Daniel A.
Fractional CTO Advisory | Technical Due Diligence | Risk Assessment
Most $100K-$500K technology failures start with one bad decision — and by the time you realize it, the money's gone. The founder approves the dev agency. The CEO commits to the AI platform. 6-12 months later: project stalled, budget burned, nothing shipped. I help you see the fatal flaws BEFORE you commit the capital. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗜 𝗗𝗢: I provide independent technical governance — validation and risk assessment for founders, investors, and CEOs making technology decisions that can't afford to fail. When you're about to commit $200K to a dev agency, hire your first CTO, or approve a legacy system replacement — you need someone who's seen it go wrong 50 times. I find the fatal flaws vendor pitches hide: • Architecture constraints that make roadmaps impossible • Development estimates 3x too optimistic (blowing your runway) • Integration assumptions that break under real conditions • Missing decision ownership, letting projects drift 6+ months My rate is $250/hour, but most work is structured as ADVISORY PACKAGES — full scope and pricing in my Project Catalog below: 𝟭. 𝗧𝗘𝗖𝗛𝗡𝗜𝗖𝗔𝗟 𝗗𝗨𝗘 𝗗𝗜𝗟𝗜𝗚𝗘𝗡𝗖𝗘 𝗦𝗣𝗥𝗜𝗡𝗧 Question: "Should we invest/hire this agency/approve this project?" Deliverable: Go/No-Go recommendation (3-5 days) At stake: $50K-$500K ROI: One avoided bad hire pays for 5+ years of diligence 𝟮. 𝗣𝗥𝗘-𝗙𝗨𝗡𝗗𝗥𝗔𝗜𝗦𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗧𝗘𝗖𝗛 𝗣𝗔𝗖𝗞𝗔𝗚𝗘 Question: "How do we pass investor technical diligence?" Deliverable: Investor-ready docs + Q&A prep (1-2 weeks) At stake: $500K-$3M round ROI: Failed fundraising costs 3-6 months + founder credibility 𝟯. 𝗧𝗘𝗖𝗛𝗡𝗜𝗖𝗔𝗟 𝗚𝗢𝗩𝗘𝗥𝗡𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗘 𝗦𝗧𝗔𝗥𝗧𝗘𝗥 𝗠𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗛 Question: "Who do we call for CTO-level judgment without a CTO?" Deliverable: Starter month of on-call guidance (5-8 hrs), converts to a standing retainer if it's a fit At stake: $100K-$300K quarterly spend ROI: One bad vendor/architecture choice costs $150K+ to unwind — often the natural next step after a Due Diligence Sprint 𝟰. 𝗖𝗨𝗦𝗧𝗢𝗠 𝗔𝗗𝗩𝗜𝗦𝗢𝗥𝗬 CTO transitions, dev agency evaluation, legacy modernization, AI feasibility — scope and pricing based on complexity and capital at risk. $350 scoping session (credited toward your package if you move forward) to assess what you're protecting. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 𝗪𝗛𝗬 𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗦 𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗦: Technology failures hide in: • Dev proposals skipping hard integration questions • "Modern stack" pitches ignoring your operating constraints • AI demos working in labs but failing in production • Roadmaps assuming 5 things go perfectly — all 5 wrong 6-12 months post-contract: budget spent, runway shortened, asking "how did we miss this?" You missed it because the pitch looked credible, the agency spoke confidently, the contractor said "feasible" — and no one asked questions exposing fatal flaws BEFORE commitment. I ask those questions. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 𝗪𝗛𝗔𝗧 𝗜'𝗩𝗘 𝗣𝗥𝗘𝗩𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗗: 25+ years across defense, water infrastructure, energy, fintech, edtech — 14M+ endpoints, zero-downtime environments. Recent outcomes: • $250K dev contract avoided — assessment revealed team lacked integration experience (founder negotiated 40% better rate elsewhere) • $1.2M seed secured — package removed investor concerns (diligence passed first review, 30-day close vs 60-90) • $180K AI killed at 60 days — retainer ID'd misaligned case before $140K more spent • $320K migration, zero downtime — rollback protocol designed, 12% under budget • $150K saved on CTO hire — assessment caught skill gaps founder couldn't evaluate I understand startup urgency AND enterprise reliability — critical when burning $50K-$100K/month. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 𝗖𝗟𝗜𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗦: "Finding Daniel was hitting 'Triple 7's'! Grasped our concept immediately, provided extremely valuable insight. Tasked him with vetting dev teams — methodically found perfect fit. Without Dan, wouldn't have achieved our progress. Cannot recommend enough." — Steve, ZinZuu "In the first few minutes Daniel showed us he's a true professional and expert. He provided more value than we asked for and really simplified complex technical things in terms our whole team understood. Highly recommend for advice on development projects." — Robert, Private - Startup Initiative "Knew within minutes we found who could lead us to launch. Detail oriented, professional, responsive, excellent communication. Knowledgeable, experienced leader. Recommend without reservation." — Jen, GoShimmy "Hired for Windows app requiring deep IoT I/O understanding. Took loose specs, unraveled details, developed fast/reliable solution. Highly recommend as Sr. engineer for any magnitude." — Heath, Mueller Water ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Ready to de-risk your next decision? Request a 30-minute discovery call, or check the Project Catalog below. Lets fix it
Earnings and projects
Last 6 months ÷ 6
Last 6 months: $5.5k
Billed in all: $340,801$341k
$5.5k in the last 6 months
Across 70 contracts
Earnings, last 30 days
Skill rankings: Top 10% in Visual Basic
Ranked by MRR among everyone on Upwork with the skill.
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