Fractional CTO vs Full-Time: Here's How to Decide

I get asked this constantly. Let me save you the back-and-forth.

Go fractional when:

You're pre-PMF. You need someone to review your devs' work, make architecture calls, and tell you when you're about to make an expensive mistake. You don't need 40 hours a week of that.

Your runway is under 18 months. A full-time CTO costs $250K-$400K fully loaded. I charge $1,500-$2,500/month. Do the math.

You have builders but need guidance. Your devs can code. They just need someone who's seen this movie before to tell them which door has the tiger behind it.

You're prepping for diligence. Investors are going to poke your tech. Better to find the problems yourself first.

Go full-time when:

You're scaling past 10 engineers. At that point you need someone dedicated to org building, not just technical decisions.

Tech is your actual moat. If you're doing something genuinely novel — not just "we use AI" — you need deep, sustained focus.

You've raised a Series A+. You have the budget, you have PMF, now you need continuity and ownership.

The move I see work best

Start fractional. Get the architecture right, build the team foundations, set up the processes. Then hire full-time and have the fractional CTO help with the transition.

I've done this handoff a dozen times. It works because the new CTO inherits a clean situation, not a mess.

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Not sure which you need? Book a call and I'll give you a straight answer.