San Francisco founders don't need a full-time CTO. They need the right one, part-time.
For non-technical founders building startups in San Francisco and the Bay Area: hire a former CTO as your fractional tech partner. Strategy, architecture, developer oversight, and hands-on development — without the Bay Area salary premium or the equity hit. Most fractional CTOs stopped coding years ago. I didn't.
$40/hr · Former CTO · Toptal Top 3% · 5 free hours · 13+ years shipping production software
Why Bay Area Founders Work With Me Remotely
San Francisco is where the bar is highest — your investors have seen hundreds of pitches and your enterprise customers run rigorous security reviews. The architecture decisions you make at pre-seed will either hold up or embarrass you in due diligence. I've built products that survived both.
Hiring a full-time CTO in the Bay Area means $250K–$400K in salary plus equity. A fractional CTO gives you the same strategic oversight and hands-on building at $40/hr — with no equity conversation and no 12-month hiring process. You get a senior technical partner next week, not next quarter.
All my engagements are remote-first. I work US business hours, respond same-day, and show up to your standups on your calendar. Bay Area founders I work with say the timezone and async overlap feels exactly like working with someone local.
What a fractional CTO does for a Bay Area startup
Five areas where SF and Bay Area founders — pitching VCs, courting enterprise customers, racing the next round — lose the most ground when they pick the wrong technical partner. A senior fractional CTO compresses the timeline.
Tech Stack Decisions
Bay Area startups default to "the modern stack" because it's what your investors' portcos use. Sometimes that's right. Often it's premature scaffolding for a product that hasn't found PMF yet. I help you pick what fits your actual stage and use case — not what's impressive on a Y Combinator demo day.
Architecture Reviews
Your first enterprise customer in SF is going to send you a 200-question security questionnaire and a SOC 2 audit request. Your Series A lead is going to put you through technical diligence. The architecture decisions you make pre-seed determine whether you pass either review. I find the gaps before they cost you a deal or a round.
Hands-on Development
When your engineer hits a wall on a hard problem and your timeline is 'we promised the customer Friday,' I open the editor and ship the fix. Real production code, real Git commits, real PRs — same week. Not 'I'll connect you with a specialist.'
Developer Oversight
You raised $1M and hired a senior full-stack at $180K. Six months in, you cannot tell if they are excellent or coasting. I review their code, sit in on standups, and give you an honest read — including whether the equity package you are about to grant matches the value being shipped.
Roadmap Planning
Bay Area startups die from feature sprawl more than from lack of features. Investors push you to 'do more' and the founder builds the wrong thing faster. I help you sequence what to build, what to kill, and how to ship a 12-week roadmap that survives contact with the next board meeting.
Bay Area startups don't have time for two hires — get both in one
The standard Bay Area pattern: hire a CTO advisor for $400/hr, hire senior engineers at $200K each, and watch them not talk to each other. The strategist writes a beautiful architecture doc the engineers don't read. The engineers ship something that doesn't match the strategy. You pay for the translation gap with your runway. I do both jobs — same brain, same week, same Slack thread. Strategy at 9am, production code by 2pm.
The Advisor in me
- Stack decisions tuned for Bay Area realities (Series A diligence, enterprise security reviews)
- Roadmap that aligns with your investor narrative and milestones
- Help vetting and hiring senior engineers from the SF talent pool
- SOC 2 readiness, security architecture, multi-tenancy for enterprise sales
- Technical narrative for fundraising decks and diligence calls
The Builder in me
- Ships production features end-to-end every single week
- Unblocks your senior engineers when they hit hard problems
- Builds the integration with whatever YC company is suddenly your customer
- Fixes the performance issue that surfaced during your enterprise pilot
- Reviews PRs from your team — and writes them when needed
Most SF founders run out of money before they run out of feature ideas. Hiring an advisor and a builder separately means you're paying twice for context-switching. One person who does both means decisions get made faster and the code gets shipped that matches them.
A working CTO who never stopped shipping
Strategy and code. Same person. Same hour.
The fractional CTO market in SF is full of former CTOs who exited five years ago, sit on five boards, and outsource the actual code review to their network. I'm not one of them. I still write production code every week — for the same clients I'm advising. Your team hits a wall, I open the IDE. Same day, same person you talked strategy with that morning.
