Most consulting fails not because the advice is wrong, but because it doesn't account for reality. Recommendations that ignore organizational constraints, technical debt, team capacity, or political dynamics end up in slide decks that nobody implements.

We take a different approach. Before recommending anything, we spend time understanding your actual situation—not the sanitized version, but the real one. The legacy system that can't be replaced because it's too entangled with everything else. The team that's already stretched thin. The stakeholder who will veto anything that threatens their domain. We've been on the receiving end of advice that ignored these realities, and we've been the interim executive trying to implement it anyway.

The other thing we've learned: accountability matters. It's easy to hand over a strategy deck and move on. It's harder to stay engaged through implementation, when the real problems emerge. We stay accountable for outcomes, not just deliverables.

We don't have a rigid engagement model. The shape of work depends on what you actually need, and that becomes clearer as we understand your situation. That said, most engagements fall into a few patterns:

Fractional Leadership

You need CTO-level thinking but not a full-time hire. Maybe you're between technical leaders, or scaling past what a first-time CTO can handle, or need senior technical input for a board that's asking hard questions. We embed part-time—typically 2-3 days per week—and take on real responsibilities: architecture decisions, hiring, team development, investor communication. This isn't advisory from a distance; it's actual leadership on a fractional basis.

Fractional engagements usually run 3-6 months, sometimes longer. We're explicit about building toward independence: the goal is to either hire a permanent leader or develop internal capability, not to create dependency.

Project-Based Work

You have a specific problem with a defined scope: an architecture that needs redesigning, a platform that needs optimizing, a product that needs building, a due diligence that needs completing. We scope the work, agree on deliverables and timeline, and execute. Most project work runs 6-12 weeks, though complex implementations can be longer.

For development projects, we work alongside your team rather than in isolation. We write code, review pull requests, and participate in standups. When we leave, your team owns what we built and understands how it works.

Strategic Advisory

Sometimes you don't need hands-on implementation—you need a thinking partner. Someone who's seen enough situations to pattern-match effectively, who can stress-test your assumptions, who'll tell you when an idea won't work. Advisory relationships are lighter-touch: perhaps a few hours per week, with deeper dives around specific decisions.

Advisory works best when there's trust and candor. We're not useful if we're just validating decisions you've already made. The value comes from honest pushback and alternative perspectives.

Coaching

Technical leadership is a specific skill set that most people learn through painful trial and error. Working with Lena Reinhard, we offer coaching for CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and technical founders navigating the transition from individual contributor to leader—or from leading a small team to leading an organization.

Coaching engagements are typically ongoing, with regular sessions over 6-12 months. Learn more about our coaching practice.

Direct Communication

We tell you what we think, even when it's uncomfortable. If your timeline is unrealistic, we'll say so. If your architecture has fundamental problems, we won't dance around it. If we're not the right fit for what you need, we'll tell you that too. You're paying for honest assessment, not validation.

Working Alongside Your Team

We don't operate as a separate entity delivering work products over a wall. We join your Slack, attend your standups, pair with your engineers. This sometimes feels slower than "just tell us what to do," but it produces better outcomes. We understand context that wouldn't make it into a brief, and knowledge transfers naturally rather than in a handoff document nobody reads.

Building Independence, Not Dependency

The goal is to make ourselves unnecessary. Every engagement should end with your team more capable than when we started. We document decisions and rationale. We explain our thinking. We mentor where appropriate. A consulting relationship that creates ongoing dependency is a failure, even if it's profitable.

Realistic Scoping

We'd rather tell you something will take longer than overpromise and underdeliver. Software projects are notoriously hard to estimate, and organizational change is even worse. We give you honest assessments of complexity and uncertainty, and we communicate proactively when things change.

We start with a conversation—usually 30-60 minutes—to understand your situation and whether we might be able to help. No pitch deck, no sales process; just a discussion about what you're dealing with and what you're trying to accomplish.

If there's a potential fit, we'll propose a short discovery phase: typically a week or two of deeper investigation. This might involve talking to stakeholders, reviewing systems, understanding constraints. The output is a clear picture of the situation and a proposal for how we might help.

We don't require long-term commitments upfront. Engagements can be structured with clear checkpoints where either side can reassess. Trust is built through working together, not through contracts.