Do you need more clarity around your tech business? This is what I do.
A little bit about me
I’m an experienced engineer, engineering manager, and chief technology officer with 10+ years shipping/maintaining products in various industries; and building teams both in offices and 100% remote.
With a strong business and product knowledge I’m able to identify and maximise business opportunities through technology, identify and manage technical risk; and ensure business and product scalability.
I love talking to people; defining problems; gathering requirements; solving problems; selling ideas; developing proof-of-concepts; and leading teams towards successful and continuous deliveries.
If something can be automated, it will be.
I know a lot about:
- Software businesses
- Talking to investors
- Solutions engineering for SMBs and big corporates
- IT security
- Operations
- Backend
- Frontend
- Mobile
- Users
- Data
- Software engineers
Here’s what you can get
Just fCTO
I will be your CTO within 2-6 weeks for an engagement of 6-12 months.
Developers as a service
I will be your CTO, and I will also provide you with a team of developers as-a-service to work on your product.
fCTO & Devs as a service & I recruit your next CTO
I will be your CTO, provide you with a team of developers as-a-service, and I will also find your ideal full-time CTO to begin after I’m done.
If you don’t have a solid idea yet, check out: I have an idea.
Pre-product/Early stage
At this stage, change is the name of the game. The product will change and shift extremely quickly. You may build several prototypes and proof-of-concepts.
It’s important to have a good base and processes to work on. Business and engineering need to send and respond to feedback from one-another. Business people need to know how to communicate to engineers, and vice-versa.
I will:
- Help you define your product
- Create the foundations of your engineering and communication processes
- Address quality issues
- Build your team (s)
- Show you how to communicate with your engineers
- Show you how to simplify your product/features (why take 6 weeks building something that can be built in a couple of days?)
- Help with MVPs, POCs, and customer conversations
- Help with requirements gathering (it’s very hard to solve a badly defined problem, I know exactly what to ask from an engineering perspective)
- Help with hiring (I’ve hired dozens of engineers over the years)
- Help with investor conversations (I’ve raised money before)
- Help with technical documentation
Later stages
At this stage, you know what your product does and you’re likely making cash. Congrats! 🚀
The mistakes here range from hiring way more engineers than you need and inadvertently slowing down your development, to creating silos in between business/tech, or even within the tech.
And of course, the silent killer nobody expects to happen to them: security issues. A data leak at this stage could kill customer and investor relations.
Engineers may start to leave, and unless you want a revolving door, something will need to happen.
I will help you:
- Build the right teams for your organisation
- Create an environment people want to work in
- Identify and minimise silo’d information
- Make your processes more effective
- If you’re acquiring: Audit code before an acquisition
- Mediate and manage your dev agency for you
- Help with long term software strategy: Do you need a rewrite? Is some important component of your stack going to be deprecated? + much more to think about
Extra
Although I fit many cases. I’m not always the right person for your business. I’ve partnered up with other fCTOs who have different skills and experiences. If I’m not the right person for you, I’ll let you know and put you in touch with someone who is!