Fractional CTO for founder-led service businesses

What if revenue is growing but nobody owns the technology seat?

Most companies do not need another dashboard. They need a CTO — someone who owns the technology decisions between sales, delivery, and the P&L.

I work as a Fractional CTO: a part-time, fully embedded technology leader. I own the technology direction for one agreed initiative and coordinate the people who put it into practice.

You get stack direction, build-versus-buy, vendors, security and data boundaries, and the AI/ops changes that turn those decisions into margin, capacity, cost, or cash improvements.

One engagement seat at a time. One seat open for October 2026. One executive operating session each week, with asynchronous support between sessions. $9,500 per month with a three-month initial commitment.

The problem I take

AI work rarely stalls because a company cannot imagine a use case. It stalls because nobody connects the operating change to the economics of the business — and nobody owns the technology choices that make the change real. That is AI-native tech ownership under a CTO seat — not a separate CAIO title.

Sales rise. Activity rises. Software spend rises. Leadership still cannot explain why profit did not follow.

That is the job.

“It's fun to take a step back and rip the Band-Aids off the systems and put stuff in that we know will be here for a long time. It's fun to just see it keep growing each week now with you.”
— Zach Dulla, CEO, Indoor Drone Tours

What Fractional CTO means here

Fractional means part-time and fully embedded — not advice on the side, not a project vendor, not a ticket queue.

I own:

• Technology strategy for one profit-linked initiative at a time
• Build-versus-buy and vendor direction
• Architecture and integration choices your team can run without me
• AI usage with agreed data boundaries
• Security, access, and governance at a practical operating level
• Adoption, measurement, and the monthly executive brief

Your employees and implementation partners still do much of the building. I own the decisions, orchestration, accountability, and outcomes.

This is not an on-call help desk, outsourced engineering team, or fractional CMO.

Need a lighter relationship? See Technical Advisor.

How I work

We start upstream. Before we choose a model, vendor, or build plan, I want to know what decision is slow, where the handoff breaks, and how we will know the work helped.

Then we choose one operating loop that affects profit — job margin, utilization, rework, time-to-bill, vendor cost, pricing visibility. We give it an owner, establish a baseline, and choose a result we can move within 90 days.

The weekly executive session is where we make decisions. Between sessions I use AI to review operating information, research options, pressure-test assumptions, prepare decision briefs, and build small diagnostics or prototypes when they help us decide faster. I review the work and remain responsible for the recommendation. We agree on data boundaries before client information enters any AI system.

What you get

• One 90-minute executive operating session each week
• Asynchronous decision support throughout the business week
• AI-assisted research, analysis, decision briefs, and focused prototypes between sessions
• A 90-day technology and AI outcome plan
• A profit baseline for one operating loop
• Executive ownership of one profit-linked initiative at a time
• Build-versus-buy decisions and vendor direction
• Coordination across your team and implementation partners
• Adoption, governance, and outcome measurement
• A monthly executive brief with progress, decisions, risks, and next actions

Asynchronous access is for the active initiative, not unlimited technical support or same-hour response.

This is probably a fit if

• Your company is founder-led or the work has direct CEO or COO sponsorship
• You run an operations-heavy service business with recurring workflows and costly handoffs
• You have AI experiments, disconnected tools, or a technology initiative that has stalled
• Revenue, activity, or technology spending has grown faster than profit
• One result matters enough to improve during the next 90 days
• An internal operator or technical owner can help implement the decisions
• You are willing to change the workflow instead of attaching AI to a broken process

Useful signals (not rigid gates): ~30–250 employees or roughly $10M–$75M revenue.

Industries where I do my best work

Lead:

• Creative, media, and entertainment
• Multi-location service businesses
• Hospitality and restaurants
• Agencies (ops only — see note)

Also work with:

• Founder-led software / ecommerce when ops and margin are the problem
• Aviation, drones, and remote systems
• Manufacturing, energy, and logistics (select engagements)

A note for creative and marketing agencies

I improve how an agency estimates, staffs, delivers, reviews, and bills its work. I do not own brand strategy, campaigns, demand generation, paid media, marketing automation, or fractional CMO outcomes.

We should not work together if

• You want a chatbot, demo, workshop, or list of AI ideas
• You need a part-time help desk, outsourced engineering team, or on-call ticket queue
• Nobody on the executive team will sponsor the work
• There is no internal person who can help implement decisions
• You want to transform the entire company at once
• You are unwilling to measure the current condition and the resulting improvement
• Your main objective is cutting headcount rather than improving the work
• You want advice but do not want the current process challenged
• You need bookkeeping, tax advice, or a cash-allocation coach
• You need a fractional CMO or demand-generation owner

Why I work this way

I believe there is almost always a better way to work. Finding it means challenging the assumptions that made the current system feel inevitable.

I take responsibility for moving one profit-linked technology outcome forward, and I leave your team better able to see and improve the economics of its own work without me.

Investment and next step

$9,500 per month with a three-month initial commitment. Weekly executive session plus asynchronous operating support. The fee reserves ownership and momentum around the outcome, not a block of billable hours.

The application asks about the operating problem, why it matters now, who will sponsor and implement the work, and what a useful 90-day result would look like. If the fit is real, I will invite you to a 20-minute call.

“Fractional” here follows the industry definition of a part-time, fully embedded leader — Fractional Defined.