Technical Advisor · $1,500 per month
A senior technical brain, on call
I'm Kunal Vohra. I've been the technical co-founder six times across three continents, I hold an M.Tech in Cybersecurity with 30+ academic citations, and I run ColadAI, a production multi-LLM platform.
This is the smallest thing I sell, and for a lot of founders it is the right one. You do not need someone in your standups. You need the big decisions checked by somebody who has made them before, and an honest read on whether what your team or your agency is telling you holds up. $1,500 per month, published like everything else here.
Minimum 15+ hours a month, sized at $100 an hour. Month to month after a three-month start, cancellable with 30 days notice.
M.Tech · Cybersecurity
NIT Kurukshetra
24h
Async Reply Window
6+
Ventures built 0→1
10+
Years shipping products
24h
Async reply window
30+
Academic citations
Who this is for
Four situations, and they are nearly always one of these
Advisory is the right answer when the problem is judgment rather than capacity. Somebody is already building; what is missing is a senior read on whether it is the right thing, built the right way, by the right people.
You have an agency building it
Someone is writing the code and you have no way to judge whether what comes back is good. I read the architecture, review what they ship, and tell you which of their pushbacks are legitimate engineering and which are them protecting a margin. Founders routinely find this pays for itself in the first month of a build.
You have juniors and no one senior
Your engineers are capable and nobody has ever shown them what good looks like at scale. They get someone to escalate to, and you get a read on whether the team you have can take you where you are going, which is a question most founders avoid until it is expensive.
You are about to make one big decision
Rebuild or refactor. Hire a CTO or promote. Take the enterprise deal that comes with a security questionnaire. Move off the platform that is now costing more than the team. These are cheap to get right and brutal to get wrong, and they are mostly what advisory hours get spent on.
You are raising and the technical story is soft
Investors will ask about architecture, scale, and why the moat is real. If the answer is vague, that is a fixable problem and it is much better fixed before the meeting than during it. This includes the diligence questionnaire nobody warns you about.
What you're actually buying
What a month looks like
Every month
Two scheduled calls
Sixty minutes each, on the calendar, with an agenda you set. Not a status update: we spend them on whatever decision is largest that month. I come having read what you sent, and you leave with a recommendation rather than a list of considerations.
Between calls
Async, replied within 24 hours
Email and Slack. Paste the architecture diagram, the vendor contract, the candidate's take-home, the incident post-mortem, the pricing page from the platform that just tripled. Most of the value lands here, in the questions that would not have justified booking a call.
When it matters
Written reviews
Architecture reviews, vendor and agency contract reviews, and technical input on investor materials come back as documents you can forward to your team or your board, not as opinions delivered on a call that nobody wrote down.
What it looks like in practice
Three advisory engagements, anonymised
Names and specifics are under NDA. The numbers and the decisions are real.
Marketplace · Pre-seed
Agency quoted a nine-month rebuild to fix performance problems. I read the codebase in a week: the architecture was fine, three queries were not, and there were no indexes where it mattered. Two weeks of work by the team they already had. Advisory retainer for a year still cost a fraction of the quote.
B2B SaaS · Seed
About to hire a $180k senior engineer to fix a problem that was structural, not staffing. We changed the deployment pipeline and the on-call rotation instead. Six months later they hired, but for the role they actually needed rather than the one the pain suggested.
Healthtech · Pre-seed
Security questionnaire arrived attached to their first enterprise pilot and stalled everything. Four advisory hours to work out which controls genuinely mattered at their stage, and which answers were honest to give. Pilot signed. They moved to a fractional retainer once the build got real, which is how this is supposed to go.
Pricing
$1,500 per month. Not counted at it.
I value my time at $100 an hour, and that is how this retainer is sized. The hours are a floor I commit to, not a cap I bill against. If a month needs more than it was supposed to, it gets more, and you will never get a surprise invoice about it.
Part of it can be equity instead of cash, up to roughly half, negotiated on your stage. The advice does not change either way.
Where most founders start
Technical Advisor
$1,500
per month
Minimum 15+ hours a month
- At least 15 hours a month, and I do not count the overflow
- Two 60-minute strategy calls per month
- Async access over email and Slack, replies within 24h
- Architecture and tech-stack decision reviews
- Vendor, agency, and contract review
- Technical input on your investor materials
Best for: Pre-seed founders and teams with an agency or junior team already building.
When this stops being the right tier
Advisory works while the bottleneck is decisions. The moment the bottleneck becomes delivery, when the roadmap keeps slipping, when nobody is accountable for what ships, when the team needs someone in the room rather than someone to email, you have outgrown it.
I will tell you when I think that has happened, because continuing to take an advisory retainer while your engineering quietly stalls is not a service. Moving up costs nothing, carries no renegotiation, and ramps fast since I already know your codebase.
Three-month minimum, then month to month with 30 days notice either way. Invoiced in USD. No overage line, no rollover, and no timesheets. All five engagements are compared side by side on the services 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
Questions founders actually ask
Before you book the call
What does a technical advisor cost?
$1,500 per month, which is a floor of 15+ hours a month sized at $100 an hour. That figure is a commitment rather than a meter: if a month needs more, it gets more, and you will not get an invoice about it. Month to month, cancel with 30 days notice.
What is the difference between this and a fractional CTO?
Depth and hours. As an advisor I am reviewing your decisions from outside: I read the architecture, pressure-test the plan, and tell you what I would do. As a fractional CTO I am inside the company, in standups, accountable for the roadmap and the team. Advisory is the right answer when the decisions are the problem. It stops being the right answer when the execution is.
Is 15 hours a month actually enough?
For the situations on this page, usually yes, because most advisory value is concentrated in a few decisions rather than spread evenly. It stops being enough the moment you need someone accountable for delivery rather than available for judgment, and I would rather tell you that than keep billing an advisory retainer while your roadmap slips.
Do you take equity instead of cash?
Partly, up to roughly half the retainer, negotiated on stage. Advisory equity is normally small and vests over a year or two. What does not change is the advice: if I think your plan is wrong you get that opinion whichever way we are structured, and an advisor who softens their read to protect a stake is worth nothing to you.
Can you talk to my team directly, or only to me?
Either. Some founders want everything routed through them; others want me in the engineering channel answering questions directly. Both work. Direct access is usually better for the team and occasionally uncomfortable for the founder, so it is worth deciding deliberately rather than by accident.
What do you need from me to be useful?
Repository access if there is code, whatever architecture documentation exists even if it is a photo of a whiteboard, and honesty about what is actually broken. The fastest way to waste an advisory retainer is to present me a tidied-up version of the situation.
Can I move up to a fractional retainer later?
Yes, and it is the common path. There is no penalty, no renegotiation, and the ramp-up is short because I already know your codebase and your team. It also runs the other way: engagements that finish the heavy phase often drop back to advisory rather than ending.
What is the minimum commitment?
Three months, then month to month with 30 days notice on either side. Less than three and I am still learning your situation when it ends, which is not worth your money.
Thirty minutes, one straight answer
Bring the decision that is currently stuck. I'll tell you what I would do, whether a retainer is worth it, and often enough that you can handle this one without me.
Book a 30-min callSend me a messagePrefer email? me@kunalvohra.com