Fractional CTO for Series A
Series A companies have proven product-market fit and are now focused on scaling the business efficiently. With significant capital, you're transitioning from startup to scale-up, which requires profe...
Typical Funding
$2M - $15M
Team Size
15-40 people
Revenue
$1M - $5M ARR
Runway
24-36 months
Understanding Series A
Series A companies have proven product-market fit and are now focused on scaling the business efficiently. With significant capital, you're transitioning from startup to scale-up, which requires professionalizing every aspect of the engineering organization. You need to build platform architecture that supports multiple products, establish engineering leadership structure, implement enterprise security and compliance, and scale the team from 5-10 engineers to 30-50 while maintaining velocity and quality. This is where many technical leaders struggle without experienced guidance.
Key Priorities at This Stage
- Scale engineering team from 10 to 30-50 while maintaining culture and quality
- Build engineering leadership: hire engineering managers, tech leads, staff engineers
- Transition from monolith to scalable architecture (microservices, event-driven)
- Implement enterprise security requirements (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR compliance)
- Build platform and infrastructure teams separate from product teams
- Establish data engineering and analytics capabilities
- Create engineering career ladder from junior to staff/principal level
- Implement OKRs and engineering metrics for accountability
- Build for multi-tenancy, white-labeling, enterprise scale (1M+ users)
- Prepare technical foundation for Series B (international, mobile, integrations)
Why You Need a Fractional CTO
- Expert guidance scaling to 50+ engineers without losing culture or velocity
- Proven architecture patterns for enterprise scale and compliance
- Network of VP Engineering and senior IC talent for leadership hires
- Strategic technical roadmap aligned with Series B requirements
- Objective assessment of engineering org effectiveness and gaps
Common Challenges at Series A
Scaling engineering team 3-5x while maintaining velocity and culture
Technical debt from MVP/seed stage becoming major obstacle to development
Need for engineering management layer but founders haven't managed managers before
Enterprise customers requiring security certifications (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA)
Monolithic architecture can't support team size or product complexity
Inconsistent development practices across growing number of teams
Difficulty attracting senior engineering talent to compete with FAANG
Performance and scalability issues with 10-100x user growth
Need for specialized roles: DevOps, SRE, Data Engineering, Security
Engineering costs ballooning without clear ROI or productivity metrics
Budget Guidance for Series A
Fractional C T O
$7,500-$12,000/month (30-40 hours/month as strategic advisor to VP Eng)
Engineering
$3M-$7M/year (20-40 engineers, 2-4 managers, 1 director)
Infrastructure
$5,000-$20,000/month (AWS/GCP, monitoring, security tools)
Tooling
$2,000-$5,000/month (advanced dev tools, collaboration, security)
Recruiting
$100K-$300K/year (recruiters, sourcing tools, employment brand)
Training
$50K-$150K/year (conferences, courses, certifications)
Total Monthly Tech Burn
$280K-$650K/month
Success Story
Series A enterprise SaaS, 25 people, $12M raised, $2.5M ARR, targeting $10M ARR in 18 months
Challenge
Engineering team of 12 couldn't keep up with sales demands. VP Engineering hired 6 months prior was struggling (first VP role). Monolithic Rails app had performance issues and took 2 weeks to deploy simple changes. Multiple enterprise deals blocked on SOC 2. Engineering morale low due to constant firefighting. Board concerned about ability to scale.
Solution
Fractional CTO engaged as advisor to VP Engineering and exec team. First 60 days: conducted engineering assessment, identified critical bottlenecks, defined 12-month transformation roadmap. Key initiatives: 1) Restructured teams into product squads with clear ownership, 2) Hired 2 engineering managers and staff engineer, 3) Initiated microservices migration for core bottlenecks, 4) Implemented proper CI/CD reducing deploy time from 2 weeks to 2 hours, 5) Led SOC 2 Type 2 certification (6 months), 6) Established engineering metrics and OKR process, 7) Coached VP Engineering on leadership and communication, 8) Scaled team from 12 to 35 engineers with quality bar.
Result
Grew from $2.5M to $11M ARR in 18 months with engineering team of 35. Deployment frequency increased from bi-weekly to daily. SOC 2 Type 2 achieved, unblocking $3M in enterprise deals. Engineering engagement scores improved from 6.2 to 8.1. Successfully raised $35M Series B with clean technical diligence. VP Engineering promoted to CTO with confidence. Platform now supports $50M ARR without major rewrites.
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