A technical co-founder who has run the company, not just the codebase.

The work overlaps; the deal is where they differ. A fractional CTO costs a fee and a technical co-founder costs equity. The businesses that ask me mostly need the technology owned now, for a while, which a fee buys far more cheaply. The long version, with what equity costs and how vesting protects you, is in Technical co-founder or fractional CTO.

Part-time CTO, virtual CTO, outsourced CTO and CTO as a service are other names for what I call fractional: senior ownership of your technology for a day or two a week, on a monthly fee.

An interim CTO is a full-time seat for a fixed period, to cover a departure or carry a company through a sale. I don’t take those. I run a business of my own, so a day or two a week is what I can give properly. Which you need is in Fractional CTO or interim CTO.

A fee, in every engagement so far. Where equity has come into it the client brought it up, and I’ve had investors on a cap table and taken them off again, so I know what that costs from both ends.

Partnership does happen. It isn’t what’s being sold, and it has no price: equity only when you raise it, and only after a fee.

Both, and the ratio moves about depending on what the engagement needs. The systems in the case studies are mine, designed and built by me, and I still write code in my own company as well as in clients’.

Then the work is direction: architecture, standards, what gets built in what order, and the decisions that are expensive to reverse. It’s how my own business runs.

A diagnostic is two weeks of concentrated attention. A retainer is a day or two a week, plus being reachable in between for a decision, with a considered reply aimed for within one working day. A support retainer is two days a month for a live system that needs looking after. I take on a few clients at a time.

I aim to start a diagnostic within two weeks, and a retainer on a similar footing, depending on what’s already running. You’ll get the real date on the first call.

£2,000 a month for a support retainer of two days a month, £4,000 a month for a day a week, and £7,500 a month for two, so the more days you book the less each one costs you.

Need less than two days a month? I work at my day rate of £1,000 as and when, booked in half days and invoiced for what’s used. Nothing is reserved, so there’s no reply promise.

What each one comes to per day, why the weekly ones cost less a day, and what the slot buys you between the scheduled days, are all in the pricing article. On the support retainer the aim is a considered reply within two working days.

The diagnostic price is the exception here, set by the outcome. All prices exclude VAT.

No minimum term. It runs month to month with 30 days’ notice either way. More than two days a week is possible and unpriced, because three days is most of one person’s week.

You hold a system that runs without me, in production, with the decisions written down as they were made and the handover built as we went. That holds whether you leave after one piece of work or stay for years.

A system in production keeps generating decisions, though: what to build next, what the constraint is now, whether the next spend is right, and a retainer is for those. It runs month to month on 30 days’ notice, so it can’t become a dependency.

The team as well. I’ve built my own business to a core team of more than ten, and in earlier companies helped build teams of fifteen to twenty, across operations and delivery as well as engineering, which covers hiring, structure, standards and the unglamorous part where a team of three becomes ten and stops running on conversation alone.

I’m not a recruitment function. Past twenty people you want a permanent leader in the building, and by then my job is to help you pick them.

This is one person. If you need guaranteed cover, hire a team. A bigger client doesn’t displace you, because I take few engagements. Where a problem needs a skill I don’t have, or a gap needs covering, I can call on a small group of senior people I’ve delivered alongside for years, and the contract stays with me.

What I can control is how exposed you are when I’m not there. Everything runs on your infrastructure under your accounts, decisions are written down as they’re made, and another competent engineer could pick the work up from the repository alone.

Holiday goes into the availability we agree at the start. If I’m ill for long enough to disrupt you, you’ll hear it from me straight away and we’ll agree what happens. I carry professional indemnity insurance, certificate on request, so if procurement needs it named, ask early.

Retainers run month to month, and either of us can end one with 30 days’ notice.

It can be. Better raised now. I’m co-founder and CEO of an education technology business, and if you operate in that market we should talk about it before anything else.

In practice that means a mutual NDA as standard, any sector overlap named before we start, and declining work where I couldn’t act wholly in your interest. If you want a sector restriction written into the engagement, ask for it.

The case studies show the problem, what was built and what changed for the business, with the figures dated, so read one and judge it for yourself. I don’t name clients, so there’s no logo wall.