Texas founders don't need a full-time CTO. They need the right one, part-time.
For non-technical founders building startups in Austin, Dallas, and Houston: hire a sitting CTO as your fractional tech partner. Strategy, architecture, developer oversight, and hands-on development — without the $200K+ salary or the equity hit. Most fractional CTOs stopped coding years ago. I didn't.
$40/hr · CTO at Get Cover · 5 free hours · 13+ years shipping production software
Why Texas Founders Work With Me Remotely
Texas is three different startup markets inside one state line. Austin is the densest software scene, full of B2B SaaS and bootstrapped founders bidding against big-tech campuses for engineers. Dallas–Fort Worth skews enterprise, with founders selling into the kind of corporate headquarters many of them came from. Houston builds for energy, healthcare and logistics, where software has to survive real operations. The technical mistakes that hurt most are different in each, so the help should be too.
Houston is worth a specific note. The energy, healthcare and industrial companies there buy software cautiously and then keep it for a decade, which rewards boring, well-documented architecture and punishes the shortcuts that only surface in year three. I build for that horizon, because the domains I have shipped production software in — fintech, warranty and insurance — work the same way.
All my engagements are remote-first. Weekly video calls, async Slack, same-day responses during US business hours. Texas founders I work with say it feels like having a technical co-founder — without the equity conversation.
Fractional CTO for Austin startups
Austin is where a large share of Texas software companies begin, and most of them hit the same wall in their first year: the product needs senior technical judgment before the company can afford to pay Austin rates for it. Apple, Tesla, Dell and a long list of relocated engineering teams set the salary floor for senior engineers here, and a seed-stage startup is bidding against all of them.
That squeeze pushes founders toward two expensive shortcuts — giving the first engineer a CTO title they have not grown into yet, or hiring an offshore contractor with nobody on the founder's side able to judge the work. A fractional CTO is the third option: senior calls on the stack, the architecture and the hiring bar now, hands-on code when the team stalls, and an honest read on the people you are paying, part-time until the company can justify a full-time technical leader.
It also sets up the hire you eventually make. When you are ready for a full-time CTO or head of engineering in Austin, I help write the role, run the technical interviews, and hand over a codebase and a record of decisions that a strong candidate will actually want to inherit.
Fractional CTO for Dallas startups
Dallas startups tend to sell to large companies from the first deal. Dallas–Fort Worth is home to the headquarters of AT&T and Toyota North America and to a deep bench of banks, insurers and logistics operators, and plenty of Dallas founders came out of exactly those organisations. They know the buyer. What they usually lack is someone who knows what that buyer's security questionnaire, vendor-risk review and integration requirements will demand of the software.
That is where early architecture decisions get expensive. Single sign-on, audit logging, tenant data isolation, role-based permissions and a credible SOC 2 plan are cheap to design in during the first months and painful to retrofit after a pilot is signed. They are the problems I deal with as CTO of an insurtech, so I make those calls with you before the procurement conversation — and write the code for them, rather than handing you a checklist.
The engagement runs the same as anywhere else in Texas: remote, on Central time, with a weekly call, async Slack and same-day weekday responses. Founders in Fort Worth, Plano, Frisco and Irving get exactly the same arrangement.
What a fractional CTO does for a Texas startup
Five areas where Texas founders — bootstrapping in Austin, raising Series A in Dallas, building enterprise SaaS in Houston — lose the most time and money when they guess. A senior technical partner closes the gap.
Tech Stack Decisions
The "Austin default stack" (Node + Postgres + Vercel) works for half the startups I see and is the wrong call for the other half. I help you pick what fits your industry — fintech compliance, healthtech HIPAA, logistics scale, energy data pipelines — not what was trending on Twitter last week.
Architecture Reviews
Texas founders selling to enterprise (and most of you are) eventually face a security review from a customer that will tear your architecture apart. I find the multi-tenancy gaps, auth shortcuts, and data isolation issues before your first procurement call does.
Hands-on Development
When your dev team in Austin or your offshore team in Dallas hits a hard problem, I jump in and ship the code myself. Not 'review and suggest.' Open the PR, write the tests, deploy the fix. I write production code every single week.
