When should a B2B SaaS startup decide on multi-tenancy?
Before the second paying customer, ideally before the first. The tenancy model (pooled, siloed, or a hybrid) shapes your data model, your security story, and your per-customer cost. Changing it later is one of the most expensive migrations a SaaS company can face, so it's the first thing I lock down.
Can a fractional CTO get us through a SOC 2 or security review?
Yes, and it's a common reason SaaS founders call. I scope the security work to what unblocks the deal in front of you (access controls, audit logs, SSO, encryption, and the SOC 2 path) rather than treating compliance as a project that swallows the roadmap. The aim is to answer the questionnaire in days.
How do you add AI features without blowing up our margins?
By treating AI cost as a first-class metric: per-tenant cost controls, caching, model routing across providers, and falling back to cheaper models where quality allows. I've built multi-provider abstractions over OpenAI, Anthropic, and Bedrock so an AI feature stays affordable as usage grows instead of quietly eroding gross margin.
Should we still price per seat?
Probably not as your only lever. Seats still work for the surface a human clicks. But the moment agents or APIs consume your product, a seat stops being a meter. One connection can front unlimited usage. Most B2B SaaS is moving to hybrid (platform fee plus usage), and I'd build the metering for that now even if you launch on seats, so you're not forced into a migration when your customers' agents arrive.
Is outcome-based pricing the future?
In specific cases. It works when the outcome is fast, measurable, and clearly attributable to your product. Salesforce can price per closed deal. It breaks when outcomes are slow or binary; at MateBio the outcome is a 10-year, billion-dollar drug approval you can't run a SaaS P&L on. I help you tell which kind of business you are before you copy someone else's pricing.
Do you build, or just advise?
Both, depending on the engagement. I ship production code alongside the team when that's what moves the needle. Most SaaS startups before product-market fit need a builder more than a meeting. As you grow, the balance shifts toward strategy, hiring, and architecture review.
We're early and pre-revenue. Is a fractional CTO worth it?
Often more so, because the decisions that are cheapest to get right are made earliest. A short assessment plus advisory can save you from the multi-tenancy and billing rewrites that derail SaaS startups six months in, for a fraction of a full-time hire.
How quickly can you start?
For urgent situations (a technical co-founder left, an enterprise security review landed, a launch is slipping), I can start within 48 hours. For planned engagements, typically 1–2 weeks from our first call.