10–20 hours a week of advice, or a founder who also writes the code.
A fractional CTO answers who thinks about the architecture. It rarely answers who builds it, and before product-market fit the second question is the one with a deadline.
| Dimension | SingleBit, retained | Fractional CTO |
|---|---|---|
| What you buy | Technical judgment and the hands that ship it | 10–20 hours a week of senior technical judgment |
| Who writes the code | We do. Naman Barkiya leads engineering directly | Rarely them; usually a shop or freelancers they manage |
| Architecture calls | Made by the engineer who then builds on them | The core of the role |
| Investor story | Abhiraj Sakargaye writes the positioning and the deck | A credible senior technical name for the raise |
| Layers between you and the code | None: requests go to the people doing the work | Often one more: you, the CTO, then whoever they hire |
| Shipped output | Every request ships to staging and gets demoed on Friday | Plans, reviews, and vendor picks; code only if someone else is hired |
| Hiring your full-time CTO | A repo your hire can read from the first commit | Often runs the search, one of the most useful parts of the role |
| Attention | Four or fewer active engagements per co-founder | Split across several companies by design |
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What a fractional CTO is for.
A fractional CTO sells 10 to 20 hours a week of senior judgment: architecture decisions, vendor and stack selection, a technical narrative investors believe, and eventually the search for your full-time CTO. That's real work. It's also advisory time, not build time.
Ten to twenty hours is enough to review a pull request, not write forty of them. So when the product actually gets built, one of two things happens: the fractional CTO codes a fraction of it and the timeline stretches to their bandwidth, or they subcontract the build and manage that team for you.
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The stack of costs you end up paying.
The second path is the one to price honestly. You pay the fractional CTO's retainer, the build cost of whoever they hire, and you get a management layer between you and the engineer writing your code. A retained team removes that structure by doing the thinking and the building under one roof.
The tell is one question. Ask any technical hire: will you personally write the code, or hire someone who does? Our answer is the first one.
The other side
When a fractional CTO wins.
When you're mid-raise and a senior technical name on the deck moves the round. That credibility is the product, and no amount of shipped code stands in for it in the investor meeting.
When the product's core risk is one architecture decision big enough to outlast the MVP. Pick the wrong database or event model on a fintech product and you're rebuilding at Series A. Buy the senior owner of that decision first, then hire people to build against the plan.
And when you already have engineers. If your team writes good code and lacks senior direction, you need the advisor, not more hands.
Price
Tell us where you're stuck and what's in the queue, and we'll reply with pricing within 24 hours. Ask for pricing
Questions founders ask
- Can a fractional CTO build my MVP?
- Rarely at the hours they're sold at. Ten to twenty hours a week covers architecture and review, not the build, so most fractional CTOs subcontract the code and manage that team.
- Do I still need developers after hiring a fractional CTO?
- Usually, yes. Someone still has to write the code, and that's a second cost most founders don't budget for when they sign the first retainer.
- When is a fractional CTO the right first hire?
- When you need technical credibility for a raise, or when one architecture decision is big enough to outlast the MVP. In both cases you're buying judgment, not a shipped product.
- How is SingleBit different from a fractional CTO?
- We make the technical calls and write the code. Naman Barkiya leads engineering directly, with no subcontracted team or management layer in between.
Keep reading
Talk to the two people who'd do the work.
A 30-minute call with Naman or Abhiraj. Or email two paragraphs on what you're building — we reply with a pricing estimate within 24 hours.
Send two or three times that work, with your timezone. A founder confirms within 24 hours.
Request a call by email