Ongoing technical leadership that scales with your stage.
From a strategic sparring partner for solo founders to a hands-on operator for scaling teams the CTO you need, exactly when you need them, without the €250K+ salary.
Your technical sparring partner
2–4 hours/week · Calls + async Slack
Ideal for solo founders or small teams (1–5 people) who have a dev team or agency building the product but no senior technical voice to challenge assumptions, validate decisions, and prevent expensive mistakes.
60 minutes, video, structured agenda. Review decisions, discuss upcoming choices, troubleshoot blockers. Recorded with written action items within 24 hours.
Asynchronous review of any significant technical decision before it's committed. Technology stack, database selection, API integrations, build-vs-buy questions. 24-hour response SLA.
Review proposals from agencies and freelancers. Evaluate estimates, identify red flags, negotiate scope. Attend key vendor calls as your technical representative.
Help articulate your technology strategy. Review pitch deck tech slides. Prepare answers to investor technical questions. Optionally attend investor calls as your named CTO.
Slack or phone for urgent situations production outages, security incidents, critical vendor issues. 2-hour response during European business hours.
Mon: You send 3–5 bullet async update. Tue/Wed: Strategy call (60 min). All week: Async Slack access, 24hr SLA. Monthly: One-page "State of Technology" summary for your investors.
Hands-on technical leadership
10–20 hours/week · Embedded in your team
For startups with growing teams (5–20 engineers) that need genuine technical leadership in their daily operations. The transition from "hacking" to "engineering" led by someone who's done it before.
All advisory services included as the baseline.
Lead sprint planning. Define acceptance criteria. Unblock engineers. Review velocity trends. Introduce just enough process for delivery predictability.
PR reviews on critical paths. Architecture Decision Records (ADRs). Coding standards. Review checklists that uplift quality even when you're not reviewing.
Bi-weekly coaching for senior engineers. Grow internal technical leadership. Identify and develop your future permanent CTO or VP Engineering.
CI/CD pipelines, monitoring & alerting, incident playbooks, on-call rotation, release management. For hardware: firmware OTA pipeline, device testing protocols.
Technology roadmap created in week 2, refreshed quarterly. Monthly board-ready engineering report: velocity, debt status, infrastructure health, and upcoming decisions.
Mon: Sprint planning + founder sync. Tue–Thu: Code reviews, architecture, 1:1s, standups. Core hours 10–17 CET. Fri: Retro, weekly summary, roadmap updates. Monthly: Full engineering report. Quarterly: Half-day roadmap refresh.
The Advisory and Operator tiers are designed as a natural progression. Most clients start with Advisory and graduate to Operator as their team grows. And when you're ready for a full-time CTO, I help you hire them and transition out.
Diagnose what you have
Strategic safety net
Embedded leadership
I help you hire them
If you have strong founder-market fit but limited runway, the Equity Partner CTO model gives you full Operator-level leadership at a senior developer cash rate (€3,000–4,500/month), compensated with 1–3% equity on a 4-year vesting schedule. CTO-level thinking without CTO-level cost.
Success is tracked through business metrics: product velocity, technical debt reduction, uptime, fundraise outcomes. The retainer buys results, not time.
Most fractional CTOs are software-only. If your product touches the physical world IoT, medtech, cleantech you need someone who speaks firmware as fluently as cloud.
Every engagement includes documentation and knowledge transfer. The goal is to leave your team stronger and eventually help you hire a permanent CTO when you're ready.
Every retainer starts with a free 30-minute health check. No pitch, no pressure just an honest conversation about your technology situation.
Book a free health checkOr email directly: [email protected]