Technical Co-Founder · Equity Partnership
Technical co-founder, six times over
I'm Kunal Vohra. I've been the technical half of a founding team 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 I built the same way I'd build yours.
This is the one engagement I don't sell. It's an equity partnership: I own the technology, you own the market, and neither of us can leave easily. That makes it the most valuable thing on this site and the one I say no to most often. The structures and the filter are both below, so you can work out where you stand before you book anything.
Most founders who open this conversation actually need a fractional CTO. I'll tell you which one you need on the call, including when the answer costs me the bigger engagement.
M.Tech · Cybersecurity
NIT Kurukshetra
6x
Technical Co-Founder
6x
Technical co-founder
10+
Years shipping products
3
Continents worked across
30+
Academic citations
Who this is for
You know exactly what to build. You can't build it.
You have spent years in an industry and you can see a problem that the people currently serving it cannot. You have talked to the customers. You might already have a pilot, a waitlist, or a distribution route nobody else can get. What you do not have is anyone who can turn it into software, and every month it stays an idea is a month someone else could have it.
Hiring an agency gets you a product nobody owns. Hiring a first engineer gets you someone who needs direction you cannot give. A technical co-founder is the answer when the technology is not a project but the company itself, and when you need someone whose downside is the same as yours.
It is also the wrong answer more often than founders want to hear. If your product is genuinely straightforward and your advantage is commercial, giving away a co-founder's equity is the most expensive way to solve it. That conversation is free, and I would rather have it than take a stake I did not earn.
The filter
Four things that have to be true
Published so you can disqualify yourself without spending an hour on a call. If all four hold, the conversation is usually worth having.
01
You have to be the other half
I own the technology. That only works if someone else genuinely owns the customer, the market, and the commercial side. If you are looking for someone to also do sales, fundraising, and product strategy, you are not looking for a technical co-founder, you are looking for a founder, and you should keep looking.
02
There has to be something real
Not a finished product, but not just a deck either. Customer conversations, a waitlist, a pilot, domain expertise nobody else has, an unfair distribution route. Something that suggests this exists because you found a problem rather than because you wanted to start a company.
03
The equity has to be honest
A technical co-founder joining at zero, building the product, and hiring the team is not a two-percent advisor. If the number you have in mind starts with a decimal point, we are solving different problems and the call will be short. I would rather say that here than after an hour of your time.
04
I have to want to build it
This is years, not months, and no amount of equity fixes a product I do not believe in. I say no to most of these conversations, which is the only reason a yes from me is worth anything.
How it actually starts
Two weeks, then papered, then building
Weeks 1-2
We find out if this is real
Before anything is signed: what you have, what you actually know about the market, where the technical risk sits, and what the honest build looks like. You get a written technical plan and a real number on scope either way. If I decline at the end of this, you keep the plan.
Month 1
Papered, then building
Vesting, cliff, IP assignment, role definition, and what happens if either of us wants out, all documented before the work starts. Founders skip this constantly and it is the single most expensive mistake I see. Then architecture is set and the first version is under construction.
Months 2-6
Product in market, team forming
Something real ships to real users, and the technical story is ready for whoever you are raising from. If we are hiring, I write the roles, run the loops, and make the calls. The engineering culture gets set now, by default or on purpose, and I would rather it were on purpose.
Beyond
It stops depending on me
A partnership that only functions while I am personally writing the hard parts is a liability dressed as an asset. Past the first year the job becomes hiring people better than me at specific things, and making sure the decisions are written down.
Structures
Three shapes. No list price, and here is why.
Every other engagement on this site has a published number, because you should not sit through a sales call to hear one. This one does not, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest: co-founder equity depends on when I join and what already exists. Joining at zero with nothing built is a different number from joining after you have raised with a product in market.
What I can publish is the shape of the deal, which is what actually determines the number. All three vest over four years with a one-year cliff, and all three get documented before any work starts.
Equity-Weighted
Mostly equity
small cash floor
The closest thing to a real co-founder arrangement. You are pre-seed, cash is the thing you have least of, and I take the risk with you in exchange for a meaningful stake.
- Meaningful equity, standard four-year vest with a one-year cliff
- A small cash floor so this stays sustainable for me
- Full technical ownership: architecture, stack, build
- I am in the founder conversations, not reporting into them
- Investor and diligence conversations as the technical founder
- Documented properly before a line of code gets written
Best for: Pre-seed founders with a real wedge and no technical counterpart, who would rather give up equity than run out of runway.
Most common
Balanced Partnership
Roughly half and half
cash and equity
Half the compensation in cash, half in equity, and the commitment horizon that comes with it. This is the shape most of these conversations actually land on.
