Fractional CTO for startups and small teams
Part-time technical leadership for companies that need a CTO’s judgment before they need a full-time one.
Starts at $4,000 a month for about 6 hours a week.
Signs you need this
- You’re making technical decisions you don’t feel equipped to evaluate.
- Your developers are shipping, but nobody owns the architecture or the roadmap.
- You’re preparing to raise, and investors will ask hard technical questions.
- You need to hire your first engineers and aren’t sure what good looks like.
What I do
Roadmap and architecture
Decide what to build, in what order, and on what foundation, so today’s shortcuts don’t become next year’s rewrite.
Hiring
Define the roles you actually need, write the job descriptions and a practical technical exercise, review candidates’ work, and join the final conversation with your top picks. I also write the onboarding plan and docs, so new engineers get productive without someone walking them through everything.
Investors and advisors
Explain the platform, its risks, and its potential in terms investors trust, including technical due diligence.
Standards and mentoring
Put code reviews, testing, and deployment practices in place, and coach the team so it keeps improving after I step back.
From my work
$12Mseed round
The platform and architecture supported Atmosfy through its $12M seed round, during which I also participated in technical discussions with prospective investors.
6engineers led
Built and led Atmosfy’s engineering team while owning the technical roadmap and staying a core contributor.
21developers led
Development lead across three teams on a multimillion-dollar desktop application for a travel technology company.
How it works
From $4,000/month
About 6 hours a week of mostly asynchronous work, plus a regular call or two. More hours are available as your needs grow.
A set number of hours each week, ongoing or for a defined stretch such as a fundraise or your first few hires. Most of the work happens asynchronously in evenings and on weekends: reviewing code, writing up plans and decisions, and answering questions in your team’s chat. We meet on a regular call or two each week during the business day. It suits teams that need direction and sound decisions more than someone in every meeting.
Common questions
Do you still write code?
Yes. I’m happiest leading while still working on the hardest problems, and hands-on time keeps my advice grounded in your actual codebase.
What does it cost?
Fractional work starts at $4,000 a month for about 6 hours a week. We’ll agree on the exact hours and monthly rate on the intro call before anything starts.
What happens when you step back?
The goal is a team, roadmap, and set of practices that run without me. I document decisions as we go and help you hire or promote someone into the role when you’re ready.
When are you available?
Phoenix Powered is my independent practice, so I do most hands-on work in evenings and on weekends and schedule calls during the business day, usually one or two a week. That works well for building, reviews, and advisory work. If you need someone in meetings all day, I’ll say so on the intro call rather than overpromise.
Other ways I can help
- Rescue and repair
For MVPs that stalled and platforms that keep breaking. I find what’s wrong and fix it, like an outreach flaw I found and fixed in a week that was leaking revenue.
- Architecture and security reviews
A focused look at your architecture, code, and security, with a prioritized list of what to fix and why.
- Build your platform
From the first line of code to launch: architecture, backend, web and mobile apps, and the cloud they run on. It’s what I did for Atmosfy.
- Automation and systems integration
Connect the tools your business runs on and automate the manual work between them, from API integrations to scheduled data exports.
- Stubborn bug fixes
The bug that keeps coming back, or that nobody can reproduce. I track it to the root cause, and you only pay for the time I use.
Tell me what you’re working on.
Book a free 30-minute call to talk through the project and your timeline. If you’d rather start in writing, send a few lines by email.
Book a free 30-minute intro callPrefer email? [email protected]Message me on LinkedIn