What Is a Fractional CTO?

A fractional CTO is a part-time chief technology officer who works with your startup on a contracted basis — typically 10 to 20 hours per week. You get the same strategic leadership a full-time CTO provides, without the full-time executive price tag.

If you're a non-technical founder building a tech product, this is probably the most important hire you'll make. And it doesn't have to be a hire at all.

What Does a Fractional CTO Actually Do?

A fractional CTO does everything a full-time CTO does — just scoped to your stage and budget. In practice, that means:

• Technology strategy: Choosing the right tech stack, architecture, and infrastructure for your product and your budget.
• Team leadership: Hiring developers, managing vendors, running standups, and reviewing code — or building the process so someone else can.
• Architecture decisions: Deciding how the system is built so it can actually scale when users show up.
• Vendor evaluation: Cutting through sales pitches to tell you which tools and services are worth paying for.
• Investor readiness: Making sure your technical story holds up under due diligence. Investors will ask, and you need answers.
• AI prototype rescue: If you built a prototype with Cursor, Bolt, Lovable, or Replit and it's falling apart — a fractional CTO can assess what's salvageable and chart a path forward.

How Is It Different from a Technical Advisor?

People confuse these two all the time. Here's the difference:

A technical advisor tells you what to think about. A fractional CTO rolls up their sleeves and makes it happen.

How Much Does a Fractional CTO Cost?

Most fractional CTOs charge between $150 and $300 per hour, or $5,000 to $15,000 per month on a retainer. The range depends on experience, scope, and how much of their time you need.

Compare that to a full-time CTO:

• Base salary: $200K-$350K
• Equity: 1-5% (potentially worth millions)
• Benefits, bonus, overhead: Add another $50K-$100K

For an early-stage startup, that math doesn't work. A fractional CTO gives you 80% of the value at 20% of the cost — and you can scale the engagement up or down as your needs change.

When Should You Hire a Fractional CTO?

You probably need one if any of these sound familiar:

• You're a non-technical founder building a tech product. Someone needs to own the technical decisions, and it shouldn't be your dev shop alone.
• You built a prototype with AI tools and it's hitting a wall. Cursor, Bolt, Lovable, Replit — these tools are great for v1. But production-ready software needs architectural thinking they don't provide.
• You're about to raise money. Investors will ask about your tech. A fractional CTO can present the technical vision, answer hard questions, and de-risk the investment.
• You have developers but no senior technical leader. Junior and mid-level devs need direction. Without it, you get inconsistent code, wrong architectural choices, and mounting tech debt.
• You're evaluating build vs. buy decisions. Should you build a custom feature or use an off-the-shelf tool? A fractional CTO helps you make these calls with real experience, not guesswork.

What Does the Engagement Look Like?

Every fractional CTO engagement is different, but here's a typical structure:

Month 1 — Assessment: Audit the current codebase, tech stack, and team. Identify risks, gaps, and quick wins. Produce a technical roadmap.

Months 2-3 — Foundation: Implement the roadmap. Set up proper architecture, CI/CD, testing, and deployment processes. Start hiring or managing vendors if needed.

Ongoing — Leadership: Run weekly standups. Review PRs. Make architecture decisions. Report to the founder on progress, blockers, and tradeoffs.

The goal is to get your technical house in order — and eventually, help you hire a full-time CTO when you're ready.

What Should You Look for in a Fractional CTO?

Not all fractional CTOs are created equal. Here's what matters:

• Startup experience. Big-company CTOs don't always translate. You need someone who's built things from zero, shipped MVPs, and worked within tight budgets.
• Hands-on ability. They should be able to review code, not just talk strategy. If they can't read a pull request, they can't lead your engineering.
• Communication skills. They need to translate technical decisions into business language. You shouldn't need a CS degree to understand your CTO's updates.
• Founder empathy. They should understand what it's like to build something from nothing. The best fractional CTOs have been founders themselves.

How Eight Bit Studios Does Fractional CTO

At Eight Bit Studios, fractional CTO is one of our core services — led by co-founder Don Bora.

Don has 35+ years in software — starting at Motorola, then building intelligent systems at Northwestern's Institute for the Learning Sciences (an AI research lab) in 1992, long before AI was a buzzword. He's held senior engineering roles at Bank of America, UBS, and Baxter Healthcare. He's co-founded 10+ companies, including WisePatient (acquired by Sharecare) and MobileMakersEdu. Eight Bit Studios has made the Inc. 5000 list four consecutive years.

