FRACTIONAL STRATEGY LEADERSHIP

Your next CTO is already here.

A fractional CTO or CPO who embeds with your leadership team, makes the decisions your board needs to see, and transitions out cleanly when you’re ready to hire. No six-month search. No six-figure signing bonus.

$0–10K/mo

Investment

0–3 mo

Initial Commitment

0 days

First Operating Plan

0 day/wk

Time Commitment

WRONG FIT

This might not be for you if...

You need someone writing code daily — this is a strategic leadership role. You’re looking for indefinite staff augmentation with no transition plan. You’re pre-product and need to figure out what to build first.

Better Starting Points

For hands-on engineering, that’s a Development + Delivery engagement. For figuring out what to build, start with a Feasibility Sprint or Design Sprint.

RIGHT FIT

This is exactly right if...

You’re a founder-led company and the technical decisions are outpacing your expertise. You’re navigating a pivot, M&A, or growth inflection and need a seasoned operator. Your board is asking technical questions you can’t answer with confidence.

What Happens Next

We schedule an onboarding kickoff and have your operating plan within the first 30 days.

THE GAP THIS FILLS

You don’t need advice. You need someone who owns the answer.

Advisors give you frameworks. Consultants give you decks. What you actually need is someone who sits in the room, hears the hard question, and says “here’s what we’re doing and why.” Someone your board trusts, your engineers respect, and your co-founder can stop losing sleep over.

That’s what fractional leadership is. A senior operator — CTO, CPO, VP Eng, whatever title fits your gap — embedded in your company one day a week, making architecture decisions, running your engineering team, and translating technical reality into the language investors actually care about.

Built for the inflection point: Founder-led companies navigating a pivot, M&A, or growth stage who’ve outgrown the “CEO makes every technical call” phase but can’t wait six months to hire.

How We Work

The First 90 Days

Stabilize & Prioritize

Weeks 1–4

Intensive onboarding: full technical landscape review, 1:1s with key team members, and evaluation of processes and vendor relationships.

90-Day Operating Plan with owners and milestones

Technical landscape review and risk assessment

Stakeholder 1:1 synthesis and team health read

Execute & Lead

Months 2–3

Steady-state leadership: board prep, architecture decisions, team 1:1s, roadmap stewardship, and stakeholder translation.

Weekly leadership sync and team 1:1s

Board narrative and deck contributions

Architecture and vendor decision facilitation

Compound & Transition

Months 4+

Quarterly operating plan resets, and when you’re ready to hire full-time, we define the role, evaluate candidates, and ensure a clean handoff.

Quarterly operating plan refresh

Full-time role definition and candidate evaluation

Institutional knowledge transfer and documentation

What Actually Changes

WEEK 4

Decisions Start Moving

The backlog of deferred architecture calls, vendor choices, and hiring decisions starts clearing — each with an owner, a deadline, and a rationale your board can see.

MONTH 2

Your Board Hears a Real Story

No more status-update decks. Crisp, metrics-backed narratives that translate engineering work into business progress — written for the people reading them.

MONTH 3

Your Team Ships Faster

Clear priorities and explicit trade-offs mean less wasted sprint capacity. Your engineers stop guessing what matters and start executing against a plan they helped shape.

ONGOING

Hiring Becomes Credible

Senior candidates stop dropping out of your pipeline because there’s finally someone credible running the technical interview loop and selling the vision.

Choose Your Level of Involvement

Every engagement starts with a 90-day commitment. After that, month-to-month. Scale up or down as the work demands.

$5K / MONTH

Focus

Half-day per week strategic advisory. Weekly leadership sync, architecture guidance, and board prep. Best for companies with a strong engineering lead who need a senior operator to pressure-test decisions.

$7.5K / MONTH

Operate

One day per week embedded leadership. Key meetings, 1:1s with senior engineers, board participation, and ownership of the operating plan. The most common starting point.

$10K / MONTH

Lead

Full ownership of technical strategy, direct team management, hiring process, and board-level representation. For companies in critical transitions who need a full-time-equivalent leader while they search.

LOGISTICS

Common Questions

01What do you need from us to get started?

An executive sponsor with decision-making authority, access to your engineering team and codebase, and candor about what’s working.

Specifically: a CEO, COO, or founder who meets weekly and can unblock decisions. Full access to the engineering team, codebase, and relevant systems for the duration. And a willingness to act on the operating plan, not just receive it.

We’ll confirm the right tier during our kickoff conversation. Most companies start at Operate and adjust from there.

02Will this person manage my engineering team directly?

At Operate and Lead tiers, yes — including 1:1s, performance conversations, and hiring decisions.

At the Focus tier, the engagement is advisory — we guide your existing leads but don’t manage directly. At Operate and Lead, we take on direct management responsibilities: running 1:1s, setting expectations, facilitating performance conversations, and owning the hiring process for technical roles.

03Can this person attend our board meetings?

Yes. That’s often the highest-leverage use of this engagement.

We come prepared with the narrative and data your board needs. Many clients find that board prep and attendance is one of the most valuable aspects of the engagement — translating technical progress into metrics investors care about.

04Can you help us hire a full-time CTO?

Yes. We help define the role, evaluate candidates, and ensure a clean handoff.

A successful transition is part of the engagement — not the end of a contract. We help define what you actually need in a full-time leader, participate in candidate evaluation, and ensure institutional knowledge transfers cleanly. Most clients hire within 3–6 months of starting the engagement.

WHAT'S NEXT

Where This Leads

Need to build the roadmap?

Technical Roadmap Strategy

Fractional leadership paired with a Technical Roadmap Strategy in the first 60 days creates a prioritized plan your team can actually execute against.

Explore Roadmap Strategy

Ready to start building?

Development + Delivery

Fractional leadership provides ongoing strategic oversight while our Development + Delivery team handles execution.

Explore Development

Stop deferring the decisions that compound.

A 30-minute conversation is all it takes to know if this is right. No pitch deck. No proposal theater. Just a candid read on your situation.

Schedule a Conversation