CTO as a Service
CTO as a service: senior technical leadership on a subscription
You're building a company. Investors ask who owns the technology. An agency is quoting you numbers that feel invented. Your MVP, maybe AI-generated, maybe outsourced, works right up until it doesn't. CTO as a service gives you an experienced technical executive on demand, without the salary, the equity, or the six-month executive search.
The model is a monthly subscription for CTO-level judgment plus real engineering capability. I review the architecture, own the technical roadmap, sit in the investor and vendor meetings, and personally build the systems that matter when speed counts. Advisory-only firms stop at the meetings.
Every technical decision you make before product-market fit either compounds or costs you, which is why renting the judgment now makes sense. Hire the full-time CTO when the revenue justifies it.
What's inside the subscription
Technical due diligence & investor readiness
Architecture documentation, security posture, and a straight answer to "can this scale?" before your investors ask it.
MVP rescue & hardening
AI-built or agency-built MVPs cleaned up for production: auth, payments, cost controls, and maintainable code.
Roadmap & sprint direction
A prioritized technical roadmap your developers can execute, reviewed and re-planned every month.
Hiring & vendor bench
Interview your engineering candidates, vet your agencies, negotiate your contracts.
Direct build hours
A portion of every engagement is hands-on-keyboard: integrations, automations, and fixes shipped by me.
Proof, not promises
I've shipped and scaled production systems for manufacturers, media companies, and e-commerce brands, including a platform rebuild serving 398,000+ users and a programmatic SEO build that hit 4 million search impressions in a single month, with a #1 ranking for a 240,000-volume term.
Frequently asked questions
How much does CTO as a service cost? +
Subscriptions typically run $3,000 to $10,000/month for advisory-weighted engagements and more for embedded work, compared to $25,000+/month all-in for a full-time CTO. Every engagement starts with a fixed-price audit, so the first invoice pays for itself in findings.
Is CTO as a service right for a pre-revenue startup? +
Yes, and it's often the only responsible option. You get executive-level decisions during the phase where mistakes are most expensive, without burning runway on a $400K hire.
What happens when we outgrow it? +
I help you hire your full-time CTO. I write the job spec, interview the candidates, and hand over a documented, healthy stack. When that day comes, we both did our jobs.
Related services
Hire the judgment and the hands in one place.
Start with the Technology Reality Audit: two weeks, one fixed fee, fully credited if you take a seat. You keep the 12-month roadmap either way.