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I am a fractional CTO who helps CEOs solve problems quickly and practically.

Think of me as your On-Demand technical co-founder. As a serial founder, I know the challenges of coupling vision and technology. Every tech decision needs to drive ROI.


  Schedule a Call   TL;DR

Stephan Smith

devCTO | CISO | Founder

Boston based. I am taking a series of long deep breaths since leaving my last startup, and focusing on new projects. My last company was part of the Techstars Boston cohort in 2018. We have benefited from Techstars vision of 'Give First'.

ML/AI No-Code Full-Stack Solutions API Prototypes Vue/React/Swelt

 

Stephan Smith, Fractional fCTO

Why use a fractional CTO?

You seek out a fractional CTO (aka fCTO) when you can not find or afford a full-time, salaried and equity motivated technical co-founder. When you need point solutions, an outside perspective, and options.


How I engage.

I offer packages and solutions. Packages are monthly recurring services designed to fit into a budget. Solutions are special products or services that fit specific needs.


What tools do I use?

Every application is unique, and fitting the tech stack to the project and the business need takes experience.

On the Back-end

Backend systems provide the business logic, identity management and control processes.

  • Fastify/ExpressJS
  • NestJS
  • Flask + Python
  • GoLang+Gin
On Front-end

When a UI is needed solve a problem, I start with no-code and phase in the minimum front-end frameworks.

  • React
  • Vue.js (2/3)
  • AngularJS
  • Retool for No-code Admin UIs
Persistence

When storage is needed, I default to SQLLite, then scale into schema vs No-SQL depending upon the need.

  • MongoDB
  • Firebase RTD
  • Firestore/Suprabase
  • Postgres
For Code Delivery

The landscape for deployment is rich and mature.

  • Codeship.io
  • Github Actions
  • Travis CI
On the Cloud

Hosting on EC and burning budget and credits is the last step. Start with hosting options that avoid devOps requirements.

  • Fly.io
  • Heroku
  • Firebase Hosting
  • AWS Cloudfront
  • Vercel
  • Render.com (UIs)
  • Github Pages
For Operations

Operations is the foundation of any scalable solution. Empowering a team with access and tooling that met them where they are is key to proving a technology stack.

  • Slack API Integrations
  • FreshDesk API
  • New Relic
  • Loggly
  • Keen.io
Rapid Tool Recipes

The right technology stack items can drive innovation and scalable patterns.


Advisory Package

"When the CEO needs an options and patterns to understand the challenges they are facing around revenue and ROI of tech decisions."


  • Time frame: 2-3 months
  • Engagement: Weekly or Bi-weekly calls
  • Summary: Weekly calls, background Research, not visible to team, bottom up review of existing code, tools, patterns and stack components. Good for the CEO who needs background before dealing with board, investors or internal leadership.
Perspective Revenue Blockers

Technology-Stack Review

"When the CEO needs an outside perspective on what is ready being built and is looking for deeper insights into the impact of tech decisions on revenue.", "What have we built that we can retire?", " "What can we turn from features into core services?"


  • Time frame: 2-3 weeks
  • Engagement: 5-10 calls or zoom sessions.
  • Summary: Bottom up review of existing code, tools, patterns and stack components.
CI/CD Code Review Code ROI

Agile/Dev Process Tuning

"When a team needs a CTO level assessment and tuning of their agile, CI/CD processes and engineering rigor. When tech teams increase headcount, but the teams throughput remains the same.", "How do we tune our processes for more velocity?"


  • Time frame: ~4 weeks
  • Engagement: 5-10 calls or zoom sessions.
  • Summary: Set of agile process changes, scored by ROI, risk, and timeline impacts.
Code Review Code ROI Github Actions Docker Builds Ticket Rigor

SOC2 Audit Preparation

"When a Leadership teams needs to speed up their SOC work to enable their enterprise sales, train their team and demonstrate leadership around data security concerns."


  • Time frame: 2-3 months
  • Engagement: 5-10 calls or zoom sessions.
  • Summary: Set of the processes & changes, to get teams ready for SOC and Cybersecurity Review. Setup processes that match the state of a given startup, for staffing, tech and funding.
Password Policy Audit Prep 2FA/Passcode Setup Stack Tuning SOC2/HIPAA

MVP & POC Solution

"When a startup/company/team needs to quick and practical proof-of-concept to enable an investment pitch, technology decision or simply prove an idea will work."

No-Code Low-Code Patterns NLP-to-Schema Operations Integrations Funding MVPs

Interim CTO Engagement

"When you need an interim CTO to take a day-to-day role; provide strategy, run a dev team and processes, and provide execution to reach revenue goals."

