No senior owner
Strong engineers, no one deciding.
The team can build anything and keeps relitigating the same architecture question, because nobody has the standing to close it.
Fractional CTO / one day a week
The senior engineering owner your team is missing. 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.
1 founding-rate engagement remainsacross the build practice, confirmed manually.
Fractional engineering leadership
What is a fractional CTO?
A fractional CTO is 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. It is one day a week, month to month, with 30 days notice on either side.
Review Omid Ahourai's background and public work on GitHub.
- 01
Own the architecture nobody currently owns
Decide the agent, wallet, key handling, and payment-rail shape once, write it down, and give the team a boundary they can build against.
- 02
Raise the release bar without slowing the team
Reviews, tests, deploy path, rollback, and on-call reality, moved from tribal knowledge to something a new engineer can follow.
- 03
Answer the diligence questions before they are asked
Security posture, custody boundaries, dependency risk, and a technical story your investors and largest customer can both read.
Why teams reach for this
The decisions are piling up faster than anyone can own them.
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.
Too early to hire
A full-time CTO costs more than the runway allows.
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
The risky part is the part nobody has shipped before.
Agent wallets, key custody, and payment rails fail in ways a generalist backend leader has not seen and cannot review confidently.
Founder as bottleneck
The technical founder is now doing three jobs.
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
Judgment, plus hands in the repository.
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
Technical decisions, written down
One architecture decision record per real fork in the road, so the choice survives the meeting and the next engineer inherits the reasoning.
Code
Hands on the actual repository
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
A release bar the team can hold
Tests, CI, deploy, rollback, and observability set at the level the product's risk actually requires, then handed to the team to run.
People
Hiring and vendor input
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
Bounded, so you can end it without an argument.
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.
Before week 01
Name the decision this unblocks
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.
Week 01
Read the system, not the deck
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.
Week 02
Close the open decision
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.
Week 03
Take the risky path myself
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.
Week 04
Hand back a decision, not a dependency
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
One senior owner, not four missing engineers.
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
- A funded team shipping onchain or AI products, typically between five and thirty engineers.
- One named technical decision or risk the first month is expected to close.
- A founder or engineering lead who wants a peer to disagree with, not a contractor to direct.
- Repository, deployment, and roadmap access available in the first week.
- The team wants senior judgment plus hands in the code, not a strategy deck.
Not this engagement
- A full-time, on-call, or fully embedded engineering commitment.
- People management, performance reviews, or anything requiring an employment relationship.
- Fundraising support, board representation, or legal, tax, and financial advice.
- A title for a pitch deck without the underlying work.
- Rescuing a team that needs four full-time engineers rather than one senior owner.
Transparent reservation
One rate for the first month. Then month to month.
The exact 10% deposit reserves the displayed founding rate and confirms your start window after Stripe verifies payment. 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.
$1,000 deposit todayCredited in full toward the first month.
The call comes first, and it is free.
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.
Clear refund boundary.
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.
Month one is bounded. What follows is your call.
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.
You own everything I write.
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.
Straight answers
Operational FAQ
Scope, payment, access, and ownership before either of us commits.
What does a fractional CTO actually do in one day a week?
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.
Why one day a week rather than two or three?
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.
What happens after the first month?
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.
How is this different from the sprints?
A sprint ships one bounded feature in 10 working days and then ends. 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.
Does the deposit guarantee a start date?
No. It reserves the displayed founding rate and confirms your start window after payment is verified. 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.
Can you take equity instead of the rate?
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.
Written path
Rather write than talk? Name the decision that is stuck.
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.
A qualified inquiry receives a written fit response. If you would rather just talk it through, the scope call is free and open.
Adjacent sprints
Same operating model, different risk surface.
onchain / 10 working days
Agentic Onchain Sprint
Ship one production wallet, payment, contract, or agent feature with explicit safety boundaries.
ai / 10 working days
AI Product Sprint
Turn one customer-blocking AI prototype into an evaluated, observable production feature.
devtools / 10 working days
Developer Tools Product Sprint
Ship one setup-to-success path with failure recovery, instrumentation, tests, and a working quickstart.