CTO as a Service
A CTO's judgement, without the CTO hire.
Great ventures die of bad architecture more often than bad ideas. Our CTO Partnership embeds the studio as your technical co-founder, decisions, roadmap, and execution, on terms where we win only if you do.
What the partnership covers
Everything a founding CTO would own: system architecture, technology choices, the engineering roadmap, hiring and vendor decisions, AI strategy, and patent-ready IP where the product warrants it. You get senior judgement in the room for every hard call, not a consultant's slide deck after the fact.
The engagement is deliberately long-term: minimum six months, structured as revenue share or an equity kicker plus retainer. A vendor optimizes for the invoice; a partner optimizes for the outcome. The structure is what keeps us honest.
Proof: the VDOlocal partnership
VDOlocal, India's video-first digital storefront for physical store owners, runs on this exact model. Sitio Labs owns the complete technology stack: platform, mobile, AI, and infrastructure, with five patents filed across the work. It's a co-founding relationship, not a services contract, and it's live across India today.
Case study
VDOlocal, owning the stack as CTO Partner
Platform, mobile, AI, and infrastructure for India's video-first storefront, architecture to app store, under one partnership.
Read how the partnership works →Fair questions.
How is this different from hiring a fractional CTO individual?
You get a studio, not a person: CTO-level judgement plus the design and engineering team to execute on it. When a decision is made, the same roof ships it.
What does it cost?
A monthly retainer plus revenue share or an equity kicker, scoped to the venture's stage. The variable component matters, it's what makes us a partner instead of a vendor.
Will you work with our existing developers?
Yes. Often the fastest win is giving an existing team clear architecture and honest priorities. We lead, mentor, and fill gaps, we don't demand a rebuild to justify ourselves.
Your venture deserves a real technical partner.
Tell us where the product stands today. We'll give you a straight architectural read, even if the answer is that you don't need us.