January 22, 2025
James Williams - Fractional CTO Masterclass
(This ep was originally posted in Aug 2023, but with all the talk about fractional consulting recently, I thought I’d resurface it for your listening enjoyment - jstark)
James Williams of Cofebe joined me on Ditching Hourly to give what amounted to a masterclass on how to avoid failure and delight clients as a fractional CTO.
Key Points
- Fractional CTO services allow entrepreneurs to access valuable CTO insights at a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time CTO.
- Fractional CTO engagements typically last anywhere from eight months to a year, with the aim of eventually hiring a full-time CTO or team.
- The focus is on outcome-oriented implementation rather than just selling hours, ensuring that both parties are invested in achieving business goals.
- Keeping the narrative on the goal helps avoid debates over past proposals or task lists.
- Setting the tone for the consultant relationship by being honest, direct, and committed to achieving results.
- Using qualitative goals and demo-driven plans to measure progress and ensure client satisfaction.
Quotable Quotes
- ”We don’t even do scope of work.“
- “It’s not about the hours. It’s about the outcomes.”
- “They’re less concerned about what our Jira tickets look like and more concerned about the outcomes that we can achieve.”
- “I would rather take the advisory part and use their team if they have one.”
- “Instead of waiting for mommy to come tell us what to do, let’s dictate the roadmap to the client and proactively share our vision.”
- “Business guys get yachts, and engineers get nice monitors, and I want to cut that crap out.”
- “How do you go from $110,000 a year to $230,000 a year or $300,000?”
- “The chance of failure increases proportionally with you accepting what the client tells you what to do.”
- “If you accept 100% of your client’s suggestions and three months from they can’t launch or it fails, guess whose fault that is?”
- “If you keep the narrative on the goal, you can avoid debates about scope.”
- “I ask a trillion questions upfront to disqualify prospects before considering pricing.”
- “To guide the engineers, I write paragraphs on how the client should feel at every demo and what the qualitative goal should be.“
- “My goal is always to get smaller, not bigger.”
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Yours,
—J