Fractional CTO · One day a week
I own the technical decisions nobody currently owns, set a release bar the team can hold, and write code on the paths that can lose funds. Three years as an engineer at Coinbase, now working on agents with wallets. The first month is bounded and ends in a written recommendation to continue or stop.
One founder-led founding-rate slot is open across all offers.
Fractional engineering leadership
A senior engineering leader who owns technical decisions, standards, and risk for part of a week rather than all of it. The seat is the same as a full-time CTO; the commitment, the cost, and the reversibility are not.
For a team shipping onchain or AI products, that means owning the agent, wallet, custody, and payment-rail architecture, setting the release bar around code that moves money, contributing to the risky paths directly, and giving the founder a technical peer to disagree with.
Review Omid Ahourai's background and public work on GitHub.
Decide the agent, wallet, key handling, and payment-rail shape once, write it down, and give the team a boundary they can build against.
Reviews, tests, deploy path, rollback, and on-call reality, moved from tribal knowledge to something a new engineer can follow.
Security posture, custody boundaries, dependency risk, and a technical story your investors and largest customer can both read.
Why teams reach for this
Every one of these is survivable for a quarter and expensive for a year. The cost is not a missed feature; it is architecture that gets harder to change every week nobody owns it.
No senior owner
The team can build anything and keeps relitigating the same architecture question, because nobody has the standing to close it.
Too early to hire
The first-year cost of a full-time engineering leader is a real fraction of a seed round, and the seat is hard to reverse once filled.
Onchain and AI risk
Agent wallets, key custody, and payment rails fail in ways a generalist backend leader has not seen and cannot review confidently.
Founder as bottleneck
Every architecture call, code review, hiring loop, and vendor decision routes through one person who also has a company to run.
What the day buys
One day a week is a real constraint and it is stated plainly here so you can judge whether it is enough. What it does not stretch to is people management and full-time availability.
Decisions
One architecture decision record per real fork in the road, so the choice survives the meeting and the next engineer inherits the reasoning.
Code
Reviews on the risky paths and implementation on the ones that need a senior pair of hands. This is not an advisory call once a fortnight.
Standards
Tests, CI, deploy, rollback, and observability set at the level the product's risk actually requires, then handed to the team to run.
People
Scorecards, technical screens, and build-or-buy calls at the depth one day a week allows. I do not manage people or run reviews.
The first month
The first month is a fixed price with a defined output. It is designed to be easy to stop, because an engagement you cannot leave is one you will hesitate to start.
A free scope call, then one written decision the first month is expected to close. Repository, deployment, and roadmap access are ready before the first day.
Run the product, read the repository, trace the deploy path, and talk to the engineers. The week ends with a written map of what is actually load-bearing and what is at risk.
Write the decision record for the fork the engagement was hired to resolve, with the option that was rejected and the reason it was rejected.
Set the release bar and implement or review the code that can lose funds, leak keys, or corrupt state. Standards land as reviews on real pull requests, not as a document.
A written first-month summary: what changed, what is still open, what I would do next, and an explicit recommendation to continue or stop.
Scope boundary
This works when the team can build and needs someone to decide. It does not work as a substitute for headcount you actually need.
Good fit
Not this engagement
The exact 10% deposit reserves the displayed founding rate and does not reserve a start date. The scope call happens first and costs nothing.
Standard rate $12,000 per month
$10,000
Founding rate for the first month, one day a week, for the single manually confirmed slot.
Book 15 minutes and I will tell you straight whether one day a week is enough for what you are facing. The $1,000 deposit comes after that call, reserves the rate rather than a start date, and is credited in full.
Refunded if I decline fit, cannot offer two start dates within 60 days, or you cancel before accepting a date. It becomes non-refundable after written SOW and date acceptance.
The first month ends in a written summary and an explicit recommendation to continue or stop. Continuing is month to month at the standard rate with 30 days notice on either side, agreed in writing rather than renewed automatically.
Code, decision records, and operating notes land in your repositories under your ownership. Applicable taxes are disclosed before the SOW.
Already had the call? Reserve the $1,000 deposit. Terms version 2026-08-18. Secure checkout is handled by Stripe.
Questions
Owns the technical decisions nobody currently owns, sets the release bar, and writes code on the paths that carry real risk. In practice that is one architecture decision record per real fork in the road, reviews on the code that can lose funds or leak keys, and hiring or vendor input. It is not a weekly advisory call.
One day a week is the honest amount of time I can give an engagement while still doing the sprint work that keeps my hands in production code. More days are possible and are priced separately on the scope call. Buying a title without the attention to back it is worse than buying nothing.
You get a written summary and an explicit recommendation to continue or stop. The founding rate covers the first month only; continuing runs month to month at the $12,000 standard rate with 30 days notice on either side. There is no minimum term beyond the first month and no automatic renewal you have to remember to cancel.
A feature sprint ships one bounded feature in 10 working days and then ends. A product build can take a focused MVP from scope to first release in two weeks, with its own agreed price and terms. The fractional engagement is ongoing ownership of technical decisions and standards across whatever the team is building. Teams often start with a sprint, and a sprint can be run alongside a fractional engagement at the sprint price.
No. It reserves the displayed founding rate but does not reserve a start date. The 15-minute scope call happens before that and is free. If the engagement is a fit, I offer two start options within 60 days. The existing refund and written SOW terms apply.
The rate is cash. Equity is a separate conversation, is not part of this offer, and never replaces the cash rate in the first month.
Book 15 minutes and get a straight answer on whether one day a week is enough. The deposit comes after the call, never before it.
Written path
Tell me the technical decision nobody is closing, the team size, and what you are building. You will get a written view on whether one day a week is enough, including when the honest answer is no.