I spent 4+ years as Executive Director of IT at Jacana Warranty — building the engineering org from zero, hiring, firing, and reporting to the CEO. So I know what it looks like to run a tech org from the leadership chair. I also never gave up the builder's chair, which is what most fractional CTOs in the Bay Area lost a long time ago.
13+ years shipping production code across B2B SaaS, fintech, and warranty platforms — including products that survived enterprise security reviews and Series A diligence. I know what breaks when you scale from 10 paying customers to 1,000, and from $1M ARR to $10M, because I've written the code that had to handle each transition. Not theoretically. In production.
Shipping production software
Not just a dev — I've led teams
Vetted by the top freelance network
Still a working full-stack developer
This is NOT for you if…
I take a small number of Bay Area clients at a time. I'd rather decline a bad-fit engagement than burn your retainer and disappoint you. Read these honestly — if any sound like you, I'll tell you on the first call anyway and save us both the time.
You're pre-customer with a deck and a vibe
If you have a pitch deck, a Notion doc, and zero customer conversations, you don't need a fractional CTO. You need 30 customer interviews and a willingness to throw the deck out. The Bay Area founders I help successfully are the ones building for customers they've already talked to — not the ones building for the round they want to raise next.
You want a technical co-founder for sweat equity
Co-founders take equity, take risk, and commit to the company for years. I'm a paid advisor and builder — cash, not stock. "Work for free until we raise" is a Bay Area pattern that exclusively benefits the non-technical founder. If that's the deal you're offering, I'm not the right person and frankly I'd be skeptical of anyone who says yes.
You want to disappear and come back to a finished product
The SF founders who get value from this engagement are present — weekly calls, fast Slack decisions, real input on tradeoffs. If your model is "give the engineer the spec and check back in a month," you're better off hiring an offshore agency. They'll quote you a price, build the wrong thing, and at least you'll know exactly who to blame.
Your real problem is positioning, not engineering
Half the SF startups that ask me to "build the next version" are actually struggling with positioning, sales, or product-market fit — and another six months of engineering won't fix any of those. I'll tell you on the call if I think your problem is technical or commercial. Either way, I'd rather give you the honest read than take your money to build the wrong thing.
5 free hours — before any retainer, before any contract
Every Bay Area engagement opens with 5 hours of real, billable-quality work I do for free. An architecture audit, a team assessment, prep for an upcoming Series A diligence call, or a hands-on build sprint on a specific problem. Not a "discovery call." Real work product, delivered before any contract is signed. If we both want to continue, we pick a model.
Embedded with your Bay Area team
$200–$1,200/week depending on hours
- Flexible weekly hours — typically 5 to 30 hrs/week
- Weekly strategy call (US business hours, your calendar)
- Async Slack/email — same-day response on weekdays
- Architecture reviews and hands-on shipping when needed
- Code reviews and 1:1s with your senior engineers
- Roadmap planning, milestone tracking, hiring help
- Best for: ongoing technical leadership for an SF / Bay Area startup
Fixed scope for a specific Bay Area problem
Fixed total quoted upfront — typically starting at $4,000
- Pre-Series-A architecture audit and technical narrative for diligence
- Or: SOC 2 readiness assessment and remediation plan
- Or: enterprise security review prep before your first big pilot
- Or: fixed-scope build sprint (specific feature, integration, refactor)
- Fixed timeline, usually 6 to 12 weeks, with a fixed price quoted upfront
- Written report and recommendations you can hand to investors or your board
- Best for: specific, time-bounded technical questions
Not sure if you need ongoing technical leadership or a one-shot project? Book the call. In 30 minutes I'll tell you whether your problem is recurring (retainer) or scoped (project), and if it turns out you don't need a fractional CTO at all — maybe you need a full-time hire, maybe you need a specialist consultant — I'll tell you that and recommend the actual right move.
Questions Bay Area founders ask before hiring fractional
Direct answers from someone who has worked with SF and Bay Area teams remotely. No spin.
Let's Build Your Bay Area Startup's Technical Foundation
Book a free call. 30 minutes. Tell me where you are — pre-seed in SF, post-seed in Oakland, racing toward Series A in Palo Alto — what's stuck, and what milestone you're trying to hit. I'll tell you whether a fractional CTO is the right answer for your stage, and if it is, exactly what the first 5 free hours would deliver.