Fast now.
The version that ships in weeks, built to prove the business, not to impress an architect. If it makes money, we earn the right to do it properly.
FRACTIONAL CTO FOR BOOTSTRAPPED FOUNDERS
I know you're struggling with vibe coding
Fractional technical leadership for founders and business owners who have a product, paying customers, and a hundred technical decisions nobody on the team is senior enough to make. I make them with you, fast. Then I tell you which ones you got wrong.
Book a 30-minute call
No deck required. Bring the thing that's keeping you up.
- TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONAL SINCE 2009
- HIGH STANDARDS
- ADDICTED TO WINNING
- WORKING ANYWHERE
The situation
You're past the idea. That's when it gets expensive.
The product is live. Customers are paying. Every dollar going into the business is yours or came from a customer. And every week there's a technical 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? Which of the twelve tools the agency wants to sell you actually matter?
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 to the next level.
THE RIGHT SHORTCUTS
Your engineers will hate some of my advice. Your customers won't.
Every business hits a moment where the textbook answer costs six months you don't have. I've spent fifteen years learning which rules can be broken, what each one costs, and how to pay it back. So when you need a product in front of customers in three weeks instead of three quarters, I'll show you the unconventional way to do it, exactly what you're trading away, and the date we come back and fix it.
Most people in your corner want you to feel good. I want you to win. Those are different jobs.
Technical people scoff at this. Then the revenue shows up and they stop. Most of what passes for "best practice" is advice for companies that already won. You're not there yet. The way you get there is speed with a receipt: every shortcut written down, priced, and scheduled for its cleanup. That isn't technical debt. That's a loan you took on purpose, from someone who knows the terms.
Priced honestly.
Every shortcut comes with a written note: what we skipped, what it will cost, and when it starts to bite. You decide with the real numbers in front of you.
Fixed on schedule.
The cleanup goes on the roadmap before the shortcut ships. Scalability isn't abandoned. It's deferred, with a date, and I'm the one who holds you to it.
Build-vs-buy and tool decisionsWhat to automate and what to leave manualHiring and vetting engineersVendor and agency negotiationsArchitecture that can grow laterSecurity that fits the businessEngineering process and velocityHands-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 are spending their own money and can't yet afford a full-time version of me. They 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 business hit its revenue target, and how fast. Not hours. Not headcount. Not titles.
Napkin to paying customers.
The rougher the idea arrives, the more useful I am. The path from unrefined idea to real revenue is shorter than founders expect when someone has walked it before.
Engagements
Three ways to work together. No prices on the page, no retainers you can't cancel.
The Read
Two weeks inside your code, team, tools, and roadmap. You get a written verdict and a 90-day plan in plain language, including which shortcuts to take and which to stop taking.
For: founders who need to know where they stand, usually before a big hire or a big bet.
Fractional CTO
One to two days a week. I own the technical strategy, run the engineering cadence, lead hiring, and sit in on every decision that costs real money.
For: businesses with a product, paying customers, 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 pay for and you want it to become a company.
- You'd take a six-month head start over a perfect architecture.
- You'd rather hear bad news this week than in the quarterly review.
- You want to understand your own technology, not outsource caring about it.
This doesn't work if
- You want agreement on decisions you've already made.
- You need every decision to pass a textbook review.
- You want the cheapest hands to write code.
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 team. 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.