Convert a fresh Series A round into a defensible 18-month plan before the company spends the round on the wrong things.
A fixed-scope, fixed-price engagement that turns 6–10 weeks of structured work into a quarter-by-quarter deployment plan, hiring sequence, architecture roadmap, and board reporting framework synchronised to the runway clock.
The capital is fresh, the team is energised, and the founder is under enormous pressure to demonstrate progress quickly. The most common result is a confident sprint in the wrong direction.
The use-of-funds slide on its own is not a deployment plan. There is no quarter-by-quarter, no hiring sequence, no architecture migration tied to runway. By month nine, when the next round is four to six quarters away and the burn rate is at full tilt, the absence of that plan becomes structural.
Going from eight engineers to twenty-two in six months without a sequencing plan turns velocity into chaos. Most of the new headcount stalls.
The team finally has time to "do it properly", and they go away for two quarters. Sales notice. So does the board.
Engineering output looks healthy on the engineering dashboard and irrelevant on the board deck. The Series B narrative does not write itself from velocity.
The story sold during DD and the story being executed nine months later are two different stories. Investors notice the divergence before the founder does.
Board-ready artefacts that translate a fresh round into a defensible 18-month plan. Each is structured to survive contact with hiring reality, customer pressure, and quarterly board scrutiny.
Quarter-by-quarter mapping of technical milestones to the commercial milestones promised to investors. Each quarter has explicit deliverables, owners, dependencies, and success criteria.
Detailed hiring plan by quarter, by role, by seniority, with target compensation by market and time-to-fill estimates. Includes total compensation projection against runway, with stress tests for slower-than-planned hiring.
Current-state architecture, target architecture for the end of the runway, and a phased migration plan that does not stall feature delivery. Covers software, electronics, and hardware components where applicable.
The set of process artefacts the engineering team will run on for the next 18 months. Lightweight enough to absorb in one quarter, structured enough to scale to thirty engineers.
Templated monthly and quarterly board updates covering engineering velocity, technical debt, infrastructure health, hiring progress, and the risk register. Translates technical activity into board-comprehensible business language.
All material risks across delivery, security, hiring, vendor concentration, and regulatory compliance, prioritised by business impact, with mitigation owners and trigger conditions.
Kick-off with founder, any technical lead, and key investors. Access to existing roadmap, current org chart, runway model, board materials. A rapid technical audit — not a full Strategic Audit, but focused on what is needed for plan construction.
Iterative construction of the 18-month deployment plan and architecture evolution roadmap. Weekly working sessions with the founder. Cross-checks against runway and hiring capacity.
Design of the engineering operating system: process, tooling, cadence. Pilot of new processes with the existing team. Documentation of the playbook. Lightweight enough to absorb without grinding delivery to a halt.
Construction of the board reporting framework. Review of the plan with existing investors to surface concerns early. Adjustments based on investor feedback before the plan goes to the next board meeting.
Final readout to founder, leadership team, and board. Embedded CTO retainer proposal for the next 6–12 months of execution support, or knowledge transfer to an existing technical lead.
Cash retainer at near-market rate, plus a small advisor equity grant for ongoing alignment, plus a performance-based completion bonus paid in equity on milestone achievement. Cash-only fallback available at a 15% premium where the cap table cannot accommodate.
SaaS, platform, or pure-software · just closed €5–10M Series A
IoT · medtech · cleantech · industrial automation post-Series A
Layered onto Standard or Extended for material AI components
Founders who finish this engagement almost universally retain Overlay to lead execution against the plan they have just built. The plan-build engagement creates the trust; the embedded retainer delivers the outcome. Conversion rates and engagement design favour continuity, not handover.
The 18-month plan provides a measurable benchmark against which delivery progress can be reported every quarter. Most founders convert into an Embedded CTO retainer — the plan is built; what remains is the unglamorous work of running it. For companies that already have internal technical leadership, the engagement ends with a structured knowledge transfer.
A 45-minute strategy call within the first six months of your close. We map your runway, your committed milestones, and the gap between the use-of-funds slide and an executable plan. A written diagnostic brief follows within 48 hours.
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