If you have a product and a team, but nobody senior deciding what to build next, I can help you decide.
My longest product had an eight-year journey from inception to eventual retirement, with many key pivots along the way. I join for a few hours a week and make those calls with you: what comes first, what can wait, and whether to build or buy.
90-minute call, $500. Refundable in one click.
- A long list of feature requests
- A build-or-buy call, still open
- Another round on the same feature
- What comes first, decided
- Build or buy, decided
- Fewer rounds on the same feature
What I usually find
The feature list keeps growing
The user interface tends to get cluttered as more and more features are added to a product. While accommodating these ever-increasing feature lists for expert users and edge use cases, extra care is needed to maintain the product's usability and simplicity for first-time users and frequent use cases.
Where I come in
My job is to align this extra complexity with your business goals, simplify the build-or-buy decisions, and keep the iterations few and useful if we decide to build.
Build or buy, case by case
At a revived heritage travel brand, we did both. We bought a new CRM that their 40-person sales team actually uses. And in about three months, an in-house portal built around how their team actually works replaced several paid travel-booking tools.
A note from me
Please, please don't over-engineer your product to prepare for the future. With AI and vibe coding, it's much easier now to 1) build bloat now, or 2) add it when needed. I've been in a large enterprise team that carried an intricate architecture for years. It slowed down everything we did, and when the day finally came to use it, the requirements had changed enough that we refactored it anyway.
The one exception: automate whatever you can, early. It's always worth it. Other than this, whenever possible, choose #2. Please. YAGNI: you aren't gonna need it.
- Sachin
Some of the work
A virtual-events platform, built by six teams in several countries. I sat between the founders and the development teams, turned what users needed into what the teams would build, and tied every payment to a milestone we could check. That kept an estimated 30% cost overrun from ever happening.
A New Jersey based e-commerce operation needed an app for its warehouse: picking, packing, shipping with several carriers, and label printing. I designed the core workflow, recruited the development team, and ran a fully AI-enabled development process. All the core product ideas went from concept to implemented and validated within a few weeks.
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 the product, your plans, and your team, over two to three weeks.
- Your business goals, and everything on the list
- What to build first, what to buy instead, and what can wait
- Solutions to the problems we find, worked out together with you and your team
Your fractional CTO
A few hours a week on what to build next and what can wait. The monthly range depends on how much of my time you need.
- Every call aligned with your business goals
- Iterations kept few and useful
- 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.
Yes. My job is to make sure all stakeholders and team members are aligned with the user stories throughout each iteration. I do this by coordinating the user stories with the functional and technical details.
Sometimes, for a tricky performance problem or a code review. Mostly I make sure the right people are writing it, and that what they build is what you actually need.
Book your first call
Pick a time that works for you. Bring whoever on your team knows the product 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 →