Fractional CTO · technical partner
A senior technical lead for your startup, without a full-time salary.
Architecture, vendor and hiring decisions, roadmap and code review — a few days a month, from someone who builds and runs his own products.
You probably need one if…
- 01An agency or freelancer builds your product and nobody on your side can check their work.
- 02Investors ask about your tech stack and you answer with your developer's words.
- 03Releases keep slipping and you can't tell whether it's people, process or code.
- 04You're about to hire your first developers and don't know what good looks like.
What is a fractional CTO?
A fractional CTO is an experienced technical leader who works for your company part-time, usually a set number of days per month. You get the decisions and oversight of a CTO while your product and team are still too small for a full-time hire.
With me that also means hands-on help: I can review a pull request, fix a store rejection or prototype a feature myself when that is faster than explaining it.
Choose how much of me you need
Advisor
For founders working with an agency or freelancers who need an independent technical voice.
- Monthly strategy session
- Review of agency estimates and invoices
- Architecture and stack decisions
- Async answers within one working day
Part-time CTO
For startups with a small team that needs direction, process and someone accountable for tech.
- Weekly call with founders and team
- Code review and release process
- Hiring: job specs, interviews, test tasks
- Roadmap and investor tech questions
- Vendor and cost control
Hands-on
For products where the CTO also needs to ship code until the team grows.
- Everything in Part-time CTO
- Building critical features myself
- Mobile releases and store reviews
- Monitoring, incidents, on-call setup
- Handover to a full-time CTO when ready
The first 30 days
- Week 1Technical auditCode, infrastructure, costs, security and team. A written report in plain language.
- Week 2Top three risksWhat will hurt first, what it costs to fix, and what can wait.
- Weeks 3–4Roadmap & rhythmA 90-day technical roadmap, release cadence and the metrics we review together.
A good fit
- Pre-seed to Series A, 0–10 developers
- Mobile-first or app plus web product
- EdTech, subscription and consumer apps
- Non-technical founders who want to understand decisions
Not a fit
- Teams of 30+ engineers that need a full-time leader
- Regulated banking or medical device software
- Someone to sign off a project without reading it
Fractional CTO questions
How much does a fractional CTO cost?
From €750 per month for the Advisor plan. Most early-stage startups choose the Part-time CTO plan at €1,500 per month, a fraction of a full-time senior salary.
Fractional CTO or a full-time hire?
Full-time makes sense once you have a team of roughly ten developers or more. Before that, a part-time lead gives you the same decisions at a lower cost, and helps you hire the right full-time person later.
Do you write code too?
Yes. On the Hands-on plan I build features myself; on the others I review code and step in when something is urgent.
How do we start?
A 20-minute call, then a paid technical audit in the first week. If we both want to continue, the monthly plan starts from there.