Another way

The usual way

Raise. Hire. Hope.

You want to grow faster, and engineering isn’t keeping up. So the advice is to raise: give up some of the company to fund more engineers, and hope that more people means more delivery.

It rarely does. Complexity grows faster than headcount, so every new hire adds a little capacity and a lot of coördination. The capital buys you more people. The people bring more meetings, more handovers, and more code nobody dares delete. A year on, your team is bigger, the release cycle is the same, and you own less of the company than when you started.

That’s not a failure of yours, or of the engineers you hire. It’s simply the way the standard advice plays out most of the time. You don’t know what you don’t know.

Another way

Unlock. Multiply. Deliver.

Speed is almost never fixed with capital. When engineering isn’t delivering, the cause is usually a lack of clarity, trust, or purpose, and that’s fixed from the inside.

Don’t raise. Unlock.

The capacity is already in the building, trapped by process, by code nobody dares delete, and by the cost of coördinating. Unlock it before you pay equity for more.

Receipt: 70 engineers in six teams went from a three-month release cycle to two weeks or less. The speed came from clarity and autonomy, not from pushing harder.

Don’t hire. Multiply.

Make each person count for more, so each hire is a multiplication, not an addition: clarity, trust, and purpose.

Receipt: a careers framework gave a function of 70 a shared language for what the work is, and was adopted across a software organisation of 300. Engineer churn fell by around 30%.

Don’t hope. Deliver.

Stop waiting for engineering to come good. Make delivery predictable, and keep it that way after I’ve gone.

Receipt: a post-merger team across three continents went from delivering reliably less than half the time to more than 90%. A $300K account that was leaving, stayed.

The Work page, for all three, including what each one cost me.

Where it starts

In two weeks, find out whether your next stage needs capital, or whether the capacity is already in the building.

The Growth Without Dilution Plan. Three or four days of my time inside your company, over two weeks:

• an hour with you, on what you’re trying to build and what you fear it will cost;
• conversations with the people doing the work;
• the delivery itself: how long work waits, where it waits, and why;
• a written plan: where your capacity is trapped, what unlocking it takes, and what the alternative raise would cost you in equity, side by side.

It costs £5,000, paid up front, and you keep the plan whatever you decide. If you go on to the turnaround within 30 days, the fee comes off the retainer, spread evenly across its months.

Then, if it’s right for you:

• The turnaround: from £10,000 a month, usually for six to nine months in three-month blocks. It unlocks and multiplies what the plan found. At the start of each block we agree what it has to achieve, and I work towards it: you pay for outcomes, not for my hours. How we work together is written down, from a day’s notice for meetings to a same-day reply to messages.
• Stewardship: from £3,000 a month. It’s light and ongoing, so it keeps delivering after the turnaround: up to 16 hours a month, to use whenever you need them. What’s in scope, and what isn’t, is written down. Hours don’t roll over.

Who it’s for

For founder-led, bootstrapped or owner-funded, mission-driven companies at the fork: wanting to grow faster, and told the answer is capital.

Not for growth at any cost, or anyone who wants a CTO-for-hire to run sprints.

Questions founders ask

Do I need to raise to hire more engineers?

Usually not first. Most engineering teams that aren’t delivering have capacity trapped in how they work. Find it before you fund it: hiring into a team that’s stuck makes it a bigger team that’s stuck.

Do we need a CTO or a CPO?

Often both, and most companies your size can afford only one. Hire a CTO and nobody leads product; hire a CPO and nobody leads engineering. A fractional CPTO leads both product and technology from one seat, for a fraction of two senior salaries. If you do need a full-time hire later, the plan will say which one, and why.

What if raising is the right answer?

Sometimes it is. Then you raise knowing what the money is for, and with a team that can turn it into delivery. The plan says so plainly, either way.

Is this fractional CTO work?

Yes, on a different model. A fractional CTO usually runs your technology for as long as you keep them. I come in to fix why engineering isn’t delivering, make it run without me, and then step back into stewardship: a lighter retainer that keeps it delivering, if you want one.

Can we do this alongside our current team and roadmap?

Yes. The plan takes three or four of my days over two weeks, and the work happens inside the roadmap you already have.

The next step

Let’s find another way.

Book 30 minutes. No intake form, and no sales pitch disguised as a discovery call.

[When it’s recorded: “Or watch Another way to grow first”, to the webinar page (#411).]