Three Ways I Work With Founders and CEOs

This is the engagement founders and CEOs ask for most often. I operate as the fractional chief technology officer for your business, embedded in the leadership cadence you already have. I attend the meetings a CTO would attend. I own the decisions a CTO would own. I hire, evaluate, and sometimes replace the technical people who need to be hired, evaluated, or replaced. I review every vendor proposal before you sign it. I write and present the technology sections of your board materials.

The engagement is typically a multi-month commitment. The first conversation establishes whether it is the right fit, whether the timing is right, and what the initial scope should be.

Not every situation calls for a fractional executive. Some founders need a written execution plan and the confidence that the plan is defensible. The Ninety-Day Plan is a four-week engagement that produces that document.

Delivered through a five-stage method I call Signal, Score, Sequence, Staff, and Safeguard. The output is a written plan that inventories the initiatives and decisions in front of you, evaluates each against a defensible rubric, prioritizes them into a sequenced roadmap, specifies the staffing and governance required to execute, and installs success criteria and kill-switch triggers before any vendor contract is signed.

Many Ninety-Day Plan engagements become the foundation for a fractional retainer afterward. Some end with the plan itself, which is exactly what the founder needed.

When a specific technology investment requires a board-grade recommendation, the Investment Memo delivers it. A written document, structured around five gates — Thesis, Options, Cost, Risk, and Recommendation — that a founder or CEO can put in front of a board, a lead investor, or a CFO without needing to defend it line by line themselves.

Commissioned standalone when the moment requires it. Delivered as part of a fractional retainer when a specific decision rises to that threshold.