Fractional CTO/CRO for 8-9 figure companies and founder of CTOx, coaching tech executives to multiply their impact as fractional leaders.
Consider these scenarios: The paper manufacturer that thought they were in the commodity business until a strategic review revealed they were sitting on a gold mine of production data. The art gallery that believed it sold paintings until technology leadership showed them they were actually running a digital experience platform. The racetrack that insisted they were in the entertainment industry until they were shown to be a real-time analytics company.
After coaching hundreds of technology executives to become fractional chief technology officers (CTOs), I’ve learned that the companies furthest from Silicon Valley often have the most to gain from strategic technology leadership. The challenge is that they usually can’t justify (or afford) a full-time CTO who can help with this technological pivot.
Fractional CTOs Within Traditional Businesses
As someone who helps provide and train fractional CTOs, I find that most traditional businesses need CTO-level thinking about 10 hours per week, not full time. And even companies with full-time CTOs are hiring fractional CTO advisors at an increasing rate for emerging capabilities they lack, such as AI implementation, SOC 2 compliance, cybersecurity frameworks and cloud migrations.
This type of discovery is where fractional CTOs can create the biggest impact. For example, they can help CEOs recognize that their inventory system is actually a predictive analytics opportunity or that their customer service calls contain invaluable product intelligence.
These transformations don’t happen through massive investment, but through strategic reframing.
Pattern Recognition Across Industries
When you’ve evaluated dozens of different “non-technical” businesses, you start seeing technology patterns everywhere.
The Excel spreadsheet shared by 20 employees is the same bottleneck I’ve seen kill productivity in industries from construction to fine dining. The customer data trapped in filing cabinets is the competitive advantage waiting to be unlocked, whether you’re selling car parts or consulting services.
Every business today runs on technology. They just may not recognize it as their core capability. But consider what these “non-tech” businesses actually do:
• Medical practices manage complex scheduling algorithms, patient data platforms and compliance systems.
• Construction companies coordinate supply chain logistics and IoT sensor networks.
• Restaurants run inventory systems, customer preference databases and pricing engines.
• Law firms hold natural language processing opportunities.
Full-time CTOs in traditional industries often find themselves focused on keeping the lights on. They’re fighting fires, managing vendors and maintaining systems. This is where outside help can be beneficial, bringing fresh eyes and pattern recognition from other industries. Simply, those not embedded in the daily chaos can usually better see the forest, not just the trees.
The stakes have never been higher. IDC projects that global investment in digital transformation will reach $3.4 trillion by 2026. Yet MIT’s recent report reveals that 95% of corporate generative AI pilot projects fail to give a return on investment.
Note that I’m not trying to replace every CTO. And I’ve seen fractional CTOs make the same deadly mistakes as full-time ones, walking into startups with $4,000 monthly recurring revenue and immediately architecting for millions of users (when the company is far from ready for such enterprise-scale infrastructure). This is over-engineering and can lead to wasted time and cost when what a company at this level likely needs is validation of product–market fit.
When Full-Time CTOs Make More Sense
Venture-funded startups generally need full-time CTOs. The nature of venture capital demands de-risking the return through full-time executive attention. If you’re raising institutional money to build a technology product, that’s not necessarily fractional territory.
The deciding factor isn’t necessarily company size or revenue, but decision density. I’m a fractional CTO for one company doing $80 million annually with a substantial tech team. It works because the volume of strategic decisions doesn’t warrant my full-time attention. But if that same company were in the business of selling technology, with customers and in growth mode, I’d immediately recommend they hire a full-time CTO.
Companies with 40 to 50 people (or more) on their tech team, or those generating seven- to eight-figure revenue while selling technology as their core business, also likely need someone in the building daily to manage people, politics and operational firefights.
A fractional CTO costs $50,000 to $150,000 annually. If your entire technology budget is $300,000, having leadership consume half that budget doesn’t make sense. Conversely, if you’re spending more than $1 million annually on technology without any CTO-level leadership, you’re almost certainly losing money.
Here are the three types of businesses that tend to get less value:
1. Businesses where technology creates stability rather than growth. If you’re not building systems that scale with the business, you might need IT management, not strategic leadership.
2. Companies that don’t need custom solutions. If off-the-shelf software solves your problems, a fractional CIO focused on vendor management might serve you better.
3. Very small businesses with minimal technology spend. Below certain revenue thresholds, agency services can augment capabilities more cost-effectively than any leadership layer.
One of my healthcare clients spent seven figures annually creating their own systems without technology leadership. The result was a major security breach; processes looked sophisticated on the front end but ran on Excel spreadsheets on the back end. This eventually led to a costly complete rebuild.
The core problem was trusting agencies without someone internally who had discernment to make strategic decisions. Agencies, by definition, are outside your company. They don’t share your incentives.
The Coaching Model
But with these factors accounted for, even the best full-time CTOs can benefit from fractional advisors. Like elite athletes need coaches, experienced CTOs can benefit from an outside perspective on specialized challenges: investor pitches, M&A due diligence and board communication.
So the question is often less “do you need a CTO?” but “what kind of CTO do you need, and for how long?” Sometimes that’s full-time leadership plus fractional expertise. Sometimes it’s pure fractional. Look to see whether your tech-enabled business could benefit from strategic technology coaching at the right stage.
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