- Equity sized to stage, scoped honestly against what I am putting in
- Cash component around half of the equivalent retainer
- Technical ownership end to end, same as above
- Engineering hiring: the first hires are mine to make
- Board and investor technical narrative
- Longer default commitment than any monthly retainer
Best for: Funded pre-seed and seed founders who want a committed technical partner rather than a vendor with a notice period.
Convertible Start
Cash first, equity earned
retainer that converts
We start on a normal fractional retainer with an agreed conversion path. If it works, it becomes a partnership on pre-agreed terms. If it doesn't, you have lost a retainer, not a co-founder.
- Begins as a standard Fractional CTO or Embedded CTO retainer
- Conversion terms agreed in writing up front, not renegotiated later
- A defined trial window, usually three to six months
- Either side can decline the conversion without drama
- Equity priced off the stage we started at, not the one we reach
- The lowest-risk way into a partnership for both of us
Best for: Founders who believe this could be a partnership but sensibly want to work together before anyone signs a vesting schedule.
Vesting, cliff, IP assignment, and exit terms are documented before work starts, every time, without exception. If a partnership is not the right shape for where you are, the same work is available as a paid retainer with published pricing on the Fractional CTO page, and the two are compared side by side on the services page.
What it looks like in practice
Two partnerships, and one I turned down
Names and specifics are under NDA. The decisions and the reasoning are real.
Fintech · Co-founded, exited
Non-technical founder with a decade in the industry and a distribution deal nobody else could get. I built the product and the compliance surface, hired the first four engineers, and carried the technical side of diligence. What made it work was that they never once tried to tell me how to build it, and I never tried to tell them who to sell to.
AI infrastructure · Co-founded, operating
Started as a fractional retainer that converted at month five, which is exactly the Convertible Start shape above. We both knew far more about each other by then than any pitch would have told us. Now a production multi-LLM platform, and the reason I can speak about AI cost structures from operating experience rather than from reading.
Marketplace · Declined
Strong founder, real market, and I said no. The build was two years of undifferentiated logistics engineering and I would have resented it by month eight. I told them that, and told them what to hire for instead. Including this here because the declines are the reason the acceptances mean something.
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 offer anyone equity
How much equity does a technical co-founder get?
It depends on when I join and what exists when I do. Joining at zero with nothing built, taking little or no cash, and owning the entire technical side is a genuine co-founder stake, and the honest range for that is well into double digits. Joining after you have raised, with a product in market and a mostly-cash structure, is a much smaller number. What I will not do is pretend there is a standard figure: anyone quoting you one before understanding your cap table and stage is guessing.
Do you take equity with no cash at all?
Rarely, and only when the rest of the fit is exceptional. I have a company and a team to run, so a pure-equity arrangement has a real cost to me that a founder with a salary sometimes underestimates. A small cash floor tends to make the partnership healthier for both of us, because it stops the arrangement quietly becoming a favour.
How is this different from your Fractional CTO retainer?
Commitment, risk, and reversibility. A fractional retainer is paid, scoped, and cancellable with 30 days notice, and that is a feature. A partnership is years, carries real equity, and is deliberately hard to leave. Most founders who think they want a co-founder actually want a fractional CTO, and I will tell you if I think that is you.
What if we start as a retainer and it turns into a partnership?
That is the Convertible Start structure, and it is the shape I usually recommend. We work together on a normal retainer with conversion terms agreed in writing up front, so nobody is negotiating equity in the middle of a good working relationship. It has already worked once, and the fact that we both had months of real evidence made the conversation trivial.
Will you sign an NDA before we talk?
For a first conversation, no, and almost nobody serious asks any more. Ideas are not the scarce resource and I hear a lot of adjacent ones. Once we are into anything specific, cap tables, customer data, or actual architecture, I will sign whatever your counsel wants.
Can you be a co-founder while running Panicle Tech?
Yes, and it is exactly why the structures above are shaped the way they are. Panicle Tech is my company and it is not going anywhere. What that buys a partnership is a design and engineering team I can put on the build from day one, which is a large part of why I can move faster than a solo technical co-founder would.
What happens if it does not work out?
It gets handled the way we wrote down before we started: a cliff, a vesting schedule, and a defined exit. That document is boring to write and it is the only thing that protects either of us when a partnership ends badly. If a founder does not want to paper it properly, that itself is the answer.
Do you have to be based in the same place?
No. I am in India, and I have co-founded across three continents. What matters is overlapping hours and a founder who communicates in writing. Distributed founding teams work; ones where the founders do not actually talk to each other do not, and that is true in one office too.
Tell me what you found
Thirty minutes on what you're building, why it's you, and what already exists. You'll leave knowing whether this is a partnership, a retainer, or something you should not give equity away for at all.
Book a 30-min callSend me a messagePrefer email? me@kunalvohra.com