Why are you so expensive? Don’t you know this is for startups?

We’ve done extensive research into what others charge for services of our caliber and we are confident that we come in consistently less than other agencies every time. Still, we know it can seem like a lot of money. As a founder, you can’t afford to take a chance on developers without a track record or “cheaper” alternatives like offshoring to folks on the other side of the world. When building the products that startups ultimately use to drive massive revenue and valuations, cutting corners will cost much more in the long term than just building it right to start with.

What do you offer for those who still can’t afford full time help?

We work in a time commitment per month for cash model. We can go as granular as a half day a week. Additionally, we offer adhoc/hourly retainers for some early startups who qualify.

Do you ever work for equity or delayed payment?

Unfortunately, we can't work for equity or payments deferred until after a company is profitable or successfully completes a fundraising round. We are a small team and can't afford to work for extended periods of time without payment. For new clients, we require payment in advance each month for the first three months. We are happy to offer Net 30 terms after this, following the establishment of a consistent payment history.

I have an engineering team based in Europe/Asia/Africa. Can you work with them? What about LatAm or Canada?

Our philosophy is that there is good talent everywhere and we think it's exciting to work with folks all over the world. However, we're based in the Mountain US timezone, so sometimes working with people on the other side of the globe introduces difficulties that make communication and collaboration difficult or impossible. For this reason, we examine each team before getting started to make sure we are a good fit for our clients and their teams. Latin America and Canada is often a lot easier to manage but we'd still love to meet them or see their work before committing.

What's the process to setup technical interviews with a team member?

If your team requires a technical interview, just ask and we will set one up at your convenience. However, we do not participate in take-home assignments or coding tests since they tend not to be representative of the work that we will actually be doing in the role and generally not a good indicator for the skill level of the developer. Further, it can tend to make people feel put on the spot and drive anxiety during the interview process. Our experience is that they actually increase the screening out of promising candidates.

Additionally, we don't use code tests or take home exercises for any screening or hiring we do for our clients and instead prefer to have a technical conversation to get a sense of a candidate's experience.

What's the point of being a fractional CTO? Why wouldn't you just get a job somewhere instead?

An agency model can allow people to learn more about how diverse groups in different industries work much faster than getting a regular job somewhere, so it allows us to help your company, while still giving us the variety of work that drives our curiosity. Further, it provides consistency to our team in terms of payroll, benefits and support. We are committed to the success of our projects as we sink or swim based on our reputation. Being contractors doesn't make us feel like we have any less skin in the game in the work we do for our clients and neither should it for them.

Are there any technologies you don't work with?

We don't do any programming work with PHP or Microsoft languages (C#, .Net). There’s nothing wrong with these; they just aren’t our strong suit or interest.

We also don’t normally consider projects with blockchain tech, cryptocurrencies or digital tokens, NFTs or anything else that might be considered “Web 3.”

If you don’t see it mentioned here or on the home page, just ask - we might be able to help!