Senior technology leadership. A fraction of the seat.
A technology executive on retainer for the decisions only a CTO should own — strategy and roadmap, build-vs-buy, vendors and contracts, architecture, team, security, AI governance. For owner-led companies that don’t have one, and PE sponsors who need one across a portfolio.
The decisions that shouldn’t be made by whoever’s loudest.
Technology strategy & roadmap
What to build, buy, or retire over the next 12–36 months — tied to the business plan, not to whatever the last vendor pitched.
Build vs. buy
An honest, numbers-first call on each major decision, including the ones where the answer is “neither, yet.”
Vendor & tool selection — and negotiation
Someone on your side of the table who has read the contract before and knows what the renewal will actually cost.
Architecture review
A senior eye on what your teams and vendors are building, before it becomes technical debt with a maintenance bill.
Team & org evaluation, coaching
Do you have the right people in the right seats? Who needs a mentor, who needs a manager, who needs a different job?
Hiring support
Job descriptions that attract the right engineer, technical interviews you can trust, and a straight read on candidates.
Security & compliance posture
Where you stand against what your customers, insurers, and regulators expect — and the shortest path to “yes” on the next questionnaire.
AI governance
The rules for how AI gets used in your business: what it may touch, who approves, what gets logged. AI prepares; a person approves; the system logs.
Know what you’re buying — or what a buyer will find.
A fixed-fee technology assessment for a transaction, run by the engineers who evaluate, rescue, and rebuild systems for a living.
Buy-side
What are you really acquiring? Architecture, code, infrastructure, security, the team, and the technical debt — translated into post-close investment, risk, and the questions to ask before you sign.
Sell-side
Get ahead of the buyer’s diligence. Find what they’ll flag, fix what’s cheap to fix, and walk in with a defensible story about the rest.
Technology Due Diligence
Built on the same evaluation engine as our System Evaluation, widened to what a deal team needs: the team, the roadmap, the debt, and what it costs to fix after close.
- Written findings a deal team can read
- A risk register, ranked
- Post-close investment estimate (buy) or remediation plan (sell)
- A 100-day technology plan
A fixed fee per transaction, scoped to the size of the target and the deal clock — quoted within days of the Discovery Call, so it never holds up the process.
Talk about a transactionYou have a lot of technology decisions and nobody whose job is to make them.
- Owner-led companies ($5M–$100M) with no technology executive and a growing stack of technology decisions
- PE operating partners who need consistent technology leadership across a portfolio
- Companies between CTOs — or hiring one, and wanting a senior hand until they land
- Boards and CEOs who want an independent technical voice that isn’t selling them software
Carrying a portfolio? Start with AI for the PE Operating Partner and our Private Equity page — the same play, company after company.
Sherpa teaches your people; the Fractional CTO is your technology executive.
Sherpa is a 3-month guided program under Training & Facilitation — it gets a leadership team fluent in AI and pointed at the right first build. The Fractional CTO sits in your leadership meetings, owns technology decisions, and is accountable for them. See Sherpa.
A retainer. A named executive. Your agenda.
A monthly retainer for a named senior technologist, with a cadence set to your business — leadership meetings, vendor and architecture reviews, and the between-meeting calls that a real executive takes.
Standalone from AI Office. If your business also wants things built, the Fractional CTO is the one holding the builders — including ours — to account.
The math on hiring in-house versus retaining a team is on the Why Frogslayer page. Why Frogslayer →
The cadence — standing leadership meetings, review time, and the calls in between — is set with you after the Deep Dive and priced from there as a monthly retainer. There is no rate card on purpose: the right seat for a $10M owner-led company and for a five-portco platform are not the same seat, and we would rather quote the one you need.
The same senior bench clients call a partner.
The people who take the Fractional CTO seat are the strategists and architects behind hundreds of builds, evaluations, and rescues since 2005. What clients say about the consulting, below.
Fractional CTO
A Houston energy-software company: senior technology leadership on retainer, holding the roadmap, the vendors, and the team to account.
Technology Due Diligence
A consumer-brands company through a transaction: what the buyer would find, ranked, with the plan to address it.
Full case studies for both are being written; until then, the people who sat in those seats are happy to talk about them on a call.
Strategic, not just technical.
An expert team, Frogslayer’s strengths lie not just in development, but in their ability to consult strategically. Throughout, the team has kept the client’s best interests in mind, providing suggestions to elevate both the product and the business. Their dedication and support set them apart.
Frogslayer is easy to work with — they communicate in a detailed, professional manner without wasting time, and the work product is top level. They suggested an approach we hadn’t considered and built a product that works even better than we envisioned.
We interviewed seven firms and had a small test project. Frogslayer outperformed its competitors.
Five steps, every time.
For a Fractional CTO, “Engage” is a monthly retainer; for due diligence it’s a fixed-fee assessment on the transaction’s clock.
- 01Discovery Call30–60 min
You tell us the problem in your words. We tell you straight whether — and where — we can help. No slides.
- 02Deep Dive60–90 min
The people closest to the problem, in one room (or one call). We get to the real constraint and the number that matters.
- 03Proposal & Paperworkdays, not weeks
Scope, price, and timeline in writing. A standard MSA and a short SOW — no 50-page lock-up.
- 04Prep & Kickoffweek 1
Access, environments, and a kickoff with everyone who touches the work. You know who’s on it and what ships first.
- 05Engageongoing
The work itself — visible every week, in your environment, with your people in the loop.
Straight answers.
How is this different from AI Office?
AI Office builds — a team on retainer that ships AI and automation inside your business. The Fractional CTO decides and oversees — strategy, vendors, architecture, team, governance. They can coexist: the CTO sets direction and holds the builders accountable, including when the builders are us.
How is this different from Sherpa?
Sherpa teaches your people; the Fractional CTO is your technology executive. Sherpa is a 3-month program that gets your leadership team fluent in AI. The Fractional CTO owns your technology decisions on an ongoing basis.
Isn’t there a conflict of interest if you also build software?
The retainer’s job is your interests. If our own team is a candidate for a piece of work, you’ll hear that in writing, alongside the alternatives, and you decide. We’ve told plenty of clients to buy instead of build, and to hire instead of retain.
Do you take a full-time seat?
No — fractional means part-time, senior, and accountable. If the right answer is a full-time CTO, we help you define the role, interview, and land one, then hand over cleanly.
What does it cost?
A monthly retainer, scoped after the Deep Dive to the cadence your business needs — we quote the seat, not a rate card. Technology Due Diligence is a fixed fee per transaction, quoted within days of the first call.
Can we do a one-off assessment instead of a retainer?
Yes. For a single system, that’s a System Evaluation. For a transaction, it’s Technology Due Diligence. Either can lead into a retainer, or not.
Need a technology executive in the room — not on the payroll?
Book a 30-minute intro. Describe the decisions piling up, or the deal on your desk, and we’ll tell you whether a retainer or a one-off diligence is the right shape.