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 →Marian Kamenistak · 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.
9.17/10 average across 3,662 scored sessions.
Seven 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 CEO wants a Chief AI Officer, or a Head of AI, and the org chart has you.
Three out of four surveyed companies now have a Chief AI Officer. The seat arrives with a mandate and no boundaries, and the first quarter is spent drawing them with the CTO, the CFO and the board. Two pages, one per seat.
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. A coach asks questions until you find your own answer; a mentor has held your seat and hands you moves that were tested under fire. The expensive mistake is buying one when the situation called for the other: textbook coaching is slow when the board deck is due on Friday, and pure mentoring, run too long, leaves you leaning on somebody else's judgment. So I run mentoring first and drift toward coaching as your context builds. 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 comparison: mentoring vs coaching.
Do you coach VPs of Engineering and Heads of Engineering too?+
Yes, and the title matters less than the scope: an org somewhere between 30 and 300 engineers, a board or a CEO to answer to, and delivery that lands on you. The VPE-specific ground is mapped in the VP of Engineering role guide.
What does a CTO coach cost?+
Public pricing: 395 EUR per session; a quarter is 6 sessions for 1,975 EUR, 5 paid + 1 free. 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.
Explore other roles
Why me
3,662 1:1 leadership sessions since 2019. Mentees score every session from 0 to 10, and the average is 9.17.
- Been in the seat. Helped build Mews into a $2bn+ unicorn: 8 to 80 teams, roadmap still shipping. Advisor to Manta (acquired by IBM).
- CEE-native, US-fluent. 3 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.
CTOs I mentor
Marek Trunkát (Apify), Michal Danilák (Nuomy), Jiří Petržilka (PalmApp), Maroš Kasinec (Jablotron), Pavel Hendrich (Eurowag) and David Edwards (Vendavo) have worked with me 1:1. What they wrote is on the testimonials page.
“How to build a quarterly roadmap that survives contact with the board. How to get budget approved instead of just asking for it.”Jiří Petržilka, CTO, PalmApp
Mentees come from these companies:
The one discount, on every package
10 minutes. 10% off.
One quarter lists at €1,975. Build the inquiry with my AI and the same six sessions come to €1,778 — €296 a session. No more than 10 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.
Book the intro →Or emailmarian@marian.coach or call +420 736 519 879
Ordering this for someone on your team? How it works for companies · how to get the budget
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