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Bayun
Bayun is building a security framework, and wanted to see how a CTO would evaluate it. I put myself in the shoes of a CTO (a role I'd performed earlier) evaluating Bayun, both as a technology and a company. This brought up some blind spots in the messaging, as well as aspects that are not convincing.
I created an alternative version of the slide deck and recorded myself presenting it, to illustrate a solution to the problems found. This helped Bayun improve their pitch.
In other roles than consulting
The above section describes the work I did in Developer Tools in other roles than as a consultant:
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Full-time CTO (2020):
As a full-time CTO of a startup working in developer tools, I delivered the following outcomes:
Growth: Handled 5x in 6 months while maintaining 99.94% uptime in some months and 100% in others.
Put in place engineering processes like code review, sprint discipline, prioritisation, tech debt reduction, security, exploring new technologies.
Engineering culture: Improved by conducting talks, brainstorms, freedom week, etc.
Coordinated with designers, including making interactive prototypes to explore product ideas.
Product:
Worked as interim product lead.
Contributed to identifying expectations for hiring Product Lead, PM and APM and interviewed multiple people.
Identified critical metrics to track the health of the company and the product.
Proposed a new product line to grow 10x.
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People:
Ownership: Increased ownership for engineers.
Hiring: Identified our goals as a company, and worked backwards to identify the product needed and planned and executed hiring accordingly, including key roles like Product Lead, and brought in product, UX and eng leaders as consultants / advisors to cover critical gaps in the meantime.
Retention: Retained two key employees. There was zero attrition in the eng team until after I left.
Apiary (2011):
Apiary was a platform at Google that handles all API calls into Google. I worked as a DevOps engineer / SRE on this platform, which had traffic of 100,000 requests/second. The service was fast and reliable, with hardly any outages, during my engagement.
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Google Gears (2008):
I built an imaging API in Google Gears.
Let's talk about what I can do for your startup
Goal-based engagement
Is your startup not on track to achieve your next milestone? Are you unsure what to do to get back on track?
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Wouldn't it be great if you could get a trusted expert to guide you throughout your journey, help you make critical decisions right, and give you visibility into the consequences of decisions before you make them, so that you can execute with confidence?
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Work with me, and I’ll guide you to success.
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I'd like to offer you a couple of pricing options:
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Option 1: Guaranteed results: I’ll understand your goals, and commit to delivering them. In the unlikely event I fail to deliver, I’ll do whatever it takes to make things right, including redoing the work at no extra cost, giving you a partial refund, or even a full refund, whichever I feel is the appropriate resolution.
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The fee will be $175/hour, subject to a minimum of $4K per month.
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The bill fluctuates month to month. In the past I’ve billed as much as $20K in a single month.
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I’ll inform you every $4K — 4, 8, 12, etc — to avoid bill shock.
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A typical engagement costs $100K. I suggest you budget $100K to get started, and I’ll let you know if this changes as the work proceeds.
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Option 2: Name your own price. It could be as low as $4k. We’ll divide it by the hourly rate of $275, and you’ll get a certain number of hours. I’ll use those hours to further the agreed-upon goals. When the hours are over, if work still remains, you can choose to repeat this process by naming another price for the next iteration, or switch to option 1.
