An anonymous practice, on purpose.

Who I am

12 years in software. I started as an engineer. Recent years I spent as CTO or VP Engineering at venture-backed companies in Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK, with a run of work in between at older, owner-led businesses that had ended up running more software than they planned to.

Anonymous publicly. Identified privately.

Start with what you get, because that is the part that matters when you're deciding whether to trust a website without a name on it. On the intro call: my full name, my LinkedIn profile, a list of prior engagements, and references you can call the same day. Under NDA if you'd like. All of it before anything is signed. What I don't do is put any of that on a website that gets crawled and indexed.

The reason is the work itself. Every engagement I take involves someone losing their job, changing their scope, or hearing that the plan they built is not the plan anymore. That is easier to do when the founder isn't worried about what I might post afterwards. It is also easier when the outgoing CTO isn't reading my case-study page.

Who I take on

• Startups and scale-ups with investors behind them, roughly Series A to Series C, with engineering teams of 15 to 120.
• SMEs, most of them owner-led, with 5 to 40 people in and around software. Belgium is full of them and a lot of them now depend on a platform nobody senior is watching.
• Founders, CEOs, owners, or boards who can name, out loud, what is actually wrong.
• Companies where a successor is possible, internally or through hiring. At an SME that successor is often a lead engineer who has never been given the room.
• Earlier-stage companies, when they can pay a day rate and the problem is leadership rather than code.

The spearhead is right-sizing. That is the work I am best at and the reason this site exists. If your problem is a turnaround, a CTO replacement, or a platform that costs too much, that is the same job seen from a different angle. If the problem is high impact but doesn't fit any of the four, book the call anyway and I will tell you straight whether I am the right person.

The SME version of this work

Most Belgian companies are not venture-backed and never will be. They are 40 to 400 people, profitable, and somewhere along the way they built or bought software the business now runs on. Nobody in the building has done this at scale before. The team is 6 engineers and 2 agencies, the roadmap lives in someone's head, and the cloud bill has doubled since the last time anyone looked.

That is the same engagement with different vocabulary. No board deck, no round, no pressure to get to a Series B. The money is real money out of the operating budget, so the work is smaller, shorter, and has to earn its own fee. Typically that means a diagnosis, a cost and debt review, one or two people-decisions that have been postponed for a year, and a lead engineer who ends up doing the job properly with a title to match. Then I leave.

Who I refuse

• Equity-only or pay-me-out-of-the-savings arrangements. You need a co-founder, not a fractional CTO.
• Founders who describe the problem as "we just need to ship faster" without saying why.
• Anyone looking for a hands-on IC. I don't write production code and I won't pretend to.

How an engagement starts

It starts with a 15-minute call, then a 3-week diagnosis at a fixed price agreed up front. About 8 to 10 days of work. You get a written report and a plan. The recommendation at the end may not include me, and that happens often enough that it is worth saying out loud.

If it does include me, the engagement runs 3 to 9 months at 2 to 3 days a week. If you don't need someone embedded, there is a lighter advisory option: 2 to 4 days a month, 3 months minimum. Smaller companies usually start there, and often that is all they need.

How I charge

Day rate, invoiced monthly. No equity, no success fees, no percentage of the round, and no cut of whatever I save you on the cloud bill. If the engagement should end, I want nothing standing in the way of ending it. The rate is the same for a scale-up and for a family business. What changes is how many days it takes. I discuss the number on the call, once the scope is clear.

Where I work

Based in Flanders, Belgium. Remote-first, because the teams I work with are usually spread over two or three European countries anyway. On-site every fortnight when it matters, or every week for the first month if the org needs the presence.