WHAT DOES A FRACTIONAL CTO ACTUALLY DO?
The difference between consulting and thinking alongside you about your entire stack.
A consultant tells you what to do. A fractional CTO thinks with you about what to build, how to build it, and what happens when it breaks.
The distinction matters. Consultants deliver reports. A fractional CTO delivers decisions — the kind that compound over months and years.
What the Engagement Looks Like
A typical fractional CTO retainer at Apps & Funnels includes:
- Weekly strategy calls — not status updates, actual decision-making sessions
- Architecture reviews — before you build, not after
- Vendor evaluation — which tools, which providers, which contracts
- Team guidance — if you're hiring developers (human or AI), you need someone who knows what good looks like
- Incident response — when something breaks at 2am, you have someone to call
Who This Is For
You've built something real. Revenue is coming in. You're making technical decisions every week that will affect your business for years. But you don't need (or can't afford) a full-time CTO.
That's the gap. A fractional CTO fills it — typically one day a week, at a fraction of a full-time salary.
The Framework
Every engagement starts with the same question: what's the one technical decision you're most unsure about right now?
We start there. Then we build a decision framework you can use long after the engagement ends. The goal isn't dependency — it's capability.