En
Fr
De
It
Es
Uk
What is a fractional CTO?
A fractional CTO is a senior technical leader who works for your company part time, one or two days a week, instead of a full-time hire. You get the decisions, reviews and accountability of a CTO without a CTO salary, and without handing every technical choice to the people who also sell you the development hours.
At Lytvynov Production the fractional CTO is a named person: Anton Lytvynov, the founder of the company. Not an account manager, not a rotating pool of consultants. You talk to him, he signs off on the technical decisions, and he is the one who answers for them.
Who is it for?
- Non-technical founders who are about to spend $20,000 to $100,000 on an MVP and want someone on their side of the table: to write down what is being built, choose the stack, compare vendors and check every estimate before it is signed.
- Companies with a product built by an agency or freelancers who cannot tell whether the work is good, why it takes so long or what happens if the vendor disappears.
- Small and mid-size companies adopting AI that want to know which use cases are worth paying for, what they cost to run and how to keep customer data safe.
- Companies between CTOs, when the previous one left and the team needs a technical lead while a permanent hire is found.
- Startups before a fundraising round that need their architecture, security and technical debt in a state that survives an investor's technical due diligence.
It is not for companies that need a full-time engineering manager for a team of fifteen, or for someone who wants a developer at a CTO title. If you need hands on the code, see our development teams.
Ways to work with Anton
| Format | For whom |
|---|---|
| Fractional CTO for startups | Founders from idea to seed round: MVP scope, vendor choice, investor questions |
| Fractional AI CTO | Companies adopting AI: use cases, models, running costs, data rules |
| Interim CTO | Companies between CTOs: secure access, keep shipping, hire the next CTO |
| Independent code review | Anyone paying an agency or freelancers who wants a second opinion |
| Technical due diligence | Founders, investors and buyers before a round, an acquisition or a big decision |
What does Anton do as your fractional CTO?
Product and architecture
- Turns the business idea or the current product into a technical plan: what to build first, what to postpone, what to buy instead of build.
- Chooses or validates the stack, hosting and third-party services, with monthly running costs written down.
- Reviews the architecture of an existing product and decides what to fix now and what can wait.
Vendors, estimates and code
- Writes the scope your vendors quote against, so quotes can be compared.
- Reviews estimates, contracts and change requests from agencies and freelancers, including ours.
- Reviews pull requests, releases and incidents at the level that matters: security, data, maintainability, cost.
- Makes sure you own your code, accounts, domains and credentials, not the vendor.
Team
- Defines the first roles to hire, writes the technical part of job descriptions and runs technical interviews.
- Sets up the basic engineering process: tickets, code review, environments, deployments, backups.
AI and data
- Picks the AI use cases with a real return, chooses models and providers, estimates cost per request and per month, and sets rules for personal data.
Investors and board
- Prepares the technical part of due diligence, answers investors' technical questions and explains the technology to your board in plain language.
The first 90 days
| Period | What happens | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Days 1-30 | Access to code, infrastructure and vendors; interviews with the team; review of architecture, security and the backlog | A written technical assessment with the top risks and a 90-day plan |
| Days 31-60 | The highest risks are fixed or scheduled; vendor scope and estimates are rewritten where needed; process basics are in place | A roadmap with costs, clear ownership of accounts and code, a working release process |
| Days 61-90 | Regular rhythm: weekly call, reviews, hiring or vendor decisions; first AI or product decisions made with numbers | A team or vendor delivering against a plan you understand, and a monthly report |
After 90 days most clients stay month to month, move to one day a week once things are stable, or use the time to hire a full-time CTO with Anton running the interviews.
Plans and prices
| Plan | Time | Price | Fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Second opinion | 48 hours | $490 fixed | A written verdict on one agency quote or one codebase before you sign or pay the next invoice |
| Technical audit | 2 weeks, fixed scope | $3,500 fixed | A one-off review of a product, a codebase or a vendor before a decision or a round |
| CTO 1 day a week | About 4 days a month | $2,500 / month | MVP scoping and vendor oversight, stable products, AI decisions |
| CTO 2 days a week | About 8 days a month | $4,500 / month | A product in active development, a team of several developers, preparing to raise |
The monthly prices are founding rates for the first clients; from the first quarter of 2027 they become $3,500 and $6,500 a month.
For comparison, published rates for fractional CTOs are commonly $8,000 to $25,000 a month in the US and GBP 1,500 to 7,000 a month in the UK; a full-time CTO in the US costs well over $200,000 a year before equity. The technical audit can be the first step: if you continue with a monthly plan, you already have the assessment that the first month would otherwise produce.
Independent of our development team
Most agencies sell a fractional CTO as a cheap add-on to a development contract. That is a conflict of interest: the person who should check the vendor works for the vendor. We handle it this way:
- Separate contract and price. The CTO work is billed on its own. It does not depend on buying development from us.
- Any vendor. You can build with your own developers, freelancers or another agency. Anton will review their quotes and code with the same standard he applies to ours.
- Disclosure in writing. If our team is a candidate for your project, Anton says so in writing before the decision, and you are welcome to have a third party review his recommendation.
Two clients at a time
Anton takes at most two fractional CTO clients at once. A CTO spread across many companies stops knowing any of them well, and you would notice it in slow answers and generic advice. When both slots are taken, new clients go on a waiting list or start with the fixed-price audit.
Who is Anton Lytvynov?
Anton has worked in software since 2011, first as a business analyst writing user stories and backlogs, then as a developer and team lead:
- Meetic (Match Group): senior back-end developer on payment integrations for more than 30 dating sites in different countries, a multi-provider, high-load payment system.
- Anycommerce: team lead for payments and outsourcing. Built two payment products from zero, integrated them with the Natixis banking system, designed commission splitting and a high-load notification system, and managed fully remote teams.
- Lytvynov Production: founder and architect. Helps companies in the UK, the US and the EU decide what to build, sets up remote teams and leads the architecture of the products we deliver.
He holds a master's degree in artificial intelligence from Le Mans Université (France) and a master's degree in applied mathematics from Dnipro National University (Ukraine), and works in English and French as well as Ukrainian and Russian.
Fractional CTO or a development team?
| You need | Choose |
|---|---|
| Decisions, reviews and someone accountable for the technology | Fractional CTO |
| Code written and shipped | A development team: ours, yours or another vendor |
| Both, and you want them checked against each other | Fractional CTO plus any vendor, with the independence rules above |
If you are still deciding between the options, our guide fractional CTO vs agency vs in-house team compares costs and stages in detail.
How to start
- A 30-minute call with Anton. You describe the product, the team and the decision in front of you. No preparation needed.
- Audit or monthly plan. If the situation is unclear, start with the two-week audit. If it is clear, start with one or two days a week.
- Access and the first weekly call. Anton gets access to the code, infrastructure and vendors, and the first 30 days begin.
