HIRING
No need for a full-time CTO
Get enterprise-grade IT and AI decisions
Facing system upgrades, AI adoption, security risks, and vendor proposals? We stand with business owners to clarify the risks and returns, so technical decisions help you reach your business goals
Business owners make technical decisions every day
A company's size or type of business may not warrant a full-time CTO, yet it still faces important technical issues every year. These decisions often fall to owners or senior managers without a software technology background.
Advice is everywhere.
Nobody carries it with you.
In Taiwan, business owners without a software technology background typically have four options when facing an important technical decision.
Government-programme mentors
They can help you plan and secure resources, but once the programme closes and execution begins, there is often no one alongside you to work through the problems.
A vendor's pre-sales consultant
They can introduce many solutions, but it is hard to tell which ones you truly need and which simply spend budget on unnecessary features.
Freelance engineers
They can execute the work you specify, but will not necessarily test whether the direction is right. If the brief is off from the start, even fast delivery can be wasted effort.
A friend who knows tech
Generous, free, and willing to be honest — but they have their own priorities and cannot be accountable for long-term technical decisions or outcomes.
WHAT A FRACTIONAL CTO IS
A fractional CTO
alongside you
A fractional CTO is an experienced technical judge who helps operators assess direction, risk, and cost — and makes sure the systems they pay for can support real operations.
Fractional CTOs are an established role in the United States. Evolving alongside fractional CFOs and CMOs, using a non-full-time senior leader for a specific function is a common business practice.
AI adoption is accelerating, and vibe coding is appearing inside businesses too. More people can make software, but not more people can judge whether it is ready to launch, whether data will leak, or who will maintain it. The need for security, governance, and AI infrastructure is therefore stronger than ever.
You do not need to hire a full-time CTO before you begin putting your technical environment on the right footing. Most companies do not need another headcount; they need someone able to make the right call at the critical moment.
You may not have a full-time CTO.
You still need their judgement and management.
A fractional CTO provides senior technical decision-making and management: setting technical direction, judging priorities, and ensuring every decision serves the business goal. Most technical problems stem from absent judgement and management, not technology itself.
Judgement
What someone needs to help you think through
- Outsource it, build it in-house, or do not do it yet
- Whether a vendor's proposal and quote are reasonable
- Whether an AI tool can go live, and where company data should live
- When to hire engineers, and what kind of people to hire
- Whether “this needs a refactor” is real, or something else
- How to budget for technology, and where the money should go
Management
What someone needs to keep watching
- Progress is followed up; when delivery slips, someone can explain why
- Development processes and acceptance standards are set and upheld
- Accounts, permissions, and data stay controlled despite staff turnover
- Day-to-day vendor and outsourcing communication, delivery, and acceptance
- Security risks stay under watch, rather than being handled after an incident
- AI tools enter real operating workflows instead of remaining trials
When these signals show up
it's time for a fractional CTO
Your company makes technical decisions every week, but no one can tell right from wrong. Do not wait until technical debt explodes, or the wrong person is already inside. If any one of these is true, bring someone in now.
Before the money goes out
A million-dollar development contract is ready to sign, and you cannot tell if it is reasonable
Is the outsourcing vendor's scope and quote reasonable?
The systems vendor says you need an upgrade — is it necessary or a sales pitch?
You keep hearing “we need a refactor” — should you agree?
The AI question
You want AI to raise productivity, but do not know where to start
A colleague's AI-built tool is running, but only that person can change it
An AI tool demos beautifully, then fails in actual use
You want to apply for AI funding but cannot write an implementation plan
Can the team carry it?
You are interviewing engineers but cannot judge their ability
The only person who understood the technology has left, and no one can take over
Development is slow — but is this normal?
Security, privacy, or compliance requirements have arrived, and you do not know what to do
WHY VELOCITY CURVE
We bring
a CTO's mind
an operator's heart
Velocity Curve was founded by Vincent and Joanne. Having founded and run companies more than once, we know operators make the highest-leverage decisions for their companies and organisations under limited resources and uncertainty.
From outsourcing to building software ourselves, from testing business models to finding market positioning, and from there making technology serve commercial goals, we have gone through this process many times. We have firsthand experience of the struggles and strain operators face along the way.
Vincent has taken SaaS software from zero to one as a full-stack developer, and has served as CTO of a fintech company, building a cross-border engineering team from the ground up. The financial system he led passed technical due diligence by institutional investors; the company raised US$7 million in total, and the platform carried more than US$100 million in client assets while live.
Joanne turns user problems into development requirements and product specifications, market positioning and customer acquisition, business models and pricing, and long-term customer relationships. She works at the intersection of technology and business, ensuring that what gets built is something the market genuinely values.
Get to know the Velocity Curve team →Client work
The people who know the problem build the most useful tools
GFM | New Jersey B2B specialty food platform
GFM is a US B2B platform for specialty foods. Its team manages 3,500 products and has felt the bottlenecks and growing pains of rapid growth firsthand.
Before working with us, product listing, sorting, replenishment, pricing, catalog updates, inbound and outbound scheduling, and customer service all relied on Excel files and the system back office — about 130 hours of work every week.
We taught GFM employees to build their own tools with Claude Code and built the underlying infrastructure so tools deploy safely, data stays centralised, and colleagues can take over at any time. Routine work that once took about 130 hours a week now takes about 27.
