Fractional CTO Services
Fractional CTO services for non-technical founders and operators. Twenty-five years of building software and leading engineering teams — through two acquisitions, across enterprise scale, and shipping AI products today.
Where I've led engineering
I led engineering at a SaaS company through hypergrowth and a PE acquisition. I was VP of Engineering at Laconic before moving to a consulting role there, and I consult for LexData Labs today. I know the shape of this work because I'm living it.
One hour of meeting, one hour of prep and follow-up. Enough to change the trajectory of a decision. Not enough to become another thing you have to manage.
I'm shipping AI products this month — computer vision and agentic systems for climate data at Laconic. The advice I give you comes from code I'm writing, not a talk I gave in 2019.
Expertise
Twenty-five years of building software gives you range. These are the areas where that range turns into real value for a fractional CTO client.
Computer vision, LLMs, agentic systems. I ship this work at Laconic. I can tell you what's real, what's hype, and what your team can actually build in a quarter.
The decisions you make in year one will cost or save you six figures in year three. I help you make them deliberately instead of by accident.
Hiring, mentoring, and scaling technical teams — direct and skip-level — across companies of every size. Including the unglamorous parts nobody writes LinkedIn posts about.
Most of the "technical advice" you've been given is attached to someone trying to sell you something. I'm not. I'll tell you what to build, what to buy, and what to walk away from.
Clients
Four kinds of founders and operators keep ending up on my calendar. If one sounds like you, the service page will tell you exactly how I help.
Pre-seed founders
"Investors are asking technical and AI questions I can't answer."
You're raising, you don't have a technical co-founder yet, and due diligence is getting uncomfortable.
Learn more →Agency and services owners
"We're building software and I can't tell if my developer is doing a good job."
You're productizing years of expertise and you need a senior voice in the room.
Learn more →E-commerce and DTC operators
"Every AI tool wants a subscription and every developer quote is ten times different."
Your tech stack grew organically and now it's a liability. You need someone honest to sort it out.
Learn more →Scaling founders
"My first engineering hire is now my bottleneck."
You trust your lead developer, but the role has outgrown them. You need a sounding board before the next big decision.
Learn more →Track record
The best way to evaluate a fractional CTO isn't years of experience. It's specifics.
01
Key contributor to technical due diligence for Azuki's acquisition by Ericsson and Microsoft (2014). Owned technical due diligence for Yottaa's acquisition by Providence Strategic Growth (2022). I know what investors and acquirers actually look at because I've sat on the side of the table that answers their questions.
02
Grew Yottaa engineering from 9 to 30 engineers across four years. Built the data platform that processed over a billion events per day during Cyber 5. Led the migration of a $2M control plane from on-prem to AWS. Achieved ISO 27001 certification in 2021.
03
Consulting engineer to Laconic, delivering its next-generation carbon emissions platform — previously their VP of Engineering, where per-engineer delivery throughput rose 9.3x in 2025 after we rebuilt the process around agentic workflows. Engineering consultant to LexData Labs. On the side, I built Top Shelf AI from scratch: a computer vision system for ice hockey footage with object detection, team assignment, jersey number recognition, and a custom "pressure meter" analytic.
04
In media delivery, content processing, and network traffic systems. Engineering leadership backed by original technical contribution. MS in Computer Science from WPI.
I'm Dan Biagini, founder of Top Shelf Technology LLC. I've spent twenty-five years building software and leading engineering teams — and I've been through two successful acquisitions from the inside, including one where I owned the technical due diligence.
Today my practice is a small fractional CTO and engineering consulting business. At Laconic, where I was VP of Engineering, I'm now a consulting engineer delivering the next generation of SADAR — a platform that measures and visualizes carbon emissions and removals using geospatial data, ML pipelines and agentic AI. I'm also an engineering consultant at LexData Labs, helping an early-stage team put real engineering process in place.
Before Laconic, I ran engineering at Yottaa, a high-growth B2B SaaS, where I grew the team from 9 to 30 engineers and led them through a PE acquisition in 2022. Before that: Akamai, Ericsson, Azuki (acquired by Ericsson and Microsoft), and Cisco.
Earlier this year I was co-founder and CTO of Realia, where I built and launched an AI-native investment platform from scratch. I've sat on both sides of the table — advising founders on their tech strategy and pitching investors on my own.
I take on one or two additional fractional CTO clients at a time. Anything more and the advice gets worse.
Process
You tell me what's going on. I tell you honestly whether I'm the right person to help. No pitch, no deck.
Four hours total, spread over two weeks. Enough time for you to see how I think and for me to see if the fit is real.
Two hours a week. One hour meeting, one hour prep and follow-up. Month to month, no long contracts. You can pause or cancel at any time.
Most people who end up hiring me spent six months convincing themselves they could figure it out alone. The 20-minute call is free, and I'll tell you honestly if you can.
Book the call