Price dependent upon time and level of commitment. Often is a combination of all the packages and hands-on operations.

Short Term Rapid Integration Team Evals Roadmaps

Pay-As-You-Go

When you need access the perspective of an on-demand technical founder, you can book time. A package can seem like too much, so start with an hour.

Here are some common topics:

  • Tech Stack Review.
  • CISO Questions.
  • Team Dynamics Challenges.
  • Low-code Patterns?
  • How do I message and sell to CTOs?
  • How does a coder learn to sell?
A good starting point is review what I have written!

My Perspective

Startups are all unique, but the pathways, pitfalls and blockers are not. Constant reinvention is a requirement to turn a vision into a reality. To understand how I approach the startup condition, here are some of the patterns and anti-patterns I have encountered and how I address them.

  Observed   Solution
Context When a founding team is heads down and building, context is hard to get, and learnings can get lost in the rush to market. "Context is KING". A fractional CTO can help bridge the gap when tech challenges are impacting revenue and growth. It can build in source of new patterns and solutions.
Perspective Founding teams build on what they know when they get started. When driving for revenue, its hard to justify a huge set of skill changes or framework refactor. Changing tech stack and processes requires a different technique, patterns and approaches. Assuming a complete refactor will solve problems is a common anti-pattern.
Mental "What got you here, will not get you there" This is a common warning to founders. Your assumptions about your customers and their needs can be a huge blocker to getting your company to revenue positive. A framework for scoring solutions can help break the founder assumption problem and breaking the 'this worked so far' approach.

And tech debt is not bad, its just misunderstood!
Myths Startup founders and tech leaders often have myths and tropes that drive tech decisions. The less tech used the better! No-code patterns is cheap, fast and too valuable to pass up or ignore. Startups raise money to hire tech. Tech costs often do not correlate to revenue growth. Tech decisions can enable teams break assumptions about their customers needs.
Experimentation Founders know that experiments are important, but find that making them happen can challenge any agile team. Promoting an experiment and measure mindset can help break the assumptions deadlock that leads startups to miss productivity gains.
Tuning Teams grow, but founders can find productivity remaining stagnant. How can things no speed up with more people working on a problem? Teams and processes need tuning. They need to assessed against metrics that align with milestones. Frameworks can help score solutions. Frameworks can promote tech decision making patterns that align with revenue growth.
Code Code is the default for B2B startups. We raise VC funds to hire coders. We give equity to find tech resources. CEOs think they need dedicated tech resources to build a business. Tech is a Capital Expenditure! Treat it that way. A focus on tech first solutions can impede learnings, and burn valuable funding. No Code, Glue Code and Duct-tape solutions are the way to break the tech bind.
Time Limited time, limited runway and limited staff can train a founding team to make all decisions quickly, using instinct, in the place of intentionality. Giving a team a source of context can allow a team to process decisions at different speeds, and break the "get it done yesterday" type of solutions that can become the norm in many startup teams.

Some References

Yvan Castilloux
Yvan Castilloux
CEO of Augusta Care

“Stephan has been helping us in figuring out how we should get to SOC2 compliance within a reasonable budget. He’s looked at our tech stack and gave us practical recommendations on how it should evolve over time. I’m looking forward to working with him again."


Michelle Chao
Michelle Chao
COO of Phoenix Tailings

"Stephan worked with our team as we started to scale up and address security requirements. He assisted in our selection of security frameworks that matched our unique funding, IP, and cyber-security needs. His startup experience provided us with options that matched our stage and immediate concerns. We hope to tap into his experience when our security requirements change."


Jesse Marple
Jesse Marple
Solutions Architect at Brytebridge

"We pulled in Stephan to build out our tech stack and API. He executed in record time, provided our front end teams with Just-in-Time API resources as we decided on email providers, payment gateways, hosting and storage options on AWS. He takes a very practical approach to solutions. He gave us both working solutions, as well as best practices for API route testing, JWT token security and a framework that we can hand off to a team to extend. He helped our team go from idea to revenue in 4 weeks. Zero to MVP in record time!"


TL;DR

If you have read this far, then what you should intuit is that I apply a startup lens to my work. I use the "low effort to high-impact" filter to all decisions, assessments and recommendations. This approach provides founders with the tools to balance their limited resources to get revenue positive. I look for tech solutions that provide practical and stage-relevant solutions.

As a tech founder, I know the pain of having to make decisions based on limited information, time and resources.

And when needed I roll up my sleeves and dig in: configure cloud providers, debug CI/CD processes, upgrade libraries, integrate an auth provider and just simply: write code.


References from past and current clients are available, after an initial screening call. Client data and relationships are all covered by NDAs. No leaks.