Architecture, hiring, investor support, and technical due diligence for post-seed SaaS founders making big calls alone. $5,499/mo Advisory, $9,499/mo full.
- Audit
- Architect
- Scale
monthly retainer
Who this is for
You are a non-technical SaaS founder, seed to Series A, making architecture and hiring decisions without a senior engineer in the room. Investors are asking about the team. Your first developer is either junior, unmanaged, or both. A full-time CTO is 6+ months and $250k away. I step in as fractional CTO for SaaS companies like yours — available inside a week, no 6-month hiring cycle.
The pain today
- Stack, architecture, and build-vs-buy decisions land entirely on you
- Investors probe the engineering team and the honest answer is thin
- Junior or solo engineer making decisions above their level
- Enterprise prospects stalling because there is no technical point of contact
- SOC 2 or security questionnaires killing deals you should be closing
The outcome you get
- Fractional CTO active within a week at $5,499 to $9,499/mo
- Architecture review and 90-day roadmap in the first 30 days
- Investor-facing technical credibility in pitch and due diligence meetings
- Hiring plan for your first 3 to 5 engineers, with interview loops I run
- SOC 2 compliance path scoped and prioritized without over-engineering
- Clear handoff plan to a full-time CTO when the team and runway support it
Why post-seed SaaS founders hire a fractional CTO
The pattern shows up constantly. Founders raise seed without a technical co-founder, ship an MVP using contractors, then hit the stage where every decision — multi-tenant architecture, third-party vendor choices, first engineering hire — carries real risk. The gap between "I need senior technical leadership" and "I can afford a full-time CTO" is exactly where a fractional CTO for SaaS lives.
A full-time CTO at a Series A company costs $250k+ loaded and takes 3 to 6 months to hire. I can start in a week. At $5,499/mo for the Advisory tier, you get the same strategic coverage — architecture decisions, hiring judgment, investor conversations — for around 2% of that annual cost. The math works whether you are 6 months from a Series A or 12 months from it.
Fractional CTO active within a week at $5,499 to $9,499/mo
What the first 90 days actually look like
Days 1 to 14 are discovery. I read the codebase, interview the engineers and product leads, review the roadmap, and map the current technical state against where the business needs to be in 12 months. The output is a plain-language technical SWOT and a prioritized list of the decisions that matter most.
Days 15 to 60 are execution. The typical wins in this window: one architecture decision that was stalled (multi-tenancy model, vendor consolidation, rebuild-vs-iterate call), one hiring move (new role defined or existing-role change), and at least one performance fix. At Cuez, an API that was taking 3 seconds dropped to 300ms — 10x faster — through targeted optimization rather than a rewrite. Those gains are available earlier than most founders expect.
Days 61 to 90 are planning. A 6 to 12 month roadmap, a hiring plan, and an investor-facing technical story. By day 90 you should know exactly what the engineering organization needs to look like at the next funding round and have a written plan to get there.
3s → 300ms: API response time.
Architecture and multi-tenant decisions for SaaS
SaaS architecture decisions made at the seed stage follow a product for years. The wrong multi-tenancy model, chosen under deadline pressure, can force a full schema migration 18 months later right when you are trying to close enterprise deals. I have seen this exact situation at multiple companies.
In the Advisory engagement I own these decisions with you: database tenancy model (shared schema, schema-per-tenant, database-per-tenant), vendor and infrastructure selection, API design for third-party integrations, and the build-vs-buy calls that eat engineering time when they go wrong. I bring prior SaaS work — Cuez, a broadcast SaaS where I reduced infrastructure costs by roughly 40% while making the API 10x faster, and GigEasy, where an investor-ready MVP shipped in 3 weeks against a typical 10-week benchmark. These are the reference points I apply to your stack.
Hiring: interview loops, levelling, compensation
Most SaaS founders at the seed stage have never hired a software engineer before. The job description is generic, the interview loop tests the wrong things, and compensation bands are set by guesswork. I have hired and managed engineering teams across multiple companies, including a 15-person team across 25+ products at W2O.
In practice this means: I write the role definition, design the technical interview loop, conduct the technical interviews myself where useful, calibrate seniority assessment, and provide compensation guidance against current market rates. A bad senior engineer hire at $180k/year is a $500k+ mistake once you account for severance, lost time, and team damage. Getting the first 3 to 5 hires right is one of the highest-value things I do in an engagement.
Technical due diligence and SOC 2 for SaaS
Two moments in a SaaS company's life create sudden demand for a technical leader: fundraising and enterprise sales. Both involve people asking hard questions about your architecture, security posture, and team.
For fundraising, I attend investor meetings as the technical point of contact, prepare architecture diagrams and technical narratives, and run technical due diligence prep sessions so there are no surprises. For GigEasy, investor readiness was built into the MVP from day one — it shipped in 3 weeks and went straight to demo for Barclays and Bain Capital-backed founders.
