A Fractional CTO helps you in quickly launching your MVP in “weeks” and not “months”, and creating some low-hanging revenue stream for the product and leaves room for quick future scaling, and saves you from going off-track.
Hiring a Fractional CTO as a service is a cost effective and time saving option for the startups, because hiring a full time CTO for 250K USD per year is costly for most of them, and especially when you are a bootstrapping or an early-stage startup not having a CTO as the cofounder. This is where Agicent comes into play, we offer our top technical leaders on a very cost-effective rate (say $50/ hour for the CTO!) and on a “need-basis” where you use our CTO brains only when needed and pay only when you utilize us. You get “Immediate” CTO level service, in the “Fraction of the cost” that you’d pay to a full time CTO or a pricey consultant.
We’ve been playing the role of the Fractional CTO for our startup clients for more than a decade. We help our clients not just with the Technical Architecture as the CTOs, but actually develop the products from MVP to full-scaled level as the Software Product Development Team. So, when you work with us, you not only get CTO as a Service but also the whole development and design team that can be deployed to execute what CTO and business team has identified as the scope of the work.
Key Roles and Responsibilities of a Frictional CTO.
A fractional CTO does all that a regular on-the-job CTO (Chief Technology Officer) would do, but on a need basis. A Fractional CTO is an advanced level highly experienced Technical Leader who must have had successful experience in creating digital products from the early stage as an Engineer or senior engineer and then as someone who has taken leadership level decisions for building a Technical Product as a whole. At Agicent, you get to work with Fractional CTOs who have created more than 15 digital products (Apps, web Apps, backends, Algorithms) for the startups from the MVP level to full scaled products used by millions of users. (Example – HASfit App, Wellcure, Aiko & Egor, Panasonic Lumix and more).
Why Should Early-stage Startups Opt for a Frictional CTO?
Understanding Your Product Idea and Long-Term Goal and Budget Also Feasibility Study:
This is the first task essentially. The Fractional CTO understands what you want to create thoroughly, divides the total feature list of your product into “Regular features”, “Unique features”, “Complex Features” and goes to the next Step.
Help You Create the MVP Quickly:
A Fractional CTO will guide you to create a lean but useful MVP version of your product and launch within weeks and then put that into iteration for gaining more market. The FCTO will also help you in finding Product Market Fit, identifying revenue or monetization options, helps you achieve a low-hanging revenue stream quickly and leaves scope for rapid scaling of the product.Tech Stack Identification, Architecture Design, Building Technology and Product Development Roadmap:
Based on the specific demands of your product, a Fractional CTO will identify the Technical Stack to be used to achieve the goals and also consider the long term scalability of the product. He will also research and identify where to use open-source, where to use cross platform or native Tech, which external libraries to use, what kind of server to use and for which configuration and so on.Identification of the Resources Needed, Selecting Them and Assigning Them the Tasks:
Fractional CTO will identify which different skill sets are needed to perform the tasks of development. And then they shortlist, interview and select the right engineers whether from the market or from the Tech Agency like Agicent. For example, he may choose a Full Stack developer to do both Frontend and backend of your web app while a cross platform developer on react native or flutter to implement the mobile app to get more work done with less engineers.
Designing the Technology and Project Management Process:
The Fractional CTO will decide or participate in the decision of finalizing a developmental model which could be Agile or Extreme programming or good old waterfall. He’ll guide to design Delivery expectations, quality expectations, and schedules along with the project manager. The Fractional CTO will also set up essential protocols related to software development i.e. setting up Code Repository, Backup Plans and strategy, Setting up staging/ test server or interim App distribution protocol, Live Server, Access Control, IP restrictions, Server security measures and much more. On a Funny note, most of the times the CTOs role starts from buying the domain and setting up Emails too – which means they are your go to guy whenever you are stuck at a Technology thing whether big or small.
Overseeing the Developmental Operations:
Although CTOs in big companies are not involved in day-to-day implementation and tech operations, in case of early Stage Startups they are all that they have in terms of Tech leadership. So they get involved in implementation as a Supervisor or a guide and review deliveries, give feedback to the team, help them with troubleshooting when needed, offer them alternative solutions and also take feedback from the development team and implement what is right.Guiding the Startup in Sourcing the Talent:
Depending upon the project needs and budget, a Fractional CTO may suggest you to either outsource the whole project to a proper Development Company like Agicent or to distribute different components of your product to different vendors, or help you create an in-house development team or may also ask you to use a freelancer. For smaller tasks, they may ask you to use a one-off freelancer while for perpetual work in a cost-effective way they’ll opt for a Software Outsourcing Company like Agicent.
Collaboration With Different Departments Whenever It Comes to Technology:
Your CTO is needed by all departments namely your development team, your marketing team or vendor, your Finance team, your Admin team, your HR Team (ofcourse) and anyone else. Most of the time they need a CTO for a one-off basis except in the case of the development and HR team as they need a CTO on a more day-to-day basis than others. But this Tech Leader must be efficient and broad enough to collaborate with all of them as they rely on the CTO level decisions when it comes to using the Technology for any operation of the startup.
A Fcto Represents You in Front of Investors or Relevant Audience:
Your investors would be curious to talk to your CTO always, to throw critical questions, asking about big technology aspects, security aspects, IPR things and so on. The Fractional CTO will be equipped with handy knowledge to answer all these questions, take feedback and also give reasons behind using the certain technology Stack.Setting up KPIs and KRAs, and Remuneration and Incentives Benchmark:
A Fractional CTO will define KPIs for your product and teams and KRAs for your engineer team according to their job roles and responsibilities and also a method to measure and compare their performances. With a great knowledge of the Engineering market, a Fractional CTO will also help you in figuring out salaries and remunerations of the inhouse and offshore team alike.
