Dan Jacobs - Fractional CTO

Key information:



Examples of my fractional CTO work

Farillio (2017 - 2023)

Title:  Fractional CTO / first 'hire'. 

Achievements: I architected the MVP of the platform, hired a Director of Engineering and then stepped back into a non-exec role. Eventually, I joined Farillio Full time until August 2023.  See a testimonial from the founder here

Nimble Tank (2020)

Title: Fractional Tech Director 

Achievements: Nimble Tank is a design agency.  I designed, built and deliverd a business hub for Natwest providing information, help and support for their SME customers at the start of the Covid pandemic.

The Bio Agency (2019-2020)

Title: Fractional Interim CTO

Achievements: I managed several large digital transformation projects and supported new business with pre-sales.  Clients at the time included a UK law firm Hogan Lovells.

Medic Animal (2017)

Title: Fractional Interim CTO

Achievements: Medic Animal are a large international online petstore based in the UK.  I bridged the gap between CTO's during a period of huge change with upgrades to Hybris and a new SAP integration landing during my time.

Retail Marketing International (2016)

Title: Fractional Interim CTO

Achievements: RMI hired me to turn an agency product into a SAAS product.  I designed, built and delivered a new software platform which was designed in cooperation with Heineken & Unilever (first two customers).

LinkedInLink

< Many more fractional roles are listed on my LinkedIn

Recent content

The following article was first published on LinkedIn:

Hiring a developer to be your CTO can lead to failure - consider a fractional CTO


June 6, 2023

Over the past ten years, the option of a part-time or fractional CTO has become more popular.  A fractional CTO addresses a problem that has plagued early-stage (first 5-8 years) startups for decades; a permanent CTO is expensive and often not needed full-time.  But why is a CTO needed at all in the early stages of a business?

It’s very easy for non-technical founders to fall into the trap of either hiring a developer to produce an MVP (minimum viable product) or outsourcing the development of an MVP to a developing country with “cheap” developer resources.  

A good developer will typically know how to take your requirements and implement them in code. However, that is just one small part of taking an idea into a working product, and there are many potential pitfalls along the way.  I have had to rescue many startups that have floundered because of only having developers and no technical leadership, strategy or oversight.  

Here are some of the problems I have encountered when a developer or a team of developers are working without a CTO or other technology leadership:

READ MORE


I produced this in June 2023 to help explain what a fractional CTO does for startups and scale-ups.