Technical leadership, starting Monday.
Euclid.so · Fractional CTO & AI Enablement
The problem
This looks different depending on where you sit.
You can't tell if your team is moving fast or just busy, and no one's checking their work.
You're the architect, the IC, and the person answering security questionnaires at midnight. Something is going to drop.
Everyone's still shipping the old way. Retraining takes months, and it might not take.
You just can't get a straight answer on when it ships, or whether it holds up once it does.
Your options
Four ways to close the gap. They fail differently.
| Retrain the team | Full-time hire | Dev shop | Euclid | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starts | Now, slowly | Month 4–6 | Month 1 | Week 1 |
| Getting out | Months lost, team frustrated | Severance, equity, months of unwinding | Rebuild from zero | End the engagement on a phone call |
| Technical ownership | Maybe, eventually | Yes, eventually | No | Yes, day one |
| Shows up when it counts | Not yet | Yes | No | Yes |
The alternative
A technical co-founder.
Without the risk of hiring one.
Production-grade work, without the headcount of a hire or the overhead of an agency.
Diligence calls, security questionnaires, technical sales conversations — we answer for the architecture, not just build it.
A contract, not a cap table entry and a future negotiation.
If it isn't working, it stops. That asymmetry is the whole point.
If a permanent technical co-founder or CTO is the right long-term move, we help you find them and transfer cleanly. You're not stuck with us by default.
What that looks like
It's not outsourced vs. in-house.
It's who's earned the room.
A brand-new hire hasn't earned it yet. A junior engineer you're grooming for the role isn't ready for it. An outsourced team never will be. These three need someone who already has the standing — from day one.
The diligence call
An investor asks how the system scales, where the data lives, and what breaks first. We're on that call, and we answer for it.
The security questionnaire
A 200-line enterprise questionnaire arrives with a signature deadline attached. We own every answer.
The sales call
A technical buyer asks a hard architecture question mid-pitch. We answer it live, instead of promising a follow-up that costs you the deal.
What changed
You probably need fewer engineers than you think.
The default plan is to raise, hire five engineers, and hope the architecture holds. That plan was written before one experienced person could ship what a small team used to.
We build with AI as a matter of course — not as a demo. In practice that means a working system months earlier, and a hiring plan you write once you know what you actually need.
The expensive mistake
Hiring five engineers, then discovering in month six that the architecture won't hold — and now five salaries are waiting on the rewrite.
The other offer
AI enablement, done for real.
We identify the highest-leverage opportunities for AI in your product and your engineering process — not the flashiest ones.
Production systems, not demos. Evaluation, guardrails, and observability included from day one, not bolted on after.
You own and extend what we build together. No permanent dependency on an outside vendor to keep it running.
How it runs
The first ninety days.
Assess
- ·Architecture and code review
- ·Security posture and exposure
- ·What's blocking the next release
- ·A written kill-list
Stabilise
- ·Fix what's actively costing you
- ·Close the security gaps that block deals
- ·Set the technical direction
- ·Decide build, buy, or outsource
Build
- ·Ship the thing that was stuck
- ·Stand up the team, if you need one
- ·Compliance work underway
- ·A plan your board can read
Security & compliance
SOC 2 is a revenue problem.
Nobody buys compliance because they want it. They buy it because an enterprise deal has stalled and a questionnaire is sitting in someone's inbox with a deadline attached.
Not a first attempt on your budget.
Half the controls are engineering work — access, logging, change control. That's where the months go.
Done reactively, it eats a quarter and the deal that triggered it.
What it unblocks
Enterprise deals that stall on procurement
Security questionnaires answered in days
A trust page that ends the conversation
Diligence that doesn't surprise anyone
Building the team
Build, outsource, or neither.
We don't sell you our preferred model. We pick the one your situation calls for — including, sometimes, none of them yet.
Build in-house
You have the runway and the roadmap to justify permanent headcount. We write the specs, run the loop, and hand over to the CTO we helped you hire.
Stand up outsourced
Speed matters more than permanence. We select the partner, own the architecture, and stay accountable for what they deliver.
Neither, for now
The honest answer more often than you'd expect. We build it, you keep the runway, and we revisit when the product tells us to.
Who you're working with
The rigor of a scientist. The instincts of a CTO.
We've spent 15 years at the intersection of deep technical work and executive leadership — first in research, then as a full-time CTO, now as a fractional partner to companies that need both. No guessing, no experimenting on your dime. A proven process for identifying where AI creates real leverage, and shipping it fast.
- DegreePhD, Computational Science, Engineering & Mathematics
- Experience15+ years in engineering leadership
- ExecutiveExtensive experience as a full-time CTO
- ComplianceMultiple companies through SOC 2 certification
- ApproachFast over formal — solve the problem in front of you
Past Work
“Helped a Series B fintech ship their first AI feature in 6 weeks — something they'd been trying to do for a year.”
Series B Fintech · AI Feature Launch
“Stepped in as fCTO during a critical fundraise, stabilized the engineering org, and helped close the round.”
Early-Stage SaaS · Fundraise Support
“Replaced a $500k/yr outsourced team with one person and a clear system — faster output, better security, and a codebase someone actually understands.”
Growth-Stage Co. · AI Cost Reduction
Engagements
Six ways to start.
Assessment
Three weeks, fixed fee. Architecture, security posture, hiring plan, and a written kill-list. Yours to keep.
Project build
A specific thing, scoped and quoted, built to hand off cleanly to whoever runs it next.
Pay as you go
Hourly, for the narrow problem. A diligence call, a questionnaire, an architecture review.
AI enablement
A scoped AI implementation engagement — from opportunity assessment to shipped system.
Interim CTO
Monthly retainer, set days per week. Full technical ownership. Ends when you say so.
Advisory
Lighter monthly retainer. On call for hiring decisions, architecture reviews, and the questions that can't wait.
Start with the assessment. It stands on its own — and it tells us both whether the rest is worth doing.
Book a Call
Let's talk about what you're building.
30 minutes. No pitch. Just a direct conversation about where we can help — and whether we're the right fit.
Schedule a Call