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US Elections are here! If you’re American, don’t forget to vote this week 🗳️

In other news, I’m hosting a meet-up in Singapore on Nov. 13th. Reply to this email to RSVP.

I’m also preparing a surprise bonus for Black Friday. Stay tuned 🥳

Now let’s dive into this week’s insights…

Today, in 10 minutes or less, you’ll learn:

• 🛣️ The unconventional path from software-engineer to six-figure Fractional CTO

• 🤑 The real numbers behind a successful fractional tech leader's income

• 🔁 How to weather the feast-or-famine cycle of consulting tech work

• 🤫 The secret to creating a steady stream of high-paying clients

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🧑‍💻 Becoming a Fractional CTO | Sergio Pereira

Sergio Pereira has been building technology for 20 years and worked as a Startup CTO for the last 10 years. He loves to build tech products from scratch, onboard the first clients, get to product-market-fit, hire the first engineers, and grow product, team and processes from there towards scale.

Whenever he has spare time, he’s building his own SaaS products to keep learning about new technologies and to walk-the-walk in bringing them to market and growing that MRR.

Tell us about your career journey.

I started my career in 2009 as a Software Engineer, and since 2014 I’ve worked as a Startup CTO (twice as co-Founder).

Which has been my career for the last decade, having built from scratch several tech products and engineering teams for early stage startups.

Back in 2016, I had my first Fractional CTO client out of my close network, where non-technical Startup Founders would reach out for technical help to hire software engineers, build their product or simply help them figure out some issue or bug.

Shiptimize was such a case. I helped this startup hire their first engineers and integrate with their first enterprise client, which was a big milestone for them at that time.

I didn’t take this Fractional CTO career too seriously, and I didn’t have any proper bizdev in place back then, so I kept working as a Full Time CTO with occasional Fractional clients on the side on and off for a few years. Only in 2022, did I finally decide to make Fractional CTO my main career. So far so good.

You’ve been a fractional CTO, consultant, and advisor for over 7 years. What have been the pros and cons of going fractional?

I think there are a lot of pros in this Fractional CTO career, with flexibility being the biggest of them.

I have greater control over my calendar and decide how I will allocate my time each week.

I also get to work with a broader number of companies in just a few years, which exposes me to a wide range of technologies, industries, and business challenges.

I’ve felt that these added perspectives have accelerated my professional growth significantly, as I can transfer learnings across different contexts and add value that way.

The biggest drawback of a Fractional career is the unpredictability of income.

Some months I’m breaking my income record and working long hours, while others can drive me really anxious with a looming empty funnel ahead. It really is a feast or famine, and trust me it’s quite hard to adapt, even if it pays off when looking at my earnings in hindsight.

I think the pros outweigh the cons, but I know plenty of Fractional CTOs that tried and failed. It’s all about building a consistent client acquisition process to avoid that anxiety and any financial trouble.

How did you design your first offer? How has it evolved until now?