Choose the depth of engagement you need
Every direction you settle on now shapes what it will cost you later, and what stays open to you — these three depths differ in how far in we come, and how long we stay
Plan One
Decision diagnosis
NT$30,000from / project
One-off service fee, agreed by complexity
Helping you judge and plan the decisions that matter
Getting it wrong is expensive, and there is no one around you who can tell you neutrally which way to go. Common questions look like this:
- A system built with AI or by an outsourced team — can it go live to the public? What is it still missing?
- Should you use an external AI platform, or build your own AI agent?
- Is now the time to rebuild the whole tech stack?
- Should you hire a full-time engineer, or bring in an outsourcing firm?
- Investors want technical due diligence — what will they ask, and how should you answer?
- Every demo goes well, then it breaks the moment it goes live — where is the problem?
Plan Two
Embedded advisor
NT$80,000from / month
Reserved hours, stop at any time
In your meetings, moving the work forward
The workflows to build, what outsourced teams deliver, the AI tools inside your company — we keep judging and managing all of it. Common situations look like this:
- You are paying for software development, every meeting asks you for a technical choice, and you are not sure you are choosing right
- You know security should be stronger, but not where to start or how to plan it
- What outsourced teams and vendors deliver needs someone to check it before you accept it
- The company has built or bought plenty of AI tools, yet they do not noticeably help, and you do not know why
- Internal AI tools keep multiplying, and their permissions, data and upkeep need someone watching them continuously
- You want to move internal systems to the cloud, and do not know where to start or how to choose
Plan Three
External representative
By projectpriced separately
Agreed by the occasions and how often we appear
Your technology and your product — we stand up and speak for them, in Chinese or English.
Everything in the embedded advisor plan, plus appearing as your company's external CTO, or in a role you designate, to face the people outside your company:
- Technical reports to the board
- Investor presentations, and the live Q&A of technical due diligence
- Product launches, PR occasions, and technical briefings for major clients
- Technical talks and media interviews on the company's behalf
- Government tenders and project meetings
- Industry forums, trade shows and similar events
Project services
Quoted on scope and headcount — ask us
Security review
A system built with AI, vibe coding or an outsourced team — we check it once, before or after it goes live.
- Permissions and data: once logged in, can a user see someone else's data?
- Keys and secrets: are API keys or passwords exposed in the frontend or the code?
- AI and automation: can it be manipulated, or make a mistake that cannot be undone?
- Backups and monitoring: can a backup actually be restored? Will anyone know when the system breaks?
- Delivered as a risk list, with fix priorities and recommendations
Training
Your team learns to use AI on its own, and to build its own tools.
- AI from first principles: what an API, MCP and an AI agent are
- Using AI in day-to-day work — which data can go in, and which cannot
- Building small internal tools for a department with Claude Code
- Building AI agents and automated workflows
- In-house training or workshops, designed around the department and its level
Common questions
What is a fractional CTO?
A fractional CTO provides the CTO function to a company on a part-time basis. The difference is in the work, not the hours: they own technical direction, architecture choices, vendor evaluation, hiring and technical governance — not writing code. The term is established in the US and Europe; Taiwan has no settled name for it yet, and some people say part-time CTO or technical advisor. It suits a company that already has software investment but does not yet have a full-time CTO.
How is a fractional CTO different from a technical advisor, a vendor's consultant, or a freelance engineer?
The difference is whose side they are on, and how far their responsibility runs. A vendor's pre-sales consultant evaluates the solutions they have and want to sell you. A freelance engineer delivers what you specify and is not responsible for telling you whether the direction is right, or whether it lines up with your operations and business goals. An advisor gives advice but does not stay with you through the decision. A fractional CTO's job is to make the judgement from your side, looking at the whole picture: which work can be outsourced, how to evaluate a quote, when you need to hire a full-time engineer, and when vibe coding is not enough on its own. They also take part in important meetings, helping with communication and moving the work forward.
How big does a company have to be before it needs a fractional CTO?
It is not about size. It is about whether three things are true at once: you have ongoing software investment, the amounts or the consequences of your decisions have started to exceed the margin of error you can absorb, and nobody inside the company can judge whether a technical proposal is any good. For example, you have no senior technical staff in-house but you have already engaged an outsourcing firm. Or people inside have started vibe coding, and nobody is assessing security or how several people will maintain it. Conversely, if you already have a senior technical lead, or you simply need something already clearly defined to be built, you do not need one.
What does a fractional CTO cost in Taiwan?
There are no published rate statistics for fractional CTOs in Taiwan. Two reference points are worth having. In the US, fractional CTO providers publish rates that mostly fall between US$5,000 and US$15,000 a month, for 10 to 20 hours a week. At the Taiwan end, Michael Page's Taiwan Salary Guide 2026 puts the 75th percentile of an IT Director's annual salary at NT$3.8 million; that role is not quite the same as a CTO, but it works as an order-of-magnitude reference for what a senior technical lead costs. The right thing to compare our fees against is a full-time technical lead's salary, not a project quote from an outsourcing marketplace — the two buy different things.
Do you actually build things, or only advise?
We do, but building is not the main work. Assessment, planning, vendor evaluation and hiring gatekeeping are the core. In areas where no mature outsourcing market exists yet — AI infrastructure being one — or where a client's needs call for it, we will also help build it directly, or serve alongside a partner vendor.
Could you see my system and then go and build a competing product?
The contract states confidentiality and non-compete obligations. The more practical guarantee is that our business is built on continuing service relationships: competing with a client would put us against our own brand and our own business model. If there is a scope you are particularly concerned about, it can be named in the contract.