How I engage.
I offer packages and solutions. Packages are monthly recurring services designed to fit into a budget and match business need. 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.
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For the Back-end
Backend systems provide the business logic, identity management and control processes. |
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On Front-end
When a UI is needed solve a problem, I start with no-code and phase in the minimum front end framework. |
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Persistence
When storage is needed, I default to SQLLite, then scale into schema vs No-SQL depending upon the need. |
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For Code Delivery
The landscape for deployment is rich and mature. |
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On the Cloud
Hosting on EC and burning budget and credits is the last step. Start with hosting options that avoid devOps requirements. |
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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. |
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Rapid Tool Recipes
The right technology stack items can drive innovation and scalable patterns. |
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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 | ||
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| 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
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."
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."
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.