FRACTIONAL CTO/CPO SUPPORTING HARD-TECH FOUNDERS & INVESTORSYou have the tech.
Now you have a company to build.
I partner with hard-tech founders to build companies that deliver on their commitments - aligning product, engineering, and manufacturing - so you can ship, learn, and scale without burning people out.
CONSUMER HARDWARE · ROBOTICS · DEFENSE · AEROSPACE · ADVANCED MANUFACTURING WHO YOU'D BE WORKING WITHI've learned most of this the hard way.
Over 15 years building hardware, most of it as a technical director, VP, or founder:
Four hard-tech startups, seed through a $100M Series D
One I co-founded and led to an acquisition offer
Three where I led hardware dev and scaled the engineering org
Owned roadmaps, architecture, execution, hiring, and path to production
Industry experience: consumer hardware, robotics (physical AI), defense, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing
Enough wins to know the patterns, and enough scars to respect the problem.
9
products to production-ready
7 → 21
team built in 6 months
−45%
cost cut to robotic platform
<2%
voluntary attrition on my teams
ACTIVE TOP SECRET CLEARANCE · 6 PATENTS · BSME · BASED IN CALIFORNIAWHAT I BELIEVEComplexity is inevitable.
Chaos is not.
Hard-tech is hard enough on its own. It doesn't need roadmaps nobody believes, priorities that change every week, or promises the company can't keep. Reality is the advantage. Clear priorities and honest trade-offs beat urgency and hope, every time.
Dysfunction isn’t the price of ambition.
WHY "PLY"Strength doesn't come from mass.
It comes from how the plies are laid.
A single ply of carbon fiber bends in your hand. Lay a few together correctly, and you get something stronger than steel at a fraction of the weight. A company is no different: product, engineering, manufacturing, and team aren't strong on their own. They are strong when they are positioned and bonded with intent.
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Deciding what to build, for whom, and what to leave out - a roadmap the team actually believes, not a wish list.
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Architecture across mechanical, electrical, software, and firmware - and the interfaces between them - built to hold as you scale, not just to work today.
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Designed for cost, yield, and quality from the first prototype - the path from one working unit to a repeatable thousand.
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The right people, clear ownership, and an operating rhythm that ships - so the company keeps its commitments without grinding people down.
Most companies have the plies - few have them all holding together under pressure.
WHERE IT BREAKSTwo ways a startup comes apart.
Same as the laminate: a layer can be weak on its own, or the layers can fail to hold together. Two different problems - and most companies have some of both.
01 - ORIENTATION - LAYER HEALTHIs each ply strong on its own?
Every discipline needs the right people, a structure that fits the stage, and a clear target. When a layer is off: the team that nailed the prototype can't take it to production. Ownership is fuzzy, so decisions stall - or get made twice. Everyone works hard toward a goal no one quite agrees on.
02 - BOND - RELATIONSHIP HEALTHDo the plies work as one?
Strong layers still fail if they don't connect. Product commits to what manufacturing can't build at cost - and everyone learns too late. Engineering ships exactly what the spec said, and it's still the wrong thing. Every team hits its own milestones, and the integrated product still slips.
Neither is any single team's job to fix - which is exactly why they go unaddressed.
Lay it up right, and scale makes it stronger. Get it wrong, and scale is what breaks it.
HOW WE'D WORK TOGETHERI’ll meet you where you are.
Proactive founders start with an assessment. If you already know what you need - a fractional partner, or coaching for your leads - we can start there. And if an assessment turns into ongoing work, it credits toward your first month, up to half.
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Three weeks looking at the whole company, not just the technology. You get a clear read on what's most likely to break next, and what to do first. Sometimes the honest answer is "not yet" - and I'll say so.
3 weeks · $18,000
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I join your team a few days a week and own the product-and-engineering job: what to build, how it's built, how it gets made, and who you hire. For the stretch between "the founder does everything" and a full-time exec.
1-3 days/week · from $9,000/mo
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Once the team is carrying the work, I move to fewer hours and bigger questions. A steady outside voice for the calls that are hard to take back - strategy, key hires, board prep.
ongoing · from $4,500/mo
AVAILABLE STANDALONE OR INSIDE AN ENGAGEMENT-
Build the company's operating system: how decisions get made, how the team runs, and what it stands for. Best right before you scale headcount.
Standalone or folded into a fractional engagement.
6 weeks · $32,000
LEADERSHIP COACHING Technical leadership is the only thing harder than the tech.
I coach new managers, first-time founders, and experienced leaders new to hard-tech through the real work of leadership - delegation, feedback, hiring, and the hard calls - one honest conversation at a time. Practical and private, from someone who has done the job and gotten it wrong enough to have learned how to do it right.
from $500 per session
FOR HARD-TECH INVESTORSSimplified due diligence for informed hard-tech investments.
I help you tell what’s real from what’s vaporware in plain English - the tech, the cost, the risk, the team. Independent and conflict-free: no success fees, no carry.
Technical and manufacturing risk, ranked by severity
Cost and yield reality against the model you were shown
Whether the team can actually deliver this at scale
A clear read — go, no-go, or what to fix first
AS A FULL PRE-INVESTMENT REVIEW, AN ON-DEMAND SECOND OPINION, OR ON RETAINER