When I joined Risika, the engineering team was falling apart. 18 months later: shipping velocity doubled, zero attrition, $5.6M ARR.
The fix wasn't technical. It was commercial.
Read the full story →You have raised a seed round. Your product is gaining traction. But something is not working. A fractional CTO UK provides the strategic technical leadership you need — without the full-time cost.
Without senior technical leadership, every architecture choice, hiring decision, and vendor selection is a coin toss. One wrong call on your tech stack can cost six months of runway.
Engineering effort without commercial direction is just expensive noise. Teams build features nobody uses. Roadmaps drift from revenue goals. You need someone who translates business priorities into engineering action.
At £150K+ salary plus equity, a full-time CTO is a huge commitment for a seed-stage startup. You need the expertise now, but you do not need it five days a week. Not yet.
A fractional CTO gives you seasoned technical leadership 2–3 days a week. Board-level strategy, team building, and architecture decisions — at a fraction of the cost.
A fractional CTO is not a consultant who writes a report and disappears. I am embedded in your business. I work with your team. I make decisions. I take responsibility for outcomes. The difference is that you only pay for the time you need.
Here is what that looks like in practice. I typically work with startups at £1,000 per day, structured as 2-3 days per week over 6-12 months. I join your leadership team. I attend board meetings. I set engineering priorities. I hire your technical team. I review architecture decisions. I build the processes that let your team ship faster without breaking things. And I do all of this with one goal: turning engineering effort into revenue.
The commercial focus is what makes the difference. Most CTOs come from engineering backgrounds. They think in terms of technical elegance, scalability, and best practices. I think in terms of customer problems, revenue drivers, and burn rate. I ask three questions before every technical decision: Does this increase revenue? Does this reduce cost? Does this reduce risk? If the answer is no to all three, we do not do it.
This approach works especially well for seed-stage and Series A startups in London and across the UK. You get access to a seasoned startup CTO for hire without the full-time commitment. You get someone who has built teams, shipped products, and made the mistakes you are about to make. And you get commercial accountability: if I am not delivering value, you stop paying for me.
A part-time CTO startup arrangement is not about filling a gap in your org chart. It is about getting the right technical leadership at the right time. When you are ready to scale, I help you hire a full-time CTO. When you need board-level advice, I provide it. When you need someone to challenge your assumptions and make hard calls, I do that too.
At Risika, a Copenhagen-based fintech startup, I joined as fractional CTO when the engineering team was haemorrhaging talent. Twelve people had resigned in the previous six months. Morale was at rock bottom. The product roadmap was disconnected from customer needs. Revenue was stagnant.
Eighteen months later: zero regretted departures. Shipping velocity doubled. £5.6M ARR. The team went from survival mode to thriving. We restructured the organisation around customer problems, not technical domains. We rebuilt trust through transparency and psychological safety. We aligned every sprint with revenue goals. The fix was not technical. It was commercial.
At RefME, I scaled the team from a handful of developers to 50 people and the platform to 2 million users. We made one of the hardest technical calls I have ever been part of: rewriting the core citation engine from JavaScript to Pascal. Accuracy was sitting at 55 per cent. Users were complaining. Competitors were gaining ground. The risk was enormous. If we got it wrong, we could have destroyed the company. We pulled it off. Accuracy went to 99 per cent. User retention improved by 40 per cent. Revenue followed.
These are not consultant case studies. These are real businesses where I was accountable for outcomes. I was not writing reports. I was making calls. Hiring people. Firing people. Shipping code. Sitting in board meetings explaining why we were pivoting the roadmap. That is what fractional CPTO work looks like when it is done properly.
For UK startups looking for a fractional CTO London or elsewhere, the value is not just in the experience. It is in the accountability. I do not get paid to tell you what you want to hear. I get paid to deliver results. If the engineering team is not shipping, that is on me. If the technical roadmap is not aligned with the business plan, that is on me. If we are burning cash on features nobody uses, that is on me. That is the difference between a fractional CTO and a consultant.
If you are a seed-stage or Series A founder in the UK and you need technical leadership but cannot justify a full-time hire, we should talk. I work with a small number of startups at any given time, typically 2-3 days per week at £1,000 per day. The engagement is flexible. If you need more time during a critical sprint or a fundraise, we scale up. If you need less after the team is stable, we scale down.
The first step is a discovery call. No sales pitch. No pressure. We talk about where your business is, where you want it to be, and whether I am the right person to help you get there. If it is not a good fit, I will tell you. If it is, we will agree on outcomes, time commitment, and how we measure success. Then we get to work.
Most startups I work with are in London, but I have worked with teams across the UK and Europe. Location matters less than alignment. If you care about commercial outcomes more than technical purity, if you value directness over corporate politeness, and if you want someone who takes responsibility rather than hides behind process, we will get along.
I help seed-stage and Series A founders turn engineering effort into revenue. Not through more process, but through commercial clarity.
Latest ProjectWhether it's hypergrowth scaling, organisational transformation, or making high-stakes technical decisions, I bring both the technical expertise and the business acumen to get it done.
Get in touchAt Risika, we led the transformation from VC-funded to profitable in 18 months. We took a predominantly in-house team and built a high-performing distributed remote organisation. The key was not just structure. It was rebuilding culture around ownership, giving people a voice, and psychological safety.
At RefME, we scaled the team to ~50 people and the platform to 2 million users. We made one of the toughest calls of our careers: rewriting the core business functionality from JavaScript to Pascal. Accuracy was around 55% and threatening the business. It was high-risk. If we got it wrong, we could have destroyed the company. We pulled it off. Accuracy went to 99%.
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