Today, Don serves as fractional CTO for companies like Tilt 365 (SaaS) and a stealth healthcare startup, while also mentoring founders as an Expert in Residence at 1871's PYROS program. He mentors at Code Platoon, MATTER, gener8tor, and the Chicago Connectory.

That combination — enterprise discipline, startup speed, and deep AI expertise — is what makes our fractional CTO service different. We don't just advise. We get in the codebase. We attend your standups. We review your PRs. We help you hire developers and evaluate vendors. And because we're a full product studio, we can also execute — design, development, and deployment — when you need hands on keyboards.

Signs Your Startup Is Ready for a Fractional CTO

Not every startup needs a CTO on day one. If you're still validating an idea with a slide deck, you're too early. But once you start building software, the risks multiply fast.

You probably need a fractional CTO if:

• You're non-technical and managing developers is eating all your time.
• Product development feels slow and you can't pinpoint why.
• Your app keeps breaking and your team can't fix it permanently.
• Investors are asking technical questions you can't answer confidently.
• You're worried about security or compliance but don't know where to start.
• You built something with AI tools (Cursor, Bolt, Lovable) and it's hitting a wall you can't get past.

If you feel held hostage by your technology rather than empowered by it, it's time to bring in leadership.

Common Mistakes Founders Make

We've seen these patterns over and over:

• Hiring a fractional CTO and ignoring their advice. If you're paying for expertise, use it. When they tell you a feature will break the system, listen.
• Treating the CTO as a "super developer." They can code, but their value is in leadership — architecture decisions, team management, and strategic direction. Don't pay executive rates for tasks a mid-level developer can handle.
• Micromanaging the technical team. You hired them to lead engineering. Let them.
• Setting vague goals. "Make it better" isn't a goal. "Reduce page load time by 50%" is a goal. "Ship the MVP by March 15" is a goal.
• Hiding technical debt. Don't hide past mistakes or shortcuts. Your fractional CTO needs to know the truth to fix it. Every startup has tech debt — that's normal. Hiding it just wastes everyone's time.

Why Chicago Startups Benefit from Fractional CTOs

Chicago's startup ecosystem is built on practical, revenue-focused growth. Midwest founders tend to build sustainable businesses rather than chasing "growth at all costs." A fractional CTO who understands this landscape — who knows the local investor expectations, the talent market, and the mentorship networks like 1871 and mHUB — adds more value than a remote CTO who's never worked in the market.

We're based in Chicago and Dallas. Our fractional CTO engagements are informed by 15+ years of shipping products for Midwest startups and enterprises alike.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much do fractional CTO services cost in Chicago?

Rates typically range from $150-$300 per hour or $5,000-$15,000 per month for 10-20 hours weekly. For most early-stage startups, a fractional CTO delivers 5x+ ROI by preventing architectural mistakes that require expensive rewrites and accelerating time to market by 30-50%.

How long does a typical fractional CTO engagement last?

Most engagements run 6-18 months for early-stage startups. It usually starts with a 2-4 week audit, then shifts to ongoing leadership. The goal is to build a solid technical foundation and eventually help you hire a full-time CTO — typically after a Series A raise.

Can a fractional CTO help with compliance and data privacy?

Yes. A good fractional CTO ensures your architecture handles compliance requirements from day one — including Illinois BIPA (Biometric Information Privacy Act), HIPAA for health tech, SOC 2 for enterprise SaaS, and standard data privacy practices. It's much cheaper to build compliance in than to retrofit it later.

What's the difference between a fractional CTO and a technical consultant?

A fractional CTO provides ongoing executive leadership — they own technical outcomes, manage your team, and attend your standups weekly. A consultant typically handles short-term, scoped projects like a code audit or architecture review. If you need someone who sticks around and is accountable for results, you want the fractional CTO.

What tech stacks do Chicago fractional CTOs work with?

It depends on the CTO. At Eight Bit Studios, we specialize in Flutter for mobile and Ruby on Rails for backend, with AWS for cloud infrastructure. We chose these tools because they let startups ship fast without sacrificing code quality — and they're battle-tested across B2B SaaS, fintech, and health tech.

If you're a non-technical founder who needs technical leadership without the full-time commitment, let's talk.