Embedded CTO leadership with founder accountability
Plug in an executive-level partner who has already run engineering, AI, and diligence tracks inside venture-backed startups. We sit inside your Slack, co-own roadmap, hiring, and architecture, and show up on every investor call until the deal is done—no handoffs, no account managers.
$35M+
ARR guided through diligence
5 days
Average onboarding time
99.99%
Uptime maintained across clients
28
Engineering leaders hired
Early teams need a technology owner who can partner on roadmap sequencing, unblock engineers, and translate architectural bets to investors. Hiring that leader full time can take six months and burn precious runway.
Our fractional CTO engagements give founders immediate access to a senior leader who has already run engineering and AI teams. We join your standups, lead architecture reviews, update investor docs, and mentor your in-house talent so you can scale with confidence—without ever feeling like an agency handoff.
When should a startup hire a fractional CTO? Typically when you are a pre-Seed to pre-Series A team that needs startup technical leadership, but cannot yet justify or close a full-time pre-Series A CTO.
Day to day we behave like an embedded co-founder: running roadmap reviews, writing and reviewing code, unblocking engineers, pairing with product, and owning the technical narrative in investor rooms.
Common problems we step into include scattered architecture, unclear ownership, inconsistent delivery, and investors asking diligence questions nobody has documented answers for.
This is not an agency relationship — you get a named fractional CTO for startups who is inside your Slack, your docs, and your board meetings instead of a rotating bench of consultants.
Learn more: Fractional CTO vs full-time CTO (/insights/fractional-cto-vs-full-time-cto) and What does a fractional CTO cost? (/insights/cost-of-fractional-cto).
Quarterly technical strategy that ladders into company OKRs
System architecture and data flow diagrams updated in Notion/FigJam
Security, reliability, and compliance readiness checklist
Hiring scorecards plus interview loops for critical roles
Weekly executive updates with risks, velocity, and asks
Investor diligence packet (infrastructure, metrics, risks, mitigation)
Code review cadence plus guardrails for AI-generated code
Budget models comparing build vs. buy vs. AI automation options
Hands-on leaders who still ship code, not just PowerPoints
Deep AI/LLM expertise to guide model selection, fine-tuning, and evaluation
Experience stewarding teams through acquisitions at Fullscript and Gambling.com
Direct access to Aravind plus senior tech leads embedded daily
US timezone overlap and direct founder access within shared channels
Bench of vetted senior ICs who can join alongside the CTO
Day 0-7
We capture the current state across product, infra, data, and people. Then we align on north-star metrics and constraints with founders and investors.
Day 8-30
We co-own ceremonies, unblock teams, and implement the roadmap. Every sprint ties proofs-of-value to business milestones.
Day 31+
We help you recruit or promote the long-term leader, then transition knowledge, documentation, and rituals without downtime.
Days 0-30
Stabilize roadmap, visibility, and engineering rituals.
Days 31-60
Accelerate throughput while hiring or up-leveling leads.
Days 61-90
Hand off durable leadership systems and scale the bench.
Proof it works
We stepped in as fractional CTO during the early stages to stabilize infra, add observability, and lead hiring as Rupa Health sprinted from $100K to $5M ARR.
300%+
Traffic absorbed
$100K → $5M
ARR scale
<0.5s TTFB
Core web vitals
4 → 15 engineers
Team growth
“Aravind is in the top 1% of engineers and technical leaders I've hired. He kept us shipping through crazy growth.”
Tara Viswanathan
Co-founder & CEO, Rupa Health
How many hours per week do you engage?
Most fractional CTO engagements run 15–25 hours per week. We design the cadence around board meetings, launches, and hiring seasons. Need more execution coverage? We pair in senior ICs from the HyperNest bench.
Can you work with our existing engineering leads?
Yes. We often coach emerging engineering managers or tech leads, giving them decision frameworks, review templates, and hiring support while we retain executive accountability.
Do you help with fundraising and diligence?
We prepare technical sections for data rooms, join investor calls, and translate product velocity into business metrics. Recent rounds we supported ranged from $2M seed extensions to $25M Series B raises.
What time zones do you cover?
We maintain heavy overlap with US mornings and India afternoons, enabling real-time collaboration with both sides of distributed teams.
We’ll audit your architecture, map out an engagement, and plug in team members within days.
Book a fractional CTO consult