CTO · VP Engineering · Head of Engineering
CTO Sounding Board: A Second Opinion Without Politics
Most roles in a company come with a natural second opinion. The CTO's options all arrive loaded: the board reads doubt as weakness, peers at other companies compete for the same hires, and the CEO wants the answer, not the process that produces it.
Needing an outside voice is one of the six situations CTOs bring to me most often, and it is the one people admit last. The format is simple: two hardest calls on your plate, every two weeks, worked to a written decision.
The situation, from the inside
My board is not technical enough for the org-design conversation. My CPO does not do capacity planning. My peers at other companies compete for the same hires. My CEO wants the answer, not the doubt. And my partner is done hearing about the mid-level manager problem.
You have probably tried
- The exec-coach your CEO hired (business coach, not tech)
- CTO Slack groups (helpful for links, weak for your specific call)
- Books by ex-CTOs of very different companies
- Waiting to see if the answer arrives on its own
How we tackle it
Bi-weekly 60-min sessions built around the two hardest calls on your plate that week. Pattern data from 3,400+ unique sessions. Your actual context. No frameworks-in-general, only your-specific-call today.
Target: Every session ends with a written decision or a specific next step on a real call. No abstractions.
Working it 1:1
Bi-weekly 60-minute sessions, weekly while the fire burns. I have sat in the seat: built Mews into a $2bn+ unicorn from 8 to 80 teams, led engineering at Manta before IBM acquired it, and spent 4+ years in the Bay Area as Principal Software Architect at Databricks. The pattern data comes from 3,400+ unique sessions with engineering leaders in 17+ countries. Rated 9.17/10 on average across 300+ reviews.
Pricing is public: 430 EUR per session, 361 EUR per session for ELC members, or 2,580 EUR per quarter (6 sessions over 3 months). You only pay for a session you rate 7 out of 10 or higher. Full pricing.
Related reads
The other situations CTOs bring
- The board wants a delivery number →
- First 90 days in an inherited org →
- Technical due diligence before a raise →
- AI adoption pressure from the board →
- Every decision routes through you →
All six, plus the questions CTOs ask most: CTO coaching & mentoring