person every week, interviewed by you before we start[−]Not a rotating bench of consultants
- [✓]Decisions in writing: architecture, vendors, hiring, security[−]Not slide-deck advisory
- [✓]Governance of your roadmap and your team’s execution[−]Not on-call dev hours — execution capacity is the Growth or Scale Package
- [✓]Help writing the spec and hiring your full-time CTO[−]Not a recruiter stopgap
- [✓]Capped at the 2-day/week equivalent, in the contract[−]Not a full-time employee in disguise
Needs beyond two days a week move to the Scale Package ($32,000/MO, a dedicated squad). This tier is never silently inflated — the cap protects you. There is no hourly meter under this number; a heavy month is our problem, not your invoice.
FIG. 04 — THREE PEOPLE WHO HIRE US
If one of these is you, this is for you.
Every Fractional CTO engagement starts as one of these three situations. If yours isn’t on the list, say so in the Product Session — we’d rather route you right than sign you wrong.
- SCENARIO 01 — THE POST-SPRINT FOUNDER
Your MVP shipped. Now investors ask “who owns technical?” and every vendor email lands on you. You need architecture owned and a hiring plan — not a $300k hire you can’t afford yet.
FIRST 90 DAYS: DECISION LOG STOOD UP · ROADMAP WRITTEN · FIRST ENG HIRE SCOPED
- SCENARIO 02 — THE OPERATOR SCALING INTERNAL TOOLS
Three internal tools became nine. Vendors multiply, customers send security questionnaires, and nobody senior signs off. You need one person accountable for the stack — and a build-vs-buy rule that ends the sprawl.
FIRST 90 DAYS: VENDOR AUDIT · ACCESS REVIEW · BUILD-VS-BUY RULE IN WRITING
- SCENARIO 03 — THE INNOVATION LEAD
Every AI vendor demo looks amazing. Your job depends on knowing which ones survive production. You need evaluation criteria, pilot guardrails, and a written verdict you can forward to your VP.
FIRST 90 DAYS: EVAL CRITERIA SET · PILOTS GUARDRAILED · VERDICT MEMO DELIVERED
FIG. 05 — THE EXIT IS THE PLAN
This role is designed to end: we help you hire your CTO, then hand over.
Most retainers are designed to renew. This one is designed to end — one of two ways, and both are wins for you. Either two days a week turns out to be genuinely enough, or we help you write the job spec, run the interviews, calibrate the offer, and hand your new full-time CTO a complete decision log on day one.
“We helped you hire your CTO” is our favorite ending. A guide who plans their own exit is a guide you can trust with the middle.
The monthly rhythm
- WEEK 1 — EVIDENCE REVIEW
- What the product data, the incidents, and the team are actually saying.
- WEEKS 2–3 — DECISIONS
- Architecture calls, vendor verdicts, hiring moves — each one entered in the decision log, in writing.
- WEEK 4 — THE REPORT
- The monthly technical report: what changed, what it cost, what’s next. Board-ready.
- QUARTERLY — ENDGAME
- The technical roadmap gets the same discipline as a product: end state first, then the shortest path.
MONTH 1 → MONTH N → YOUR CTO HIRED · Ω
FIG. 06 — THE GUARANTEE
Month 1 is fit-or-refund.
If it isn’t working by day 30, month 1 is refunded — in full, no meeting required. A refundable $6,500 is cheap insurance against the mis-hire that costs a year.
What’s fixed: the person, the price, the cap. The same named leader every week, the same number every month, never more than the 2-day equivalent without an explicit conversation.
$6,500/MO · FIXED · 2 DAYS/WK EQUIV.
MONTHLY IN ADVANCE · 2-MONTH INITIAL TERM
THEN MONTH-TO-MONTH · 30 DAYS’ NOTICE
MONTH 1 — FIT-OR-REFUND, IN FULL
FIG. 07 — QUESTIONS FOUNDERS ACTUALLY ASK
Before you ask.
Who exactly do we get?
A named senior engineering leader — the same person every week. You interview them before starting. No bait-and-switch to a junior.
Two days a week — how is that enough?
Leadership is decisions, not hours. Architecture calls, reviews, vendor choices, hiring. Execution capacity comes from your team or a Growth/Scale package.
Can they manage our existing developers?
Yes. Cadence, reviews, and standards are part of the role. We report what changed and why, monthly, in writing.
What if we’re still deciding whether to build?
Start with the Product Discovery Sprint ($7,500) instead. A Fractional CTO governs building; evidence decides whether to build at all.
How do we stop?
Month-to-month after the 2-month initial term, 30 days’ notice. Docs, decisions, and credentials already live in your systems, so offboarding is a meeting, not a project.
Questions about the money side — payment schedule, what changes price, refunds? They’re all answered on the pricing page →
FIG. Ω — THE END STATE
Borrow a CTO’s judgment. Keep your cap table.
One 30-minute session. Bring your three hardest technical questions — you’ll leave with at least one answered and a draft of what two days a week would own first.