Everything about who builds with you and how you work together. You’ll find advice on cofounders, early hires, agencies, contractors, nearshore/offshore teams, incentives, and collaboration patterns that keep everyone aligned on outcomes instead of output.
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You've heard of fractional CFO. A fractional CTO is the same idea applied to engineering and technical leadership. Here's what the role actually owns, when it's the right move, when it isn't, and what to look for if you decide to find one.
In Practice is a recurring column about what actually happens inside software engagements. Not frameworks, not advice. What we find, what goes wrong, and what it means.
The Argument is a recurring column where we take a clear position on how technical work should be done — and make the case for it.
Most founders who come to me about software development have already made the decision. They have a budget, a rough idea, and a timeline. What they need, they think, is someone to execute. That moment — right before the first conversation with a developer — is where most startup software projects go wrong.
Most founders who've been burned by an agency tell the same story. The timeline slipped, but not catastrophically. The deliverables were hit, more or less. The handoff happened. And then they were left holding a product they didn't fully understand, built on decisions they weren't consulted on, by people who had already moved on to the next contract. That's not a horror story. That's the outsourcing model working exactly as designed.
Def0x is a small, specialized unit built on a simple observation: the founders who get burned by agencies and freelancers don't have a technology problem. They have an ownership problem. Nobody they hired was invested in what happened after delivery. This blog documents what we've learned building alongside founders who needed more than a vendor.