A♠
HIRING
Is this person right for the team you have now?
A♠
Budget doesn't decide it.
The first calls do.
When to bring in AI, whether a vendor quote is reasonable, whether a piece of technology is worth building, whether the architecture can carry the business — a fractional CTO makes those calls and manages them with you, without the cost of a full-time one.
Free 30-minute consultationAdvice is everywhere.
Nobody carries it with you.
In Taiwan, an operator without software expertise has roughly four options when a technical question lands — and still walks the hardest, most consequential part alone.
01
Government-programme mentors
Once the programme closes, nobody is beside you for the part where you actually build.
02
A vendor's pre-sales consultant
They scope what they can build, not what you actually need.
03
Freelance engineers
When you brief the wrong thing, they are in no position — and often no shape — to tell you.
04
A friend who knows tech
Generous, free, honest — and accountable for none of it.
You need a fractional CTO
to decide and execute with you
A fractional CTO is a senior technical decision-maker who carries the direction and the judgement for operators who don't yet need — or can't yet afford — a full-time one
Deal with what's in front of you
- The product is unstable — it crashes and errors out on and off
- The architecture buckles the moment users grow
- Technical debt keeps compounding and nobody owns it
- Delivery slips again and again, for reasons nobody can explain
- Maintenance costs run away, spent on things you cannot see
- Nobody can tell you where the security risks actually are
Lay the long-term foundation
- Every technical decision serves a business goal
- Build the engineering team — and bring the people up
- Plan an AI architecture that actually ships
- Vendor evaluation, price comparison, contract negotiation
- How to budget for technology, and where the money should go
Operators with no technical expert — and no appetite for the potholes
You are building real, usable software without the technical expertise to judge the dozens of decisions that land every week.
You have customers and momentum, but every technical decision is a guess
You have an AI-built prototype that demos beautifully but cannot hold traffic, cannot fend off attacks, and will not connect to real systems
You are raising, and need a technical plan that holds up in the deck and on the due-diligence call
You are working with an outsourcing vendor and suspect you are being oversold or shortchanged, with no way to tell
You are about to hire engineers and want a senior expert in the room
The only person who understood the technology has left, and nobody can catch it
When these signals show up
it's time for a fractional CTO
Don't wait until the technical debt blows up, or the wrong hire is already inside. If any one of these is true, get someone now.
01
You are about to sign a development contract over NT$800,000 and cannot tell whether it is reasonable
02
The AI-built prototype has started failing in front of real users
03
You cannot answer the technical questions investors ask
04
Development is slow, and you do not know whether that is normal
05
You are interviewing engineers with no way to judge their ability
06
You keep hearing “this needs a refactor” without knowing what that means
07
Security, privacy-law or industry-compliance requirements have surfaced and nobody owns them
08
The product roadmap is a wish list, not a plan
Not a fit: you already have a CTO or a senior engineering lead; what you want is someone to write the code themselves; or you have already decided what to do and just want it endorsed.
We have walked
the road you are on
Velocity Curve was founded by Joanne and Vincent. More than a decade ago, when we first had the idea to start a company, we hired an outsourcing firm to write the code — and paid for a codebase that turned out to be unusable and unsalvageable.
Together we built a niche-market software product from zero to one: first line of code, through launch, and then ten years of running it. That decade taught us the thing that matters most — how to turn a business model into the right technical architecture.
TECHNOLOGY
Vincent
Full-stack engineer, with end-to-end experience across front-end development, back-end design and cloud deployment. Former CTO at a blockchain company; the smart contracts under that remit peaked at US$100M total value locked, with their security design rated excellent by a professional audit firm.
PRODUCT & BUSINESS
Joanne
Translates user problems into development requirements and product specs; owns market positioning and acquisition, business model and pricing, and long-term customer relationships. Makes sure what gets built is something the market will actually pay for.
10 yearsBuilding and running software from zero
US$100MAudited smart-contract value locked
2 foundersInvolved from end to end
Perspectives
Written for operators with no engineering team who still make technical decisions every week.
The first post is being written.
Choose the depth
of engagement you need
We do not bill by the hour — hours reward stretching the clock, not stretching for a better answer. What actually differs is whether you are facing one decision to settle, or technical choices that keep arriving.
Plan 01
Decision diagnosis
NT$30,000from / project
One-off project fee, agreed by complexity
For when you have one clear, expensive decision in front of you and need someone who is not on the vendor's side to judge it.
- Compare several vendor quotes and judge what is reasonable
- CV screening and interview gatekeeping for a single role
- A verdict on whether to refactor
- Pre-fundraise technical health check and due-diligence documents
- One-off diagnosis of a system performance problem
Most people pick this
Plan 02
Decision partnership
NT$60,000from / month
Monthly retainer, stop at any time
For when development is ongoing, you still want to watch the team yourself, but you need someone to tell you what is right and what is not.
- Fortnightly review of progress and risk, plus the questions to put to your team
- Strategy prep before vendor conversations — you run the meeting, we prepare your negotiating points
- Ongoing hiring gatekeeping across stages and roles
- A second opinion on technical decisions (architecture choices, whether to move to the cloud)
- Technical answers prepared ahead of board and investor presentations
Plan 03
Deep engagement
NT$150,000from / month
Monthly retainer, stop at any time
For treating us as half a technical lead — we become the engineering team's day-to-day contact, so you no longer face technical disputes yourself.
- A standing weekly meeting with the engineering team, managing progress and quality on your behalf
- Negotiating with vendors as your representative, and reviewing contracts before signature
- Running the full hiring process — screening, interviewing, deciding
- Sitting in on investor meetings for you, answering technical due-diligence questions
- Handling the team-governance problem of a senior engineer who has hit their ceiling
Plans two and three are billed monthly. Change plan or stop at any time; no lock-in.
The actual scope and price of plan one is confirmed in writing within three business days of the free call, and does not increase afterwards.
All three plans can move with the complexity of the decision; on the call we will tell you which end of the range you are at.
Common questions
How is the fee calculated?
We do not bill by the hour. Plan one is a one-off project fee agreed by complexity; plans two and three are billed monthly, and you can change plan or stop at any time with no lock-in. The actual scope and price of plan one is confirmed in writing within three business days of the free call, and does not increase afterwards.
How do I tell whether a vendor quote is too high?
That is exactly what the decision diagnosis is for. We lay the quotes side by side and go through scope, effort assumptions and deliverables line by line, then tell you which items are reasonable, which are padding, and which clauses to add before you sign. We do not take work from vendors, so the judgement is not on the seller's side.
Can an AI-built prototype go straight to production?
Usually not. Prototypes demo beautifully but often cannot hold traffic, cannot fend off attacks, and will not connect to real systems. What you can do is establish which parts of the prototype are worth keeping and which have to be rebuilt, then decide how much to invest in turning it into something you can operate — rather than waiting for it to fail in front of real users.
I'm not technical. How do I interview engineers?
We sit in and do the gatekeeping. CV screening, designing the technical interview, asking the questions and reading the answers are ours; judging whether the person fits your team stays yours. A single role fits plan one; ongoing hiring across stages and roles sits in plan two or three.
Start with one 30-minute call
Talk through the technical question you have not decided yet. The call is free and there is no follow-up sales push — if we are not the right people, we will say so on the call.
Book a call