Fractional CTO for PE
A senior operator in the CTO seat for the hold
Technical leadership for a portfolio company without a nine-month search or a mis-hire — on a retainer, accountable to the value-creation plan.
6 founded · 2 exited · 500+ advised · 40+ acquisitions · $1.45B GMV · VMware · SAP · CERN · Saudi Aramco · Forbes · BBC · Inc
What the seat covers
- The roadmap tied to EBITDA and the build-versus-buy calls
- The engineering org, key-person risk, and the roles that move the outcome
- Cloud, vendor, and spend decisions, and the technical debt that caps the multiple
- A delivery cadence that ships, not another status deck
- A clear, board-ready read the sponsor can act on
from $10,000/mo
monthly retainer
Scope and terms set per engagement, against a number the seat owns.
Tell Mario what the portco needs
A few fields on the company and the situation. It goes straight to Mario Peshev — not a sales call.
Scope and terms set per engagement, against a number the seat owns. It reaches Mario Peshev directly — no call queue.
Questions
Is this a full-time hire?
No — a fractional seat for the part of the week the company needs, without the search or the package.
How is it different from a consultant?
The operator in this seat owns a number and makes the calls with the team, accountable to the sponsor.
Can it convert to full-time?
Yes — many mandates are a bridge while the company grows into a full-time role.
Growth Shuttle is the advisory practice of Mario Peshev. Advisory and implementation are separate businesses: Growth Shuttle advises, DevriX builds.
What the first 90 days look like
Weeks one to three are diagnosis: the architecture, the delivery cadence, the
team’s actual capacity versus what the plan assumes, and the two or three things
that will break first under the growth case. You get that written down, with
costs attached.
From week four the work is execution alongside the existing team — hiring
where the gap is structural, unblocking where it is not, and giving the sponsor
a monthly read that is not filtered through the person being assessed.
How this differs from hiring a CTO
A full-time CTO for a mid-market portfolio company is a 12-to-18 month
commitment before you know whether it worked, and the search alone runs a
quarter. A fractional seat gets a senior operator in place in weeks, at a
fraction of the loaded cost, and it converts to a permanent hire when the
company is big enough to warrant one — which is frequently the honest answer.
Questions sponsors ask
Will the existing technology lead see this as a threat?
Usually the opposite. Most CTOs in PE-backed companies are under-supported
rather than under-performing, and having someone who has run the function before
in their corner is a relief.
What happens if the diagnosis says replace the team? Then it
says that, in writing, early — which is the point. The expensive outcome is
finding out in month fourteen.
Can this cover more than one portfolio company? A small
number, deliberately. Attention spread across a dozen assets is a newsletter,
not an operator.