Your CTO, from the first decisions to launch.
I take on architecture, engineering hires and technical priorities. I work with you and your team to keep the product moving and spending clear.
A fractional CTO gives your startup a technical leader for part of the week. I help make decisions and carry them through with your team. Scope and commercial terms are agreed after a free first conversation, before work starts.
Free Infrastructure for Every Startup I Work With
Every startup that hires me as advisor or Fractional CTO gets production-grade infrastructure at no cost: hosted GitLab with powerful CI/CD runners, Sentry, Loki, Grafana, and custom tools for your development and operations work.
Decisions that fit your stage
Technical Architecture & Strategy
I help choose architecture and tools for your product, budget and near-term plans. We decide what to build now and which decisions can wait.
- End-to-end architecture reviews and technology stack selection
- Scalability planning from MVP to millions of users
- Monolith vs. microservices decisions based on your actual stage
- API design, database architecture, and infrastructure planning
- Technical debt assessment and remediation roadmaps
- Vendor evaluation and build-vs-buy analysis
Do more with less
Cost Optimization
I've run a production platform serving 190+ countries on $650/month AWS. I know what real cost optimization looks like, and it's not about cutting corners.
- Cloud infrastructure audit and right-sizing
- Team efficiency analysis and restructuring
- Eliminating redundant tools and services
- Optimizing CI/CD pipelines and deployment costs
- License consolidation and vendor negotiations
- Building lean development workflows
A technical partner who gets it
A technical sounding board for the founder
Bring a difficult decision: a deadline, a hire, a change of stack or a team disagreement. I help you compare the options and their consequences before you commit time and money.
- Sounding board for major technical decisions
- Reality checks on timelines, budgets, and scope
- Conflict resolution between business and engineering
- Planning around deadlines, budget and risk
- Direct feedback on your decisions
- Navigating pivots, layoffs, and tough conversations
Included at no extra cost when you hire me as your Fractional CTO, mentor, or advisor
Free Infrastructure Package
You get a complete self-hosted DevOps infrastructure: production-grade tooling that would typically cost $2,000–5,000/month from commercial providers.
Self-Hosted GitLab
GitLab for your code and CI/CD, with builds and access set up for your team.
Sentry Error Tracking
Self-hosted Sentry for real-time error monitoring, alerting, and performance tracking across all your services
Loki Log Aggregation
Centralized log collection and querying, so you can search all your services in one place
Grafana Dashboards
Monitoring dashboards for infrastructure metrics, application performance, and business KPIs
Additional DevOps Tools
Extra pieces matched to your stack: container registries, artifact storage, and more
Results from an AI transformation I actually ran
AI in Action: The AppMaster Story
People on the team before AI adoption
People on the team after AI adoption
Tokens Processed Monthly
Platform Uptime Maintained
In 2025, I transitioned AppMaster.io from a 25-person team to a 2-person AI-augmented operation. I rebuilt every function (engineering, QA, support, content) around AI workflows. The platform kept serving users in 190+ countries with no drop in service.
What the team could look like
The right team depends on the product and workload. Here are two examples.
Example with a full-time technical lead
- CEO / Founder
- VP of Engineering ($180-250K)
- 3-5 Senior Developers ($150-200K each)
- Product Manager ($120-160K)
- DevOps Engineer ($140-180K)
$890K–1.59M/year at the listed rates
FCTO Model
- CEO / Founder
- Fractional CTO (fraction of full-time cost)
- 1 Senior Engineer
CTO engagement, plus the engineering budget
On our first call, we discuss the roles you already have and the help you need.
Who This Is For
I work best with founders who are ready to move fast and think lean.
Seed-Stage Startups
Need architecture that scales without over-engineering. Want senior technical guidance without hiring a full-time CTO.
Growing Startups
Hit scaling challenges. Tech debt is slowing you down. Need someone who's been through hypergrowth to help navigate.
Pivoting Companies
Changing direction and need to rebuild the tech stack. Want to do it right this time, with guidance from someone who has done it before.
AI-Curious Startups
Want to integrate AI into your product but don't know where to start. Need practical guidance, not theoretical frameworks.
Frequently Asked Questions
When should a startup hire a fractional CTO?
When architecture, hiring or delivery needs an experienced lead, but you do not yet need a full-time CTO. We discuss your stage and the time commitment on the first call.
Can a fractional CTO help us adopt AI?
Yes. I introduced AI into AppMaster’s workflows and help other teams test it on their own work. We start with a process where time and quality can be measured before and after the change.
How do you keep cloud costs low for early-stage startups?
Start with the bills and actual usage: idle resources, unused services and expensive configurations. I help estimate the savings and choose changes that preserve the reliability your product needs.
Do you write code or just advise?
Both. Engagements range from hands-on architecture and setup to high-level advisory, depending on what your stage actually needs.
Let’s talk about your next release
In a free 30-minute call, we discuss what is slowing you down and where you need a technical lead.