You're not behind.
You just don't have anyone technical in your corner.
I'm a fractional CTO for leaders who don't have one — and don't want to spend the next three months figuring out where to start.
Most of the people calling me right now are calling about AI — what to actually try, what to skip, where it fits in their business and where it doesn't. Some are calling about other things: a migration that doesn't smell right, a project that's stalled, a system that needs someone in charge. The shape of the call changes. The job is the same.
You might recognize yourself here.
The leader who suspects they're behind on AI
You run a successful business. You've been hearing about AI for two years and assumed the rest of the world has it figured out. Mostly they don't, but you don't know that yet. You don't want to look uninformed in front of your team, and you genuinely don't know what to ask first.
The leader being asked to lead outside their lane
The expectation came down quickly. Your team is being asked to do things with tools and technology nobody on it has used before. You've never been the technical decision-maker. The pressure is real, the path forward isn't obvious, and there isn't time to figure it out from a blog post.
The operator handed a decision they can't evaluate
You've been handed a technology decision — a vendor, a platform, a migration — and the people across the table sound confident in a way that makes you nervous. You don't have the technical background to push back. There's no CTO above you to call. The deadline is real and the stakes are high.
If any of those feel familiar, you're in the right place. None of them are unusual. All of them are workable.
What I actually do.
I'm fractional, which means I work with you for as long as you need me and not a day longer. Sometimes that's a single afternoon. Sometimes it's a year. The shape of the engagement comes from the shape of your problem, not from a service menu.
- Sit with you and your team for a day and figure out where AI actually fits in your business — and where it doesn't
- Take one of your real projects, work through it with you, and show you which AI tools would genuinely save your team time on it
- Help you start small with AI — concrete first steps, with measures of success that aren't vibes
- Look at a platform or software decision the vendor is pushing and tell you whether it's the right call before you spend the money
- Stand in as your CTO for a quarter while you evaluate what you actually need long-term
- Walk into a project that's stalled, find the thing nobody's saying out loud, and get it moving again
- Translate between your team and the technical people they're talking to, when those conversations have stopped working
- Tell you, plainly, when the answer is "you don't need this yet"
If your situation isn't on this list, it's probably still something I do. Ask me.
How working with me starts.
A conversation, free.
Thirty minutes, on a call. You describe what's on your plate. I listen, ask questions, and tell you what I actually think — including if I'm not the right person for it. No pitch deck, no follow-up sequence.
A focused first piece of work.
If we both want to keep going, we start with something small and well-defined. A diagnostic week. A specific project. A short fractional engagement. You'll know the scope, the cost, and what you'll have at the end before we begin.
Whatever comes next, if anything.
Some clients work with me for a week and don't need me again for a year. Some keep me on quietly in the background. Some bring me in for the next thing. There's no retainer trap and no long-term contract.
Stories from thirty years of being the person they called.
Most of these started the same way — with someone in over their head, calling for help. The companies got bigger. The shape of the call didn't change.
A platform the team had given up on
The team believed they'd hit a hard physical limit. They hadn't. One caching change they'd written off as too risky bought them eighteen months of breathing room.
Read the full story →A year of failure, turned into a flagship
Anheuser-Busch had spent a year trying to make a portal work. The team was demoralized. The fix wasn't technical — nobody in the room had the authority and willingness to make a call.
Read the full story →A global conference that had to go virtual
COVID shut down Autodesk's annual user conference. They needed to pivot to a virtual event for 100,000+ attendees across 200+ countries — without a single regional slowdown.
Read the full story →
I'm Ed.
I've been doing this for about thirty years. Most of that time I've been the person being called when something technical was broken, stuck, or about to ship and nobody knew what to do next.
I built one of Canada's first headless CMS platforms in the early 2000s, before "headless" was a word people used. I've led teams from one person to fifty. I've walked into a year-long failed enterprise project and gotten it shipped in months. I've also helped a friend's executive assistant figure out which AI tool to try first.
The work changes shape. The job is always the same: be the technical person in the room when one is missing.
Want to talk?
Tell me what's on your plate. The first conversation is free, and I'll be honest about whether I can help.
Start with a conversation