Developer Oversight
Hiring a "full-stack dev for $10K/month" in Austin sounds great until you realize you have no way to tell if they're shipping value. I review their code, sit in on standups, give you an honest read on velocity — and tell you when it's time to upgrade or move on.
Roadmap Planning
Texas startups burn capital faster than Bay Area equivalents because the bar is 'profitable in 18 months' not 'raise the next round.' I help you sequence features so every sprint moves you toward revenue, not just toward a demo.
Texas founders need an advisor and a builder — in one hire
Most Texas startups I talk to are running lean. You can't afford a $250K CTO advisor who can't ship and a $180K senior dev who can't think strategically. You need one person who does both. I do — every single week. Strategy calls in the morning, production code by afternoon, code review for your team that evening. One brain, one context, no handoffs.
The Advisor in me
- Stack decisions tuned for Texas-relevant industries (fintech, energy, healthtech, logistics)
- Roadmap that hits revenue milestones, not just feature counts
- Developer hiring help — vet candidates from Austin, Dallas, and remote pools
- Security and compliance planning for enterprise procurement reviews
- Long-term technical vision that survives a Series A diligence
The Builder in me
- Ships production features end-to-end, every week
- Unblocks your Austin or Dallas dev team mid-sprint
- Fixes the performance issue your customer just complained about
- Builds the tricky third-party integration nobody wants to touch
- Reviews PRs from your team and opens them myself
Hiring two people — a strategist and a builder — sounds cheaper than a full-time CTO. Then you spend 6 hours a week translating between them. Texas founders running lean teams don't have those hours to give. One hire who does both is the cleaner solve.
A working CTO who still writes the code
Strategy and shipping. Same person. Same week.
The fractional CTOs Texas founders usually hire are former CTOs who haven't opened a code editor in five years. They'll review your architecture and recommend an industry consultant. I won't. When your team in Austin is stuck, I open the editor and ship the fix myself — typically the same day.
I spent 4+ years as Executive Director of IT at Jacana Warranty, building the tech org from zero, hiring and managing developers, and reporting directly to the CEO. So I know what the leadership chair feels like. I also never gave up the builder's chair — and that's the half most fractional CTOs lost.
13+ years shipping production software across B2B SaaS, fintech, and warranty platforms — the same domains Texas founders build in. I know what breaks at 100 paying customers, at 10K, and at 100K, because I've written the code that had to survive each of those thresholds. Not in a deck. In production.
Shipping production software
Sitting CTO of an insurtech serving 32,000+ clients
Taken from idea to production
Still a working full-stack developer
This is NOT for you if…
I take a small number of Texas clients at a time, so I'd rather decline a bad-fit engagement than take your retainer and disappoint you. Read these honestly. If any sound like you, we're probably not a match — and I'll save us both the call and tell you that upfront.
You're validating a weekend idea, not building a startup
If there's no business model, no plan to charge, and no first conversations with potential customers, you don't need a fractional CTO. You need a weekend, a notepad, and 5 customer interviews. Come back when there's a real reason to invest in engineering.
You want a technical co-founder for equity
Co-founders take equity, take risk, and commit to the company for years. I'm a paid advisor and builder — cash, not stock. If your pitch is "work for free until we raise," I'm not the right person, and honestly, I'd be skeptical of anyone in Austin who says yes.
You want a 'set it and forget it' build
The Texas founders I work with successfully are the ones who show up to weekly calls, give fast decisions on Slack, and stay in the loop on tradeoffs. If you want to disappear and come back to a finished product, you're better off hiring a Bangalore agency. They'll quote you a price, build the wrong thing, and you'll have nobody to blame but the spec.
You expect engineering to fix a market problem
If your Austin SaaS isn't getting customers, the answer is rarely "more features." It's usually positioning, sales, or product-market fit. I can build whatever you describe, but I won't take your money to build version 4 of a thing the market already rejected at version 2. Be honest about what's actually broken.
5 free hours — then we decide if we keep going
Every Texas engagement opens with 5 hours of real, billable-quality work that I do for free. An architecture audit, a team assessment, a strategy call with concrete deliverables. No "discovery call" disguised as a sales pitch. You see the work product before you see an invoice. If we both want to continue, we pick a model.
