Blog
Notes from the engagement
Practical writing on Fractional CTO work, AI architecture decisions, and how to lead engineering teams at startup scale. Posts are in English; page navigation is translated.
EU AI Act readiness for seed-stage startups in 2026
Seed startups do not need a compliance department — but they do need a classification memo, basic transparency, and a plan before August 2026. Here is the minimum viable AI Act posture for pre-Series A teams.
Deploying LLMs on EU infrastructure: OVHcloud, Scaleway, and Mistral
A practical architecture guide for running LLM inference in the EU — when to use sovereign cloud APIs, when to self-host, and how to wire Mistral, Llama, and retrieval without sending prompts to US hyperscalers.
Building an AI MVP in 4-8 weeks: a founder's checklist
A step-by-step checklist for founders scoping an AI MVP — from hypothesis to evals, compliance, deployment, and the sign-off criteria that mean you actually shipped something testable.
Fractional CTO vs freelance AI developer: which do you need?
Both roles show up in founder hiring conversations. They solve different problems, overlap in places, and combining them wrong wastes budget. Here is how to choose — or combine — each.
How to hire a freelance AI developer in Europe
What to look for when hiring a freelance AI developer in Paris, Berlin, or remote across the EU — scope, stack, compliance, pricing, and the questions that separate production engineers from demo builders.
EU AI Act for founders: a 2026 readiness checklist
The EU AI Act is in active rollout. Here is what is in force already, what kicks in on 2 August 2026, what classifies as high-risk, and the practical readiness checklist for product teams.
GDPR + LLMs: a practical guide for product teams
How to build LLM-powered products in the EU without breaking GDPR. A practical walkthrough of the articles that bite, the patterns that work, and the patterns that look fine but are not.
How to hire a Fractional CTO: questions, red flags, and contracts
A founder's checklist for evaluating Fractional CTO candidates — where to source them, what to ask, what should make you walk away, and what a clean contracting setup looks like.
Why you should NOT hire a Fractional CTO
A contrarian counterpoint to the rest of the writing on this site. The model is not right for every founder, every stage, or every product. Here are the cases where hiring one is the wrong move.
When to hire a Fractional CTO — and when not to
Five clear signals you need one, three signals you do not, and the most common founder mistakes in evaluating the model.
How a Fractional CTO manages an engineering team part-time
Engineering teams need decisions, unblockers, and direction. A Fractional CTO is gone 80% of the time. Here is how the model works in practice — and where it breaks down.
How to choose between OpenAI, Claude, Mistral, and Llama for your product
Four model families, four very different trade-offs. A practical framework for choosing — based on data residency, cost, capability, ecosystem, and what fails first.
MVP in 4-8 weeks: realistic vs unrealistic expectations
A working MVP in 4-8 weeks is achievable for a focused subset of products and impossible for the rest. Here is what fits in the window, what does not, and how to scope a build that actually ships.
Fractional vs Part-time vs Interim vs Full-time CTO — what is the difference?
The four CTO models look similar from outside but solve different problems. Here is the practical difference, and a decision framework based on your company stage.
What is a Fractional CTO and when do you need one?
A Fractional CTO is senior technical leadership for startups that need it before they can justify a full-time hire. Here is what the role actually does, who hires one, and when the model works.
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