Technical Strategy Retainer
Missing strong technical direction can cost your startup vast sums of capital and time. In this competitive environment the most important factor is how quickly can you learn and make the right moves.
Let’s be clear, you will take wrong steps. That cannot be entirely avoided. What must be avoided is wasting time anticipating the wrong step, and not moving forward with the correct step afterwards. With a strong business oriented technical direction, you can be confident that you are actively moving forward with your startup.
Critically, this does not require you to give up all the equity in business to bring on a technical cofounder or hire a full time CTO.
How does it work?
Our agreement entitles you to unlimited 24/7 access to me via phone, email, and IM. I return all messages no later than the next business day, although in practice response time is much quicker (particularly between 9am to 5pm ET, but also nights and weekends).
Meetings are scheduled in advance, typically take place over the phone, and are sometimes supplemented with online meeting and/or screen sharing.
There are 7 possible areas of involvement:
- Participation in an initial in-depth meeting to define long-term business goals, existing legacy systems architecture, and organizational challenges.
- Regular meetings with the primary project contact (founder) to discuss strategy, longer-term issues, and business goals.
- Support and guidance for working with a board
- Strategic and tactical advice based on a series of ongoing meetings with team leaders. These are individualized and mutually agreed upon. In addition, I’ll serve as a sounding board as they work to achieve their business and technical goals.
- Technical review of feature specifications, product plans, and roadmaps. Where appropriate, I’ll provide code samples, proof-of-concept examples, and design mockups. Please note that authoring shipping code, designs, or documentation is not included in this agreement.
- Periodic competitive analysis and market insight based on interaction with the developer community, both in person (e.g. speaking engagements, meet-ups, user groups) and online (e.g. Twitter, RSS feeds, blog posts, mailing lists).
- Situational responsiveness to needs that arise that you deem require my assistance, which are not covered elsewhere.
My fee is $5,500 USD per month. Professional courtesy discounts are available for quarterly and annual arrangements.
Participation is extremely limited. You can elect to be added to the waiting list if spots are not available.
Please contact me to sign up or for more information.