Embedded with your Texas team
$200–$1,200/week depending on hours
- Flexible weekly hours — anywhere from 5 to 30 hrs/week
- Weekly strategy call (US business hours, your timezone)
- Async Slack/email — same-day response on weekdays
- Architecture reviews and hands-on shipping when needed
- Code reviews and 1:1s with your developers
- Roadmap planning, quarterly goals, hiring help
- Best for: ongoing technical partnership for an Austin/Dallas/Houston startup
Fixed scope for a specific Texas problem
Fixed total quoted upfront — typically starting at $4,000
- Architecture audit before raising your seed or Series A
- Or: enterprise security review prep (SOC 2 readiness, multi-tenancy hardening)
- Or: fixed-scope build sprint (specific feature, integration, or refactor)
- Fixed timeline — usually 6 to 12 weeks
- Fixed price quoted upfront, no scope creep
- Written report and recommendations you can hand to your board
- Best for: specific, time-bounded technical questions
Not sure if your problem is recurring or one-time? Book the call. In 30 minutes I'll know whether you need ongoing technical leadership (retainer) or a one-shot project (architecture audit, team assessment, build sprint). And if it turns out you don't need a fractional CTO at all, I'll tell you that and recommend what you actually need.
Want a number before we talk? The SaaS MVP cost calculator turns a feature list into an hours, cost and timeline range. No email required.
Questions Texas founders ask before hiring fractional
Direct answers from someone who has worked with Texas-based teams remotely. No pitch.
A full-time CTO in Austin runs $200K–$300K base plus equity, plus benefits, plus the 6–9 month executive search to find one who isn't already at Dell, Tesla, Apple, or HEB Digital. Total all-in cost: north of $400K in year one. A fractional CTO (me) gives you the same strategic decisions and team oversight at $40/hr — typically $1,200–$3,200/month for most Texas pre-seed and seed-stage startups. You skip the search, skip the equity dilution, skip the year of paying full-time salary while you figure out if the hire was right. And unlike most fractional CTOs, I'm also a working full-stack developer, so the same brain advising you on architecture is the one writing the code when your team is stuck.
All my engagements are remote, US-time-zone-aligned. I've worked with founders across multiple US states including Texas — fintech, healthtech, B2B SaaS, and warranty/insurance. The work itself is the same whether you're in Austin or Atlanta: weekly video call, async Slack, same-day response, code reviews on your repo, and I show up to your standup if you have one. Texas founders specifically tell me the timezone alignment and async cadence feels exactly like working with someone in Austin — without the in-person coffee meetings nobody actually has time for.
A senior full-stack developer in Austin runs $130K–$180K base. A senior in Dallas runs $115K–$155K. Plus benefits and the recruiting cycle. My rate is $40/hr — that's $200–$1,200/week depending on hours, or $800–$4,800/month for a typical retainer. The math: a 10-hour/week retainer with me costs less per month than 1.5 weeks of a senior dev's salary in Austin, and you get strategy plus hands-on shipping plus team oversight, not just code. Project-based engagements (architecture audits, build sprints) are quoted as a fixed total upfront — typically $1,200–$4,000 — so you know the number before you commit.
Yes — and it's one of the most underrated parts of the engagement. The Austin and Dallas hiring markets are competitive: every senior dev is being recruited by 5 other startups, and most founders don't know how to write a job spec, screen technical candidates, or run a take-home that signals quality. I help with the spec, the screening rubric, the technical interview itself, and the offer/negotiation conversation. The hires you make are yours — but the process gets the experience of someone who has been hiring developers for 13+ years instead of guessing.
Let's Build Your Texas Startup's Technical Foundation
Book a free call. 30 minutes. Tell me where you are — Austin, Dallas, Houston, or somewhere in between — what's stuck, and what you're trying to reach. 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.
Based in a different state? I also work with founders in San Francisco & the Bay Area and Los Angeles & Southern California. Further north, I work as a fractional CTO in Seattle.
Not in Texas? Start with the national overview of my fractional CTO for startups.