FRACTIONAL CTO FOR EARLY-STAGE FOUNDERS

You had the idea. Now have the CTO.

Fractional technical leadership for seed-stage founders who have a product, early traction, and a hundred decisions nobody on the team is senior enough to make. I make them with you. Then I tell you which ones you got wrong.

Book a 30-minute call

Free. No deck required. Bring the thing that's keeping you up.

In technology professionally since 2009
Help desk to the CTO chair
Measured on funding and revenue targets, not hours
Southwest Florida, working anywhere

The situation

You're past the idea. That's when it gets hard.

The product is live. Customers are using it. Money is coming in, or about to. And every week there's a decision you can't afford to get wrong and nobody on the team is senior enough to make.

Rewrite the thing your first developer built in a weekend, or live with it? Is the engineer you're about to hire actually senior? Why does every feature take three times longer than quoted? Who's checking security before the enterprise deal signs?

You've been told to "just hire a CTO." You can't. Not a real one. Not yet. So you've been deciding on instinct and hoping nobody notices.

Somebody will. Better it's me, now, than your biggest customer in six months.

Instinct got you here. It won't get you funded.

How I work

It's your vision. I make sure it survives contact with reality.

Mike working through a technical plan with a founding team

Most people in your corner want you to feel good. I want you to win. Those are different jobs.

I start with where you're going, not what you've built.

I want to know what this company looks like when it works. Then I work backward. Every technical decision gets measured against that picture, not against what's trendy or what your last developer was comfortable with.

I hand you the tools, then teach you to use them.

The roadmap, the hiring bar, the vendor shortlist, the answer for when an investor asks about scale. None of it is designed to keep you dependent on me. When you no longer need me, I did the job.

I say the hard things. Early. To your face.

The rewrite you're avoiding. The hire who isn't working out. The feature your biggest customer wants that will sink the product. You'll hear it in plain language, with a plan attached, before it costs you a quarter.

Architecture and stack decisionsTechnical due diligence prepHiring and vetting engineersVendor and build-vs-buy callsSecurity and compliance readinessEngineering process and velocityBoard and investor technical narrativeHands-on when it matters

About

Help desk to the CTO chair. On purpose.

I didn't start at the top. I started answering the phone when someone's printer broke. Then the network. Then the servers. Then building the systems, then leading the teams that built them, then sitting in the CTO chair deciding what got built at all.

That path matters more than any title. I've done every job I'll ever ask your team to do. I know what a bad deploy feels like at 2 a.m., what a good hire looks like in the first interview, and the difference between an engineer who's slow and one who's being asked to build the wrong thing.

The hardest lesson took the longest: the technology is the easy part. People, priorities, and telling the truth when it's inconvenient are the job. The teams I led shipped. The companies grew. And the people from those teams still call me when they start something new.

Now I do that for founders who can't yet afford a full-time version of me, and shouldn't have to.

Since 2009.

Help desk to CTO chair, every rung. Nothing I'll ask your team to do is something I haven't done.

One scoreboard.

Did the company hit its funding or revenue target, and how fast. Not hours. Not headcount. Not titles.

Napkin to funded.

The rougher the idea arrives, the more useful I am. The path from unrefined idea to closed round is shorter than founders expect when someone has walked it before.

Engagements

Three ways to work together. No prices on the page.

The Read

Two weeks inside your code, team, architecture, and roadmap. You get a written verdict and a 90-day plan in plain language.

For:founders who need to know where they stand, usually before a raise or a key hire.

Fractional CTO

One to two days a week. I own the technical strategy, run the engineering cadence, lead hiring, and sit in on board and investor conversations.

For:seed-stage companies with a product and a team but no senior technical leader.

The Call

Standing advisory time for founders who already have a technical lead and want a second opinion that isn't afraid of them.

For:founders and CTOs who want a sparring partner, not a cheerleader.

This works if

You have a product people use and you want it to become a company.
You'd rather hear bad news this week than in the board meeting.
You want to understand your own technology, not outsource caring about it.
You're building something you'd put your name on.

This doesn't work if

You want agreement on decisions you've already made.
You want the cheapest hands to write code.
You need a yes-man with a title for the pitch deck.

If you read the second list and felt a little defensive, book the call anyway. That's usually the sign.

Thirty minutes. Bring the real problem.

Not the polished version. The one you haven't said out loud to your investors. I'll tell you what I'd do about it, whether or not we work together.

Book a 30-minute call

Free. Direct to my calendar. No sales deck on the other end.