PHASE 01
Ship
Make it work
Get a real product into users’ hands. Ruthless scope, boring technology, fast feedback loops. Speed is a feature.
- →MVP architecture & scope
- →Build vs. buy decisions
- →First paying customers
Fractional CTO and architecture partner. I turn founder vision into production-ready systems — from zero-to-one builds to scaling past Series A. Architecture, delivery, security posture, team growth.
One opinionated operating model, applied in that order. Most founder pain comes from doing these out of sequence — scaling what doesn’t work, or securing what won’t scale.
Get a real product into users’ hands. Ruthless scope, boring technology, fast feedback loops. Speed is a feature.
Re-architect for the load that’s coming — not the load you have today. No premature complexity, no surprise rewrites.
Security and reliability as a posture, not a one-off project. Pass the audit, sleep through the on-call.
Pick the shape that fits where you are. All of them start with a 20-minute call and a straight answer about whether I’m the right person for it.
Embedded technical leadership without the full-time hire. Roadmap, architecture decisions, hiring, and the hard calls — owned end to end while you focus on the business.
A deep audit of your system, delivery, and security posture. You get a prioritised plan with the three things that actually matter — not a 60-page PDF nobody reads.
From whiteboard to a v1 real users can pay for. I set the foundations — architecture, stack, and the first hires — so the thing you build is the thing you can scale.
A few engagements where the numbers moved. Client names are under NDA — happy to make warm intros to references on a call.
A B2B billing platform was falling over under multi-tenant load. I led a strangler-fig re-architecture — no big-bang rewrite, no feature freeze.
Enterprise deals were stalling on security review. I built the controls, evidence pipeline, and on-call discipline to pass audit without grinding the roadmap to a halt.
Two non-technical founders, an idea, and a deadline. I owned the stack and shipped a v1 that found product-market fit — then hired the team to take it over.
Infra cost was scaling faster than revenue. A focused FinOps + architecture pass right-sized the platform without a single customer-facing incident.
Opinions I’ll defend on a call. Mostly about doing less, more deliberately.
The architecture, hiring, and build-vs-buy calls that quietly decide whether you’ll be able to move fast in eighteen months.
Why the most exciting thing you can do with your stack is make it predictable — and how to know when boring stops being right.
What two weeks of looking hard at a system actually finds, and why the fix is almost never the rewrite founders fear.
A founder’s field guide to evaluating senior talent when you can’t yet evaluate the work yourself.
Talk to a real human — usually within 24 hours, Melbourne time. No pitch deck, no obligation. Just a straight read on whether I can help.
I read every message myself and typically reply within 24–48 hours.