fractional cto

Technical leadership for early-stage startups

I've been the technical co-founder who stayed up until 3am fixing production. The CTO who scaled a team from 2 to 20. The consultant who walked into chaos and left behind systems that actually work. Currently: running three production Rails apps and a **multi-agent AI system** with 6 specialized agents across Anthropic, OpenAI, and Kimi. Agents handle coding, PR review, deployment, PM/triage, and operations — all orchestrated through a custom work queue system I built. Previously: CTO and co-founder at LEA. Before that: engineering leadership at a half-dozen NYC startups. I don't do decks and roadmaps that sit in a drawer. I fix the thing that's actually broken.
What makes me different: Most fractional CTOs can talk about AI. I build AI systems — production multi-agent architectures, autonomous deployment pipelines, memory systems with vector search (pgvector), and agent orchestration that actually ships code. If you want someone who's done the work, not just read the blog posts, that's me.

Who This Is For

  • Seed/Series A startups without technical leadership
  • Non-technical founders who need a technical brain they can trust
  • Teams that are stuck — slow releases, constant fires, technical debt crushing morale
  • Companies about to scale and realizing their architecture won’t survive it
  • Founders who want to leverage AI but don’t know where to start (or got burned by hype)

What You Get

AI Systems & Agent Architecture

  • Multi-agent system design — when to use one agent vs. many, how they coordinate
  • Model selection across providers (Claude, GPT-4, Kimi) — what each does well
  • Memory systems: structured (files) vs. semantic (embeddings/vector search)
  • Prompt engineering that actually works — evaluation frameworks, iteration cycles
  • Autonomous coding agents: Claude Code, Codex CLI, setup and guardrails
  • Where AI saves real time vs. where it's theater — I'll tell you the truth

Technical Strategy & Architecture

  • Stack decisions that won't haunt you in 18 months
  • Architecture reviews — what's working, what's about to break
  • Build vs. buy guidance (spoiler: you probably don't need to build it)
  • Technical due diligence prep for your next round

Team Building & Process

  • Hiring — what to look for, how to evaluate, when to compromise
  • Engineering culture that ships instead of bikesheds
  • Process that helps instead of hinders
  • Mentoring your senior engineers into leaders

Hands-On Execution

  • Code review and standards that stick
  • Refactoring plans that don't require a 6-month freeze
  • Incident response and reliability engineering
  • Database performance and scaling strategy

How It Works

Advisory retainer — Monthly engagement with scheduled calls and async Slack access. Best for ongoing guidance.

Project-based — Deep dive into a specific problem: AI integration, architecture overhaul, team restructure, technical due diligence. Fixed scope, fixed timeline.

Fractional CTO — Embedded leadership 2-3 days/week. Running standups, reviewing code, making the calls. For teams that need leadership now but aren’t ready for a full-time hire.

Let's Talk

Tell me what you're building and where you're stuck.

chuck.blake@gmail.com

Brooklyn, NY · Available for remote or on-site in NYC