The board wants a delivery number. Your team wants breathing room.
Optimism buys twelve weeks and spends what is left of your standing. Candour hands a jumpy board fresh ammunition. There is a way through that does neither.
How we tackle it →CTO, VP Engineering, Head of Engineering
CTO Coach & Mentor. For the CTO who owes a board answer on Friday and doesn't have one yet.
Board wants a number. Team wants breathing room. Your VPE is drowning. Two of your directors are interviewing at competitors. And the board deck is due Friday.
A CTO coach is a sparring partner who has held the seat: board narratives, org design from 30 to 300 engineers, AI governance, and the delivery answer you owe on Friday. Concrete moves, pressure-tested before they leave your desk.
What's missing here is rarely a framework. It's one person across the table every fortnight whose job is finding the hole in Thursday's decision at a point where it can still be moved.
9.2/10 from 300 mentees who rated the work.
Six situations that fill my CTO calendar
You inherited an org that runs on autopilot the wrong way.
No handoff, no docs, two directors interviewing. The failure mode isn't moving slowly, it's reaching day 91 with a beautiful map and no decisions.
How we tackle it →You're about to raise, or you just did.
Their tech advisor will pull two threads, and which two is the whole game. We pull them first, in a room where being wrong costs nothing.
How we tackle it →AI adoption became an executive expectation while nobody announced it.
Adoption percentage is the wrong number and it's the one everybody reaches for. A three-tier answer instead, with the one metric that survives a follow-up question.
How we tackle it →You're the bottleneck for five decisions this week.
Saying it out loud never sticks, because everyone below you is running a risk calculation you cannot see. Putting it in writing changes the maths.
How we tackle it →You need a second opinion that isn't a peer at your own company.
Everyone you could ask holds a stake of some kind: your board, your peers, your CEO, your partner. One voice with none, every fortnight, on the two calls that matter.
How we tackle it →The questions I hear most from CTO, VP Engineering, Head of Engineering
These are the exact asks from mentees in the last 12 months. Bring one to the intro call and we start there.
- How to define and measure engineering success? Mission, KPIs, DORA vs beyond-DORA metrics.
- How to build and execute a technology strategy that lands with the CEO and the board?
- How to prepare engineering for Series A, B, or C due diligence?
- How to structure the engineering budget and headcount plan for the next 12 months?
- How to evaluate and govern AI adoption at enterprise level without FOMO?
- How to build an engineering culture that scales past 50, 100, 200 engineers?
- How to build the hiring pipeline, talent assessment, and learning programs from scratch?
- How to communicate with the board about technology investments and technical debt?
- How to balance product roadmap velocity against technical debt paydown?
- How to run a major platform rewrite or modernization without stalling delivery?
How mentoring with me works
Free 30-min intro. Two KPIs to move in 3-6 months. Small homework after every session. The full method, step by step:
See how mentoring works →Frequently asked
I'm being offered the product side too. Is CTPO a promotion or a trap?+
Both, depending on which half of the merged role you would starve. I wrote the full breakdown: CTPO: what a Chief Technology and Product Officer does. Short version: it works when you're genuinely two-sided, and collapses into one-sided decisions when the title is a bandage over a missing CPO.
What if the real problem is my CEO, not the engineering org?+
Then the CEO relationship is the work, and a large share of CTO mentoring ends up there. If that relationship genuinely can't be repaired, we plan the exit so your reputation holds and your team is looked after on the way out.
The board meets in six weeks. Is there any point starting now?+
Yes, and a fixed date tends to sharpen the work rather than weaken it. You bring the deliverable, whether that's the board deck, the DD dataroom or the retention plan, and we work backward from the date until every session hands you something ready to send.
Will you tell me my strategy is wrong, or dance around it?+
I'll tell you early, while it is still cheap to change. Then we close the hole together. Mentoring first means my read arrives while it is still useful to you, and the more open-ended questions turn up once the urgency has drained out of the week.
What if I need help executing, not just talking?+
Different product. Mentoring is 1:1 sparring. If your org needs hands-on delivery work, that's fractional CTO or the productivity audit. Same person, different engagement.
What if my board finds out I have a mentor? Is that a signal I am struggling?+
Most boards read it as investment in the craft. Nearly every serious CEO you know has an executive coach, and this is the engineering version of that.
How often do sessions happen?+
Bi-weekly by default. Weekly if you're inside your first 90 days, mid-crisis, or preparing for a board meeting. Monthly is too thin for anyone in an active CTO seat, and I'd rather say that than take the money.
CTO coach vs CTO mentor: which one is this?+
Both, in that order of trust. Mentoring first: direct advice from someone who's run engineering orgs through a Series C and an acquisition. Coaching-style questions once the context is built. If what you want is someone who only asks how that makes you feel, that's a different service and I'll happily point you at one. The full breakdown of how I run the coaching side: CTO coaching.
What does a CTO coach cost?+
Public pricing: 430 EUR per session, less in a 6-pack. Against a CTO cash comp, one avoided mis-hire at director level or one board meeting that lands pays for years of it. Details on the pricing page.
When does a CTO need a coach?+
Three things start most of my CTO intro calls: a board or CEO conversation that stopped going well, an org that's outgrown the structure it was built with, or a first-90-days seat where every mistake is public. Peer circles and group programmes cover the generic ground well. The specific answer you owe on Friday needs one person who has written that answer before.
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Why me
9.17/10 average across 300+ mentees. 3,400+ mentoring sessions since 2019.
- Been in the seat. Built Mews into a $2bn+ unicorn: 8 to 80 teams, roadmap still shipping. Led engineering at Manta before that, acquired by IBM.
- CEE-native, US-fluent. 4+ years in the Bay Area as Principal Software Architect at Databricks.
- Still highly technical. AI freak. Bullshit me on estimate, effort, code quality or architecture and I'll ask to see the code or your AI skill set.
- Financially independent. I don't need your money. I'm financially retired. Seeing you grow is my payoff.
- Direct. Mentoring first. I boost you fast. No esoteric loops.
The one discount
16 minutes. 16% off.
The First quarter lists at €2,580. Build the inquiry with my AI and the same six sessions come to €2,166 — €361 a session. No more than 16 minutes from the first question to a formal itemized offer in your inbox.
Ready to start?
Free 30-min intro. No pricing conversation on the first call. We figure out if we can move your specific problem forward. That is it.
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