Package 02 · Fractional CISO/CTO Operating Retainer
“I don’t need advice.
I need someone to run it.”
The Advisory Retainer tells you what to do. This is the one where I do it — inside your organization, one to two days a week, as your actual security or technology executive.
What sets the price
- One day a week, or two
- Size of the team reporting in
- How many programs run at once
- Whether the period includes hiring, an integration, or a