How we work with founders.
Three engagement shapes, one lifecycle, one named lead per account. Pick the shape that fits today and reshape it as you grow — same people, same accountability.
Three shapes. The shape can change.
You don't have to commit to one model for the lifetime of the engagement. Most founders start with Advisory, move into Build for a sprint, and end up in Run as the product stabilises. Same lead all the way through.
Fractional CTO. On the calls that matter.
Senior technical leadership at a fraction of the cost of a hire. We sit in your weekly leadership meeting, your investor calls, your architecture reviews, and your hiring loops — for as much or as little time as you need.
- Architecture, vendor, and stack decisions written down and defended.
- Investor and customer technical references handled credibly.
- Engineering hiring sequence, sourcing, and interviews.
- Direct line to senior architects when a deep dive is needed.
Pre-build, pre-fundraise, or post-PMF founders who need a senior voice in the room without the cost of a CTO hire.
Typical commitment0.2 to 0.4 FTE, monthly retainer, three-month minimum.
Output cadenceWeekly written status, monthly business review, on-demand decision memos.
Discover. Decide. Build. Run. Grow.
The same five steps run inside every engagement, regardless of model. Discovery sets up Decide, Decide sets up Build, Build hands off to Run, Run feeds Grow — and the cycle repeats as you ship the next thing.
Discover
What problem are we actually solving? What's already there? What can't be moved?
Decide
The five to ten choices that shape everything else, written down with our recommendations.
Build
Ship working software against a real date. Demo weekly. Boring parts done right.
Run
Operate, monitor, respond. Quiet weeks are the goal — not absence of activity.
Grow
What's the next bet? Re-enter Discover with what we now know.
One named lead. Written status. Honest reviews.
Every account has a single named lead — a senior who carries the context and is on the hook for outcomes. You get one inbox to escalate to, one calendar to find, one face on every call.
Status is written, not theatrical. Every Friday you get a short note: what shipped, what's blocked, what we're worried about. Once a month, a 60-minute business review against the goals we agreed to. If something's off-track, you read it there before you hear it on a call.
If a senior leaves the engagement — for any reason — we tell you, we name the replacement, and we run a real handover. No quiet substitutions.
We work in your tools. We expect a few things back.
Engagements run smoothest when both sides know what's expected on day one. Here's our default stack, and the small handful of things we ask of founders.
Linear, Slack, GitHub, Notion.
- Linear for delivery and tickets
- Slack for synchronous, GitHub PRs for review
- Notion for decision memos and docs
- Your tools too — we adapt
Time, decisions, and access.
- Two to four hours a week of founder time
- Decision rights on the calls we make together
- Read access to data, code, and the bank of context
- Honest signal when something isn't landing
Senior, named, accountable.
- One named lead, on the hook for outcomes
- Written weekly status, monthly business review
- No junior surprise substitutions
- Honest no when we're not the right fit
Tell us the shape you need. We'll tell you what we'd run.
A 30-minute call. We listen, we ask, we tell you whether Advisory, Build, or Run is the right starting point — or whether you need something else first.
Book a discovery call