For enterprise sales, security questionnaires and SOC 2 requests are the most common deal-blocker I see at the $50k to $200k ACV range. I scope the compliance path, prioritize the controls that matter for your specific enterprise buyer profile, and get you to audit-ready without spending 6 months on it. I do not do the audit myself — I direct the process and manage the vendor relationship.
Pricing: $5,499/mo Advisory and $9,499/mo Fractional
CTO Advisory at $5,499/mo covers 1 to 2 days per week: a weekly strategy call with founders, one day of focused work on architecture, hiring, or roadmap, and ongoing async communication. Built for founders who have an existing engineering lead but need a senior voice on the big decisions.
Fractional CTO at $9,499/mo covers 3 days per week with deep project involvement: code review, architecture, hiring interviews, roadmap ownership, and regular involvement with the engineering team directly. Built for founders without a senior engineer, where I am playing the CTO role fully.
Both tiers include: attendance at investor and board meetings where technical topics come up, technical hiring interviews, 14-day money-back guarantee, cancel-anytime terms, and NDA standard. Engagements typically run 3 to 12 months and transition to a full-time CTO hire or step down to advisor once the team has the coverage it needs.
When to skip fractional and hire full-time instead
Fractional CTO is a bridge, not a permanent state. The right time to hire full-time is when the engineering team reaches 8 to 10 people and needs dedicated leadership in the building every day, or when your next funding round specifically requires a CTO on the org chart. Some investors will ask for this explicitly at Series B.
I help with the full-time CTO hire as part of the engagement: job description, interview loop design, candidate assessment, onboarding plan. The overlap period is 4 to 8 weeks. After handoff I am available as an advisor at a reduced rate if the new CTO wants a sounding board during their first 90 days. Most do not need it — but the option is there.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Rescued a slow API that was blocking user growth
Cuez is a live broadcast production tool used by TV teams on air across Europe. I inherited a backend API averaging 3 seconds per response and cut it to 300ms, while reducing infrastructure costs by 40% and leaving the system stable under real production load.
Read the case studyKeep reading
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
At the Advisory tier ($5,499/mo) the week typically includes a 1-hour strategy call with founders, one full day of focused work — code review, architecture decision, hiring interview, or roadmap update — and ongoing async in Slack or email. At the Fractional tier ($9,499/mo) it is 3 days per week with deeper involvement in the engineering team's daily work. Both tiers include attendance at investor and board meetings where technical topics are on the agenda.
A technical advisor gives opinions when asked. A fractional CTO owns decisions and is accountable for outcomes. I set the architecture direction, run the hiring process, attend the investor meetings, and produce written deliverables — roadmaps, ADRs, hiring plans. The main difference is accountability: at the end of a 90-day engagement there are specific things that got done, not just advice that may or may not have been followed.
Yes, this is one of the most direct-value things I do. I prepare architecture documentation, write the technical narrative for the data room, attend investor technical calls, and run internal due diligence prep so there are no surprises. At GigEasy I built investor readiness into the MVP from day one — the product shipped in 3 weeks and went straight to demo for Barclays and Bain Capital-backed investors. The preparation mindset is the same regardless of stage.
Yes. Security questionnaires and SOC 2 requests are the most common enterprise deal-blocker I encounter at the $50k to $200k ACV range. I scope the compliance path, prioritize the controls relevant to your buyer profile, manage the audit vendor, and make sure the technical responses to security questionnaires are accurate and complete. Getting to audit-ready typically takes 2 to 4 months with focused effort, not 6 to 12 months.
I work on a cash retainer, not equity. Equity arrangements typically create conflicts — my incentives should align with getting you to the next stage cleanly, not with holding on longer than the engagement warrants. For founders where near-term cash is constrained, I am open to a conversation about a reduced cash rate with a small equity component, but equity-only is not a model I use. Clean cash arrangements are easier to exit and keep the relationship professional.
Every month has documented deliverables: decisions made, hires moved forward, code reviewed, roadmap updated. At 30 days there is a written check-in against the day-1 priority list. The signal I tell founders to watch for is simple: are you making technical decisions faster and with more confidence than before? If the answer is no after 30 days, the 14-day money-back guarantee already covered month one, and cancel-anytime terms make exit straightforward.
Every engagement is designed for handoff from day one. Architecture decisions are documented as ADRs. The roadmap lives in shared tools. The hiring pipeline state is visible and transferable. When you hire full-time, I overlap for 4 to 8 weeks for knowledge transfer, then step out or move to an advisory role at a reduced rate. The new CTO inherits a documented technical organization, not a set of undocumented tribal knowledge.
Multi-tenant architecture decisions, API performance under load (Cuez: 3s to 300ms, 10x faster), MVP pacing for investor demos (GigEasy: 3 weeks to demo-ready), infrastructure cost reduction alongside product growth, and hiring the first 3 to 5 engineers. My stack is PHP/Laravel, Node.js, TypeScript, React, Vue.js, AWS, and PostgreSQL — the most common SaaS backend combination at the seed and Series A stage.