You have product-market fit. Now you need the leadership to scale ARR, fix technical debt, and walk into your Series A or B with a clean story. Fractional CTOs and CFOs give you that — at 20% of full-time cost.
Full-time C-suite is a $1.2M/year decision at the Series A stage. Fractional gives you the same seniority for a fraction of the burn.
A fractional CTO at $12,000–$18,000/month delivers the same architectural guidance and investor credibility as a full-time hire at $400,000/year. The difference: you keep $340,000 in runway per year to fund growth, not headcount.
Investors want ARR cohorts, net revenue retention, payback period, and CAC:LTV ratios — all audit-ready. Most founding teams don't have the time or experience to build these from scratch. A fractional CFO has done it dozens of times across SaaS companies at your exact stage.
Investors will do technical diligence. A fractional CTO assesses your architecture, identifies the debt that matters (vs. the debt that's fine), and builds a prioritized remediation roadmap you can present credibly. Proactive diligence prep closes rounds faster.
In the $1M–$10M ARR range, your needs change every 6 months. A fractional engagement scales from 10 hours/week during fundraise prep to 20+ hours during product architecture sprints. You pay for what you need, when you need it.
Not every SaaS company needs every role. Here's what companies at your stage typically engage first.
Architecture reviews, technical debt prioritization, engineering team scaling, vendor selection, and SOC 2 readiness. Your board-facing technical voice.
Most CommonInvestor-ready financial models, unit economics, board reporting, fundraise prep, and SaaS metrics infrastructure (ARR, NRR, CAC, LTV).
Fundraise CriticalGo-to-market operations, customer success infrastructure, OKR systems, and cross-functional coordination as your team scales past 25 people.
Scale StageDemand generation strategy, product marketing, analyst relations, competitive positioning, and building repeatable pipeline before a full-time marketing hire.
Pipeline GrowthCompensation benchmarking for competitive talent markets, performance systems, culture-at-scale design, and equity plan structuring for 20–100 person teams.
People & CultureOur free assessment identifies which executive function is your current growth bottleneck and matches you with the right profile in your ARR range.
Get MatchedFrom first call to board-ready architecture review in under 60 days.
Codebase review, infrastructure audit, team interviews. Identifies the 3–5 architectural decisions that have the highest downstream business impact. You get a written findings memo.
Not all debt is equal. The fractional CTO separates cosmetic debt (low priority) from structural debt (blocks scaling) from security debt (investor risk). Delivers a prioritized remediation roadmap with effort estimates and business ROI per item.
Implements architectural improvements, designs engineering team structure for next 12 months of growth, and builds the technical hiring plan your board wants to see.
Technical due diligence prep, board presentation support, CTO-level interviews for fundraise. Most engagements shift from execution-heavy to advisory after month 3.
The math is straightforward. Use the savings calculator to model your specific situation.
| Factor | Full-Time CTO/CFO | Fractional Executive |
|---|---|---|
| Annual Cost (all-in) | $380,000–$480,000 | $120,000–$192,000 |
| Time to hire | 3–6 months | 48–72 hours to matched |
| Equity dilution | 0.5%–1.5% typical | None |
| Flexibility | Fixed headcount, hard to exit | Scale up/down monthly |
| SaaS fundraise experience | Varies — may be first-time | Typically 5–15 prior raises |
| Commitment required | 18–24 months minimum | Month-to-month after 90 days |
Tell us your ARR stage, your biggest bottleneck, and what you're building toward. We match you with executives who've done it before.