Fractional CTO for small and mid-sized businesses
I'm a hands-on technical leader who still writes production code. I work with owners, founders and people buying businesses: I lead their technology part-time, look under the hood before an acquisition closes, and build the automation and AI that saves their teams real hours.
What I do
- Fractional CTO
- I join your leadership team for a few days a month and own the technology: what to build and what to buy, who to hire, which vendors to keep, and whether your data is safe. When you're ready for a full-time CTO, I help you hire one.
- Technical due diligence
- If you're buying a business, I look at its systems, software and data before you close and tell you plainly what you're getting, what's fragile, and what it will cost to fix. You get a written report you can use in negotiations and in the months after closing.
- AI and automation
- I build things that run every day: AI agents that handle real workflows, data pipelines, reporting, and connections between the tools you already pay for. The point is fewer hours of manual work and fewer things that only one person knows how to do.
- Getting ready to sell
- Buyers pay more for a business that runs without its owner. Documented systems, clean data and automated operations help with that, and they make the business easier to run until then.
More on each of these, and how engagements work.
About me
I lead engineering teams and I still build. Most of my recent work is production AI: agents, LLM orchestration, APIs and the cloud infrastructure underneath them. I'd rather show you something working than hand you a strategy deck.
Before that I built marketing systems and automation for growing businesses, and I spent some time in business brokerage, which taught me how buyers judge a company. Both made me practical about technology. If it doesn't save time or make money, it probably isn't worth doing.
I'm based in Los Angeles and work with clients anywhere. Most engagements start with a call to see whether I'm the right fit.
Also: investment real estate
I'm a licensed real estate agent in California. For investors, I run whole markets through a deal-analysis tool I built and send over the few properties that actually cash-flow once taxes, insurance and repairs are counted. Here's how that works.
Writing
- A Searcher's Guide to Technical Due DiligenceWhat to look for — and what to watch out for — when evaluating the technology, systems, and automation potential of a target acquisition.
- How to Evaluate a Business's AI Readiness Before You Acquire ItA practical framework for searchers and PE firms to assess a target company's technology stack, data infrastructure, and automation potential during due diligence.
- 5 Agentic Workflows to Deploy in a Newly Acquired BusinessFrom automated customer onboarding to intelligent inventory management — five high-impact agentic AI workflows that create immediate value post-acquisition.
I send an occasional email when I've written something new. You'll also get my guide, 10 Things That Kill Your Valuation.
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Get in touch
Tell me a little about what you're working on. Email hello@natalie.biz, call or text (310) 359-1101, or use the contact form.