Senior Technical Leadership Without the $300k Salary
Strategy, architecture, hiring, and roadmap from someone who's shipped real products, on a retainer that fits a startup budget.
Sound familiar?
The questions that keep founders up at night, and that a full-time CTO hire is overkill to answer.
You don't know if your stack is right
A dev shop pitched you on React/Node/Postgres. Is that the right call for your business, or just what they happen to build?
You're not sure who to hire next
Senior engineer, mid + junior, contractor? You need someone who has hired all of them to tell you the trade-offs.
Your roadmap keeps slipping
Estimates are off by 3x. You can't tell if it's the team, the scope, or the process, and your investors are asking.
The dev shop won't commit
They'll build whatever you ask, then ship the work offshore. You need someone who pushes back when the spec is wrong.
AI is moving too fast to track
Every week there's a new model, framework, or workflow. You need someone whose job it is to know what actually matters.
Hiring a full-time CTO is overkill
$250–350k/yr plus equity to tell you that you need a better onboarding doc and a database index? There's a better way.
You don't need a full-time CTO. You need senior judgment, on call.
What a fractional CTO actually does for you
Strategic engineering leadership on the cadence your business needs. Typically 8–20 hours per week, fully remote, with structured weekly touchpoints.
Architecture & technical strategy
Decide the stack, the boundaries, the build-vs-buy calls. Document the why so the team can execute without you in every meeting.
Roadmap & estimation
Quarterly planning, scope negotiation with the business, realistic delivery dates you can put in front of investors and customers.
Hiring & team design
Write the job specs, screen candidates, run technical interviews, build an org chart that scales past your next round.
Vendor & dev-shop oversight
Review proposals, set acceptance criteria, push back on scope creep, make sure what you're paying for is what gets shipped.
AI & automation strategy
Where AI actually moves the needle for your business, where it's a distraction, and how to put guardrails on what ships.
Board & investor support
Technical sections of investor decks, due-diligence prep, on-call for the questions a non-technical founder shouldn't have to answer alone.
Three tiers, depending on how deep
Pick the one that matches how much of me you need. All three run on a 3-month minimum, and you can move up or down between quarters.
For founders who need a senior technical voice in the room, not a weekly hands-on partner. Architecture calls, vendor review, hiring input, and on-call for the hard decisions.
- Weekly 60-min working session
- Async Slack & email between
- Quarterly planning
Ongoing partner, in the room for the decisions that matter, sometimes writing code. The default shape for teams that want a technical leader without a full-time hire.
- Two working sessions per week
- Direct engineering contribution
- Vendor & contract oversight
- Board / investor support
Effectively acting-CTO. Hiring, architecture, some IC work, running the technical arm of the company between rounds or through a critical build.
- Daily availability
- Own the technical roadmap
- Lead hiring end-to-end
- Own architecture & execution
Larger scope, or a custom shape? Let's talk.
How the engagement works
A predictable cadence, not just "text me when you need me."
Discovery (week 0)
90-minute working session: where the business is going, the current state of the stack and team, the three biggest technical risks. Output: a written 30/60/90 plan.
Weekly cadence (ongoing)
A standing 60-minute working session, async Slack/email between, plus on-call for high-stakes decisions (hires, vendor contracts, architecture forks).
Quarterly planning
At each quarter close: what shipped, what slipped and why, what the next 12 weeks look like. Tied to the business plan, not a vanity engineering roadmap.
Transition out (when you're ready)
The point is to make yourself replaceable. We'll know when it's time to hire a full-time VP Engineering or CTO, and I'll help you find them.
Is this the right fit?
A good fit if…
- You're a non-technical founder shipping a real product
- You have a small team (1–8 engineers) and no senior technical leader
- You're working with a dev shop and want independent oversight
- You're between rounds and not ready for a full-time VP / CTO
- You want AI woven into how the company actually operates, not just bolted on
Probably not a fit if…
- You need an IC engineer to build the product themselves
- You already have a senior technical co-founder
- You're post-Series B with a 30+ engineer org
- You want someone to rubber-stamp decisions you've already made
Why work with me
Hi, I'm Matt Ferrante. I've spent 15+ years building software: across startups I co-founded, ad-tech platforms processing real money, and AI products that had to ship in production.
I've hired engineers, fired vendors, rewritten systems that grew past their original assumptions, and answered the investor questions a non-technical founder doesn't want to face alone.
What you get is senior judgment on a retainer. Not a course, not a framework, not a deck. The point is for your business to make better technical decisions, faster, until you don't need me anymore.
Schedule an intro call
Tell me a bit about your company and the technical decisions on your plate. I'll reply within 24 hours.
PS. Not sure yet? Book a 30-minute consult ($20) and we'll talk through your specific situation first.