Founder: “I need a CTO.”
Me: “For what?”
Founder: “Technical leadership.”
Me: “What technical decisions are you making?”
Founder: “Which tools to use. How to connect them. What to build vs buy.”
Me: “You need a technical advisor. Maybe 5 hours a month.”
Founder: “Not a full-time hire?”
Me: “You’re pre-product-market-fit with 2 clients. A CTO would be bored by Tuesday.”
This conversation happens more than you’d think. And every time, I watch the founder’s face shift from confusion to relief. They came in thinking they needed a $250K hire. They left with a solution that actually fits their stage.
The Expensive Mistake Nobody Talks About
Last year, I got a call from a fintech founder. Let’s call him Marcus.
Marcus had just raised a seed round and his investors were pushing him to hire a CTO. “You need someone senior to own the technical vision,” they said. Good advice in theory. Terrible advice for his situation.
Marcus’s startup had a working MVP built by a freelancer. Two paying customers. A burn rate that gave him 14 months of runway. And his investors wanted him to spend 30% of his raise on a single hire who’d spend most of their time… doing what, exactly?
At that stage, the technical decisions that mattered could fit on a napkin:
- Should we rebuild the MVP or iterate on it?
- Which payment processor integrates best with our stack?
- Do we need to think about compliance infrastructure now or later?
- When should we hire our first full-time developer?
These are important questions. But they’re not 40-hours-a-week questions. They’re 5-hours-a-month questions.
I became Marcus’s technical advisor. Six months later, his platform processed its first million dollars. His team grew to three developers. And he still calls me for the big decisions maybe 8 hours a month now.
Total cost versus a full-time CTO? He saved enough to extend his runway by four months.
The 3 AM Test
Here’s how I think about it. There are two types of technical leadership needs:
The 3 AM problems. Your database is on fire. Production is down. Customers are screaming. You need someone who can SSH into a server, find the issue, and fix it while half-asleep. This is operational leadership. You need someone in the trenches, full-time.
The Tuesday afternoon problems. Should we use PostgreSQL or MongoDB? Is this agency’s quote reasonable? How do we structure our API for the integration we’ll need in six months? This is strategic leadership. You need someone who’s seen it before, but not necessarily someone sitting in your office every day.
Early-stage startups have mostly Tuesday afternoon problems. They just don’t realize it.
I’ve been the 3 AM person. I’ve managed incidents at scale, led engineering teams through critical pivots, and built platforms serving millions of users. I know what a production crisis looks like. But I also know that most startups aren’t there yet.
When your entire user base fits in a spreadsheet, you don’t need a full-time fire department. You need someone who knows where the extinguishers are.
What I Actually Do (In 5-15 Hours a Month)
Let me tell you about a typical month with one of my clients a SaaS company in the HR tech space.
Week 1: 90-minute call reviewing their architecture decisions for a new feature. Their lead developer wanted to introduce microservices. I talked them out of it. Not because microservices are bad, but because they have four developers and one product. Premature optimization is a startup killer. Decision made, two hours saved in meetings they would have had without me.
Week 2: Async review of three vendor proposals for their AI integration. I flagged that one vendor was promising capabilities that don’t exist yet (a creative interpretation of what their LLM could do). Saved them from signing a contract they’d regret.
Week 3: Technical due diligence call for a potential acquisition. The CEO wanted to buy a smaller competitor. I reviewed their codebase, identified $200K in technical debt they’d inherit, and helped negotiate the price down accordingly.
Week 4: Sat in on a developer interview. Gave my read on the candidate. Suggested two questions that revealed they’d exaggerated their experience with React Native.
Total time: 11 hours. Total value? They’d estimate it in the hundreds of thousands between the bad hire avoided, the contract renegotiated, and the architectural mistake prevented.
The Skills I’m Lending You
Twenty years in this industry means I’ve made mistakes you haven’t made yet. That’s the real product.
I’ve shipped code across the full stack Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Python, React, React Native. I’ve built AI products before everyone was building AI products, integrating LLMs and vector databases when they were still considered experimental. I’ve done mobile (iOS, Android, cross-platform), infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Kubernetes), and even blockchain when that was the thing everyone wanted to do.
But here’s what actually matters: I’ve been through the full cycle. Founded startups. Scaled them. Watched them fail. Learned why. Built the next one better.
I know what a Series A-ready architecture looks like because I’ve built them. I know what technical debt kills companies because I’ve seen the autopsies. I know which corners you can cut and which ones will haunt you at 3 AM six months from now.
This isn’t consulting. It’s borrowing experience.
The Honest Truth About When You Need Me
Not every company needs a fractional CTO. Here’s my honest take:
You need me if:
- You’re a non-technical founder making technical decisions that feel like educated guesses
- You have developers but no one to validate their architectural choices
- You’re evaluating vendors, agencies, or potential technical hires and need a bullshit detector
- You’re approaching a decision that will define your next 2-3 years and want someone who’s seen the outcomes before
- You need AI capabilities integrated into your product but don’t know where to start
- Your current architecture won’t survive the next stage of growth
You don’t need me if:
- You need someone writing code 40 hours a week
- You’re looking for the cheapest option (I’m not, and experience isn’t cheap)
- You want someone to just follow specs without questioning them
- Your technical decisions are straightforward and your team handles them fine
I’d rather tell you that you don’t need me than take your money for something you don’t need. Bad fits waste everyone’s time.
What This Looks Like in Practice
I structure my advisory work around what you actually need:
Technical Advisor (5-10 hours/month): Regular calls, async access for urgent questions, architecture reviews, vendor evaluations, hiring support. Best for early-stage startups or companies with junior technical teams.
Fractional CTO (10-20 hours/month): Everything above, plus deeper involvement in roadmap planning, team structure, investor communications, and strategic technical decisions. Best for scaling companies that need senior technical leadership but aren’t ready for a full-time executive.
Project-Based: Technical due diligence for acquisitions or investments. Architecture overhauls. AI integration strategy. Best when you have a specific challenge with a clear endpoint.
I’m currently working with clients across fintech, AI/ML, SaaS, and blockchain companies that need someone who speaks both business and code fluently. Someone who’s pitched to investors and debugged production issues in the same week.
The Conversation That Should Have Happened
Back to Marcus, the fintech founder. A year later, he actually did hire a CTO. A great one. But here’s what he told me:
“If I’d hired someone full-time when my investors pushed me to, I would have hired the wrong person. I didn’t even know what I needed yet. Working with you helped me understand what ‘technical leadership’ actually means for my company. Now I know exactly what to look for.”
That’s the real value. Not replacing a CTO. Helping you get ready for one or realizing you don’t need one yet.
Right resource. Right stage.
I’m currently taking on 2-3 new advisory clients. If you’re facing technical decisions that feel bigger than your current resources, let’s talk. I’ll tell you honestly whether I can help or whether you need something different entirely.
Get in touch or connect with me on LinkedIn.