Enterprise readiness
Fractional CTO for B2B SaaS Startups
B2B SaaS has a specific inflection point: the first enterprise deal. Everything that was fine for self-serve customers (shared tenancy, password auth, best-effort uptime, no audit log) suddenly becomes a procurement blocker worth six figures.
I am usually brought in either just before that moment or just after a deal has stalled on it. The work is the same: build the enterprise-readiness layer without stopping product velocity.
What I'm hired to own
The decisions that are cheap now and expensive later
Tenancy model chosen for convenience, not for the customers you want
Shared-schema multi-tenancy is fast to build and hard to sell to a buyer who wants data residency guarantees or isolation. I make the tenancy decision against your target customer, and where isolation is needed, build it before it becomes a migration.
Billing that cannot express your pricing
Usage-based, seat-based, hybrid, custom enterprise contracts. Most early billing implementations handle exactly one of these and calcify. I build a metering and billing layer that survives pricing experiments, because your pricing will change.
No SSO and no SCIM means no enterprise deal
SAML/OIDC single sign-on and directory provisioning are table stakes above a certain contract size. Retrofitting them into an auth system that assumed email and password is a real project. I plan for it early and ship it when the pipeline justifies it.
SOC 2 becomes urgent exactly when you have no time for it
It always surfaces mid-deal. I sequence controls, logging, and access management so the audit is a formality rather than a quarter-long fire drill.
Reliability is a churn problem before it is an engineering problem
Enterprise customers leave over incidents, not features. I put in the monitoring, on-call, and incident process that makes uptime a number you can commit to contractually.
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 b2b saas. 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 ventures built 0 to 1, several B2B
- Panicle Tech: boutique services firm shipping production SaaS for clients
- Cybersecurity background: the security questionnaire is my home turf
- I set up the hiring bar and engineering process, not just the architecture
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
B2B SaaS, specifically
We have engineers but no senior technical leader. Is that your engagement?
Yes, that is the most common one. Two to three days a week: technical direction, architecture review, hiring, and unblocking. Your team keeps shipping and gains someone to escalate to.
How do you work with an existing engineering team?
As a leader, not an auditor. I review architecture and code, run the technical planning, help with hiring and levelling, and take on the hard implementation work myself when it matters. Teams generally find it a relief.
Can you help us prepare for technical due diligence?
Yes. I know what investors' technical diligence partners look for and I fix the things that will come up before they do.
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 b2b saas? 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