Chris HennigfeldFractional CTO
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ScaleGrowth-stage startups and established companies

Tech and team that keep up as you grow

Your product works and people rely on it. Now your business is growing faster than your tech. Will the product hold up? What will your first enterprise customer expect? Who leads the team when you can’t do it all yourself?

The signs are small at first. Pages get slower and cloud costs climb. Releases slip as complexity grows, and agreed work falls through the cracks. One customer’s huge report slows the product down for everyone. A large prospect asks about compliance. Over time it becomes clear these aren’t one-off problems: the way you’ve worked since the start no longer fits.

I help companies at this stage turn a product that works into one that scales, along with the team and the process behind it. Pick a fixed-price package or get ongoing support from me as your fractional CTO.

Scale Readiness Review

“What breaks when we grow, and what will enterprise customers look for?”

Your product works for today’s customers. Now you want to be sure it holds up for an enterprise client or ten times the users.

What you get

  • A hands-on check of the areas you choose: infrastructure, code, process, or security
  • A written report with findings ranked by severity: what holds up, what breaks first, and the risks
  • A plan for what to fix first, with effort estimates
  • A walkthrough call and answers to follow-up questions for two weeks
One areaFrom €3,500
Two areasFrom €5,500
Full reviewFrom €7,500

Fixed quote after the discovery call

Book a callFull details

Hiring Your Tech or Product Leader

“Who leads the team as we grow?”

Your team has grown beyond what you can lead yourself. You need the right person to take it on.

What you get

  • A clear role definition, worked out with you and your team
  • A job description and a structured interview process
  • Interviews and reference checks that test how candidates lead and decide
  • A clear recommendation, then an onboarding plan and check-ins during the new leader’s first month
Per leadership roleFrom €5,000

Fixed quote after the discovery call

Book a callFull details

Other ways I help

Process and delivery as the team grows

More people should mean more output, but often it means more overhead. Requirements are clear to one person and not the next, features stall while you’re putting out fires, and each release slips a little further. What worked with three developers doesn’t carry fifteen.

I set up a process that works for the team you have now and the one you’re growing into: how requirements get written and agreed, how the team plans, and how releases are tested and shipped on a steady rhythm.

In a free call we work out how I can help. Then I propose changes to help your team and support you while they take hold. If you first want an outside view of why delivery slows down, start with a Dev Team & Vendor Health Check.

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Growing the team

Your first developers came through people you knew. Now you need more and your network has run dry. Hiring through job posts and platforms brings more applicants, and it’s harder to tell who’s good.

I run the hiring with you, from the job description to screening, interviews, and onboarding, or set it up so your team can run it themselves. I’ve built teams this way in Shanghai and Singapore, and for my clients ever since.

In a free call we look at the roles you need and whether your team can screen candidates themselves.

Book a call

AI in operations

Your work grows with every new customer: sorting requests, drafting replies, checking documents, moving data between tools. AI can take much of it on today if it’s set up with care, with clear limits on what it does alone and a person who checks what matters.

I help you find where AI pays off in your operations, choose the tools, and set up the workflow with your team, from a first trial to everyday use.

In a free call we pick the area of your business to start with. Then I talk to the people who do the work and propose a pilot to help them.

Book a call

Examples

Real client work. Outside the case studies, client names are left out for confidentiality.

SiteOwl: from “trust us” to a SOC 2 report

Physical security SaaS, US, 2023

As SiteOwl moved toward larger customers, more and more prospects asked for a SOC 2 report before trusting SiteOwl with their data. I led the technical side of SOC 2 readiness, while SiteOwl’s Chief Product Officer ran the organizational side, with a compliance platform guiding the steps. That meant tightening the AWS network setup, turning the recovery and incident response plans into playbooks rehearsed in dry runs, and working with the penetration testers on the first external test. They found no serious gaps; we addressed what they flagged, and the fixes were retested and confirmed. SiteOwl’s offshore development team handled the work as ordinary tasks in its regular sprints.

SiteOwl completed SOC 2 Type 1, a point-in-time check, about six months after starting, and Type 2, which covers months of evidence, later the same year. From then on we renewed the report every year with an external auditor. Prospects and customers, including Fortune 500 companies, got an independent auditor’s report instead of just a promise that their data was safe.

Read the case study

TVT: a platform for thousands of users who don’t pay for it

Media services for broadcasters, Singapore, 2018 to 2024

TVT subtitles and translates media for broadcasters, working with contracted linguists. As TVT gradually expanded its operations, more and more linguists joined, eventually thousands. With TVT’s in-house developers and a development contractor in Vietnam, I led the work that turned its linguist platform from a database into an end-to-end system to manage their work, from job assignments to client feedback. Onboarding, from paperwork to entry tests, became a guided workflow, so coordinators only stepped in for exceptions. Each linguist got a TVT email address and a chat account, set up in one go: one login for everything. With thousands of users who don’t pay for the platform, anything priced per user was out, so we integrated an open-source team chat and a self-hosted sign-in service instead of buying them.

The platform carried TVT’s growth from about 200 to 8,000 linguists without added overhead for its coordinator team.

Read the case study
“During our sprint planning and review processes, Chris consistently demonstrated an exceptional ability to translate complex business requirements into clear, actionable technical plans. … One of his greatest strengths is his ability to keep a comprehensive mental map of the entire product, anticipating the ripple effects of changes and ensuring long-term stability.”
Daniel Matthewson, Director of Product Management, SiteOwl

Ongoing support

Your product and your team are growing, and technical decisions carry more weight: what to fix before the next big customer, who to hire, how to keep customer data safe. As your fractional CTO, I keep your tech on track while you grow the business: as a sounding board, hands-on in agreed areas, or owning all of it.

The minimum term is three months. If you start within two months of a Scale Readiness Review, half its fee counts toward ongoing support.

Advisor

An experienced view on your technical decisions, plans, and vendor quotes, before you commit to them.

From€2,500/ month

Rhythm

A call every two weeks; questions answered within two working days.

What you get

  • A startup veteran’s take on what’s on your mind, technical or not
  • Reviews of key decisions, such as architecture or vendor proposals
  • A monthly written summary of advice and risks

Not included

  • Managing developers
  • Joining team meetings
  • Hands-on work beyond the occasional draft
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Hands-on

Technical direction in the areas we agree on, put into practice with your team.

From€5,000/ month

Rhythm

Weekly founder call, the team’s planning meetings, and questions answered within one working day.

What you get

  • Everything in Advisor
  • Responsibility for agreed areas, such as architecture, vendors, or hiring
  • Clear instructions for your team, and reviews of what they deliver

Not included

  • Areas outside the agreed ones
  • Running the team day to day
  • Company decisions (they stay with you)
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Ownership

Technology is taken care of. You focus on the rest of the business; I bring you anything that needs your attention.

From€8,000/ month

Rhythm

Several check-ins a week with the team, and a weekly founder call.

What you get

  • Everything in Hands-on, for all of technology
  • Team, vendors, releases, quality, security, and compliance, all led by me
  • A monthly report on progress, risks, and budget

Not included

  • Full-time presence
  • On-call or 24/7 incident response
  • Teams larger than about 10
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You’re a good fit if you…

  • have a product people rely on and a team that’s growing
  • are taking on more or larger customers, so security, reliability, and a repeatable process matter more
  • lead a growth-stage startup, an established company, or an autonomous unit inside a larger organization

Probably not a fit if you…

  • work in a large corporation with several layers of approval and lots of red tape
  • are still building your first product: Build covers that stage
  • need a SOC 2 report or an ISO 27001 certificate itself: only an audit firm issues those, and I help you prepare for them
  • need on-call or 24/7 incident response
  • need an in-house CTO who speaks for the company to investors and the board: Hiring Your Tech or Product Leader finds one, and ongoing support can bridge the gap

What does your next stage need?

Tell me where your product and your team are heading. In a free call we look at what needs attention first and whether a review, a hire, or ongoing support fits.

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