If you're planning to sell your company in the next year or two, I can help you find what a buyer's team will find.
Before money moves, a buyer will send a team to look at your technology. I can look first, for you. I have no stake in the answer, so I'll tell you plainly what they're likely to find.
90-minute call, $500. Refundable in one click.
- One person who knows the system
- A long fix-it-later list
- An old agency contract
- A team that knows the system
- Sorted by what matters to a buyer
- Clear on who owns the code
What I usually find
Usually, the product works
What a buyer's team finds is underneath: parts of the system only one person really understands, an architecture drawn around the teams instead of the product, or fixes that kept getting pushed to later.
Before you sell
I find what a buyer's team will find, while there's still time to fix it. I check the code, the team, and the risks, and work out what each fix would take, and how long.
Stable apps, half the team
At a New York based VoIP company, the native iOS and Android apps were brittle and unstable. I planned and led the move to one hybrid app that shared most of its code with their web app, which was already stable. The app became much more stable, customers were happier, and it cost less to maintain, with half the team it needed before.
What a buyer's team will check
Architecture and code quality
What's sound, what's brittle, and what it realistically costs to fix.
Technical depth and moat
How much of the value comes from core components your team built, and how much from open-source modules or third-party APIs. Both can be valuable, in different ways. And how hard it would be for someone else to build the same thing.
What it depends on
The outside services, APIs, and open-source modules the product can't run without, and what happens to the costs and the roadmap if one of them changes its prices or terms, or stops being maintained.
Hidden liabilities
Technical debt, open-source and other licensing, AI-generated code, and infrastructure cost traps.
Team and key-person risk
Which parts of the system only one person understands, and what happens if that person leaves.
Delivery risk
Whether your team can ship the roadmap the price assumes.
Fit with the market
Whether what's built, and what's planned, matches what your market actually needs.
What to fix first
What a buyer's team is likely to flag, what each fix would take, and which to start on now.
Some of the work
On a client's telehealth platform, the development team was 13 people across three countries. Over three years I helped bring it down to a remote team of four, by simplifying the architecture and the tech stack, upskilling the team, improving the process, and automating what we could. Less overhead made delivery twice as fast.
The founders had vibe-coded their whole AI app. I led a human review of the front end and the back end, and got it stable enough for a public App Store launch.
Clients stay unnamed here. I'm happy to walk you through any of these on a call.
How I work
What I look at first
What you're trying to achieve, and where things really stand. The quality of the work so far, and how the ground reality compares with how it feels to you. That can go either way: sometimes the work is worse than it looks, and sometimes it's much better than it feels, simply because it isn't finished yet. The skills the job needs against the skills on the team. Whether your timeline and budget estimates are realistic. And the gap between what I hear from leadership and what I hear from the people doing the work. That gap usually tells me the most.
Progress everyone can see
Status updates that say what's really done, in enough detail to act on, and a working build you can try every week. A lot of the misunderstandings I see start with updates that skip the details.
People who've solved it before
I look for people and tools that have already solved the exact problem you're struggling with, not just a good developer, a good marketing team, or a good CRM. A job post that says “great machine learning engineer” vs “a machine learning engineer who has worked on audio models, and plays a musical instrument” can turn a 3-month project into a 3-week sprint.
A team that doesn't need me
Knowledge moves to your team, and if you need a full-time CTO, I help you find the right one. By then, no part of your product should depend on one person, including me.
How we'd start
Everything starts with one paid call. By the end of it, we'll both know whether there's more to do, and which of the other two options fits.
A first call
- 90 minutes with me, working on your actual problem.
- Real answers and clear next steps on the calls themselves.
- Up to two follow-ups, with you or the people on your team.
- If it wasn't worth it, one click refunds the full $500.
The right first step for nearly everyone.
Some teams take the solutions and run with them on their own. That's a perfectly good outcome.
A fixed-price review
A close look at your technology before a buyer takes one, over two to three weeks.
- The code, the architecture, and the people it depends on
- Vendor contracts, and who has access to the code
- Solutions to the problems we find, worked out together with you and your team
Your fractional CTO
A few hours a week while your team works through the fixes. The monthly range depends on how much of my time you need.
- The fixes spread across the months before the sale
- Closing the gap between what leadership hears and what's happening on the ground
- A planned hand-off to your own team
Bootstrapped and pre-revenue? Book a 40-minute Founder Call for $200. It doesn't include follow-up calls, and the same one-click refund applies.
Fair questions
Because it's working time on your problem, and you get real answers on the call itself. It also covers up to two follow-ups, including calls with people on your team if needed.
Rarely. Fixing what's broken is usually easier and better than wholesale replacement. Sometimes all that's needed is adding an expert with the missing skill set. Replacement is the last option.
It's the same review. An investor's due diligence before a big round looks at the same things a buyer's does: the code, the team, and the risks.
Usually, everyone is working hard, and your CTO already knows where most of the problems are. We work out the fixes together, and a buyer's team will ask your CTO the same questions anyway.
Book your first call
Pick a time that works for you. Bring whoever on your team knows the technology best.
$500 for the first call
- 90 minutes with me, working on your actual problem.
- Real answers and clear next steps on the calls themselves.
- Up to two follow-ups, with you or the people on your team.
- If it wasn't worth it, one click refunds the full $500.
Need more than one person? Rawzor is my firm, a small senior team of experts that works alongside your people. Explore rawzor.com →