So you want a CTO… but you don’t want/need a full-time one, and don’t want to give away equity? Smart move :)
This is where I operate.
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; problem solving; 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 I do
If you don’t have a solid idea yet, check out: I have an idea.
Pre-seed/seed
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:
- 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
Series A/A+
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 inadvertedly 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
- Audit your information security and put you on the path to ISO27001 standards
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 skillsets 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!