Earliest stage
Fractional CTO for Pre-Seed and Seed Startups
At pre-seed you cannot afford a CTO and you cannot afford to get the technical decisions wrong either. That gap is the entire reason fractional engagements exist.
I have been the technical co-founder six times, so I know which of these early decisions actually matter and which ones founders lose weeks agonising over for no reason. Most of the value I add at this stage is subtraction.
What I'm hired to own
The decisions that are cheap now and expensive later
Building far more than the question requires
The most valuable thing I do pre-seed is tell you what to cut. Most seed-stage roadmaps contain three months of work that answers no real question. Removing it is worth more than any architecture decision.
A stack chosen for novelty rather than hiring
The right stack at this stage is the boring one you can hire for in your market and that I can hand to a team without a six-week ramp. I have watched interesting technology choices make the first engineering hire twice as hard.
Agency contracts signed without technical review
If you are outsourcing the build, someone technical has to own the spec, the acceptance criteria, and the IP and code-ownership clauses. I do that review, and I have caught contracts that would have left founders without rights to their own codebase.
The technical section of your deck does not survive contact with an investor
Investors ask why this is hard, why you can build it, and what happens at scale. I help you answer honestly and specifically, which is far more convincing than the usual hand-waving about proprietary technology.
The first engineering hire is the highest-leverage decision you will make
Get it wrong and you spend nine months and your runway finding out. I write the role, screen technically, run the interviews, and give you a real assessment, because you cannot evaluate a senior engineer if you are not one.
How an engagement runs
Week one, month one, month three
Week 1
I find out what is actually true
Architecture review, codebase read, and honest conversations with every engineer you have. You get a written assessment at the end of it: what is solid, what is risky, what is going to break, and what it costs to fix each one. No slide deck, just a document you can act on.
Month 1
The bleeding stops and the roadmap becomes real
I fix or contain the things from week one that were actually urgent, and rebuild the technical roadmap so it has dates you can believe. If you are hiring, the role is written and the interview loop exists. If you are pre-launch, scope gets cut, usually by a lot.
Month 3
It runs without me in the room
Ship cadence is predictable, the team knows the standard, security and infrastructure are at the level your customers expect, and the decisions are documented. If the engagement is a bridge to a full-time CTO, this is where I start hiring my replacement.
Why me, for this specifically
Experience, not a capabilities deck
Plenty of people can advise on pre-seed & seed. Fewer have shipped in it, been wrong in it, and had to fix it with their own name on the commit. Here's what I'm bringing.
- Six times a technical co-founder, so I have made these decisions with my own money at stake
- 10+ years building, across US, UAE, and India markets
- MVPs shipped from blank repo to live users in 8–12 weeks
- I will tell you when you do not need me yet, and that honesty is the point
Pricing
Priced at $100 an hour. Not counted at it.
I value my time at $100 an hour and the retainers are sized from that, but the hours are a floor I commit to rather than a cap I bill against. If a week needs more, it gets more. A full-time CTO in the US runs about $260,000 a year before equity; I'll do that job for $60,000 at 150% commitment. Three-month minimum, then month to month.
It does not all have to be cash. The split is negotiable, from a small equity component up to roughly half and half, depending on your stage and how long we expect to work together.
Technical Advisor
$1,500
per month
Minimum 15+ hours a month
A senior technical brain on call. For founders who mostly need the big decisions checked rather than someone in the codebase.
Fractional CTO
$5,000
per month
Minimum 50+ hours a month
Around 50 hours a month as your acting CTO, usually two days a week. I own technical direction, and the roadmap ships because someone senior is accountable for it.
Embedded CTO
$8,000
per month
Minimum 80+ hours a month
Around 80 hours a month, usually three days a week, hands on the keyboard. Everything above, plus I build the hard parts myself instead of delegating them.
Questions
Pre-seed & seed, specifically
We have almost no budget. Is this worth it?
At the smallest engagement, a few hours a month of advisory, often yes, because the decisions being made at pre-seed are the expensive ones. If the honest answer is that you should spend that money on customers instead, I will say so on the call.
Would you join as an actual technical co-founder?
For the right team and the right problem, yes, though that is a separate conversation involving equity and real commitment, not a retainer. A fractional engagement is often how both sides find out whether it makes sense.
Can you just build the MVP for us?
Yes. That is a defined 8–12 week engagement and a different shape from a fractional retainer. Many founders do the MVP build first and move to a fractional arrangement afterwards.
More general questions about cost, commitment, and how this compares to a full-time CTO are answered on the main fractional CTO page.
Earned, Not Claimed
What the founders and teams I build with say
I had the pleasure of working with Kunal while building out my MVP and I have to say that it was pleasure to both interact and work with him and his team. As a first time founder, I had a lot of self doubt and internal ruptures, however Kunal's calm, never-say-die and never-panic attitude often helped bring me back to center. I can't vouch for him enough.
Anand Tahiliani
Founder, Debaser Technologies
I had the pleasure of working closely with Kunal during my time as a Product Manager at DhunGuru. As our CTO, Kunal and his team at Panicle Tech worked closely with me across the entire product journey, from building and launching our mobile apps to developing and maintaining our web platforms. His technical expertise, ownership, and willingness to collaborate made a real difference, and I genuinely enjoyed working with him throughout the journey.
Anirudh Joshi
Product Manager, DhunGuru
Kunal helped us architect Mosler's core platform, connecting smart lock hardware, our cloud dashboard, and PMS integrations into one reliable system. The foundation he helped design in those early days still scales with us today.
Pranav Kapoor
Co-Founder, Mosler
Building in pre-seed & seed? Let's talk.
Thirty minutes. Tell me what you're building and where it's stuck, and I'll give you a straight answer on whether I can help.
Book a 30-min callSend me a message