Fractional CTO: The technical co-founder you never had.
After working with many midsize and small and indie-hacker style companies, I'm launching a Fractional CTO service with one express goal -- helping you getting your tech org and stack under control.
What does that even mean? Glad you asked. I help you:
- Make technical decisions with confidence. I know (and explain) so you don't waste hours looking through content marketing.
- Better manage your technical team
- Audit your security/risk and improve processes
- Make your business run smoother (automation, focus on code quality, simplification)
- Get technical questions answered -- there is no such thing as a dumb question (especially when you're paying me to answer it). Email whenever you want, ask whatever you can think of.
I'll work with you -- if you only need the odd flurry of advice, there's a tier for that. If you need someone to manage your team and make sure deadlines get met, there's a tier for that. If you need hands-on development help from me there's a (very expensive) tier for that -- but my job is to enable your more junior engineers.
Read more about what we can do together
Here's an example of what I can do -- you know how Ghost only uses Mailgun? My instance doesn't, it's probably the only one in the world that is capable of sending out mail via SMTP (or any other email provider).
That said, it's my job to tell you the obvious, sensible get-to-market take: just buy Mailgun.
Congrats on your initiative. I saw this type of idea on other spaces which is similar to Developer subscription as SaaS.
Here is my take on CTO position:
How I see the CTO job
CTO ----> Team/Tech Leads -----> Devs
----> Marketing / Design
----> Operations
Hey thanks for noting your reservations -- this is not a developer subscription as a service -- it's more a consultancy and management aaS. The assumption is that there are developers to do the work, but if the team isn't functioning well (and there's no other CTO present), I can help with that.
It's more common these days for founders to build with small teams of developers. Sometimes the founder hasn't found the perfect CTO yet or someone willing to commit to the vision.
Another thing is I think we might be thinking of different sized companies here -- companies big enough to have multiple teams (development, marketing, design, operations), should have a full-time CTO! I don't think fractional CTOs would make sense at that scale.
What you offer is called "Technical Advisor", as you can't do "Better manage your technical team" and "Make your business run smoother (automation, focus on code quality, simplification)" on fractional basis, unless the fractions are 10 of 10 hours a day.
The rest of the services will also be questionable if you offering them more than 2-4 times a month, assuming you have 4-6 customers and it is only you providing the service.
Also, "Get technical questions answered -- there is no such thing as a dumb question (especially when you're paying me to answer it)." very useful service but over email it is the most useless thing imaginable, every technical question you can answer in a form that can be understood from a non technical person can be answered by a simple google search, everything else will require at least a discussion over a video call.
Hey Nikolay,
Thanks for responding -- I disagree with just about everything you said, but the difference in opinion is what makes a market. A couple of succinct rebuttals:
As far as what a technical advisor does -- they strictly do not manage day to day work, this is why I don't call it a technical advisor.
The idea is more hands-on than a technical advisor, but less hands on than a full time CTO. This is where the "fractional" comes in. Can you get 80% of the benefits of experienced technical guidance for 20% of the cost/time (AKA the pareto principle)? I think so. That's what I offer.
I understand what you offer, my comment was a warning to people that will actually expect a CTO level of service, they will simply not get it.
it is very clear you do not have actual understanding of software development and management of developers.
"Much like development, effective management is not measured by" the results, and it is true that a good dev or manager can create great value in a hour that is valid only if the person is very experienced and have good understanding of the task they want to achieve. This is why you actually offer an advice only service (assuming you have the experience), to offer a CTO service you need to put the time in to understand what the company needs so you can spend a hour giving best advice and suggesting best possible path..
"Making a business run smoother is also not about time spent in the seat" that I'm assuming is a joke.
"The service is not exclusively email-only", the specific part you mentioned looks like it is a email only (may be just the way you put the " Email whenever you want"), but the google search is a point I'm making of how useless the e-mail is for answering tech questions, google is better for it and the people that google can't help need to talk to a person that can understand and explain in approachable language the specific technology or problem, so pointless to offer such service over email.
But good job on the response, it is a common marketing trick to distract attention from criticisms of your product and you did a good job of it, I hope you have at least some technical knowledge too and you will at lest not get more non-technical people in trouble with their projects.
Why would people expect a full CTO level of service -- it's fractional. It's right there in the name.
So to explain again, the reason I don't offer an advice only service, is because technical advice, especially at a high level is not valuable without implementation by someone who is technical. This service is aimed towards non-technical founders, they generally need to receive advice and make sure the advice is implemented properly.
I'm not there to figure out what the business needs -- founders know their own business -- I'm there to support and help implement the plan of the founder, and direct the resources they have.
They understand their business, and what they need out of their tech. My job is to help oversee and make that happen, and be accountable for technical outcomes so they can worry less.
I think we disagree fundamentally here -- I think the question is simple. Do you think that a CTO and day-to-day technical manager must spend 8-10 hours (micro)managing a team?
Spending one hour ironing out the build process, or adding automated remediation or a back-office service tool does not take the whole day, but can open up a lot of productivity for a team.
Again the whole point is not that I write this code -- it's doing what a good CTO would do -- it's recognizing the issue, delegating to the right employee to do the work, and prioritizing it against the other tasks and making sure the people working on it aren't blocked.
It's really weird, that you've seized up on this part of the offering. Did you miss the "Day to day management" header? I literally say in there that I review code, and make sure devs aren't blocked. It's the first section after the fold.
Google is not better for answering technical questions for important things. And even if it was better, I don't think you understand how leverage works in business. You hire people so that you don't have to Google search, and possibly end up with the wrong answer for something that matters.
It's weird, because you understand that technical advisors exist, but insist that google is better.
And I guess we're rounding off with a weird insinuation/attack. I'm not sure what made you react so viscerally, but this is the last time I'll interact with you. It's absolutely unproductive.
Awesome. Sent email.