What a fractional CTO actually costs in the UK
Day rates, retainers and what the money buys, with the sources named and my own rate card on the page.
Read itInsights
What I’ve learned building the things on this site.
Decisions and trade-offs, written from engagements and from running a business on software I built.
I let buyers question my business from their own AI. Here's what broke.
Anyone using Claude can ask my business whether I'm worth a call, through a small server I run. The fit check turned away my ideal client before I stopped letting wording decide.
Read itWho owns the app your finance team built with Claude?
Staff can build a working tool in an afternoon now. Eight questions that tell you whether anyone still knows what the business runs on.
Read itHow technical due diligence works, from the first call to the report
What gets looked at, what access it needs, how long it takes and what slows it down. Written for the investor with a deadline and the founder on the other side of it.
Read itFractional CTO or interim CTO: two jobs that share a title
One is a day or two a week for as long as it's useful. The other is a full-time seat with an end date. Which you need depends on whether the chair is empty or the decisions are.
Read itHow to assess a software agency when you cannot read the code
You are paying an agency or an outsourced team and you cannot tell whether the work is good. Eight checks a non-technical founder can run this week, none of which needs the code.
Read itRunning AI locally when the data cannot leave
A refused cloud AI request is a constraint on one stage of the pipeline, not the end of the project. How I run private AI in my own business, and how to work out what yours needs.
Read itWhat belongs in a technical due diligence report
A technical due diligence report is for the person signing. What the first page has to say, the seven questions behind it, how a finding should read, and what to distrust in a report you've been handed.
Read itWhy an AI pilot stalls before production
The pilot worked and nothing shipped. Five reasons that happens, all of them visible before the pilot started, and what to agree on day one so yours is not the next.
Read itWhen a database query beats a language model
Which customers are about to leave is a query, and somebody could write it this week. How to tell a reporting gap from an AI project.
Read itAI consultant or fractional CTO: which one does the problem need?
One is hired for a technology and the other for a business. How to tell which you are short of, and what it costs to hire the wrong one.
Read itTechnical co-founder or fractional CTO, and how to tell which you need
They do almost the same work. What differs is what you pay with, how long it lasts, and who carries the risk if it goes wrong.
Read itWhere AI automation pays, and where it does not
The test I use for whether AI will pay, the shapes of work where the economics change, and why picking the right technique matters more than picking the model.
Read itWhen should a founder hire a CTO?
Later than most founders expect, and earlier than they'd like. Five signals that the technical decisions have outgrown the person currently making them.
Read itNothing under that topic yet.
Work with me
Working on something like this?
If one of these is your problem, that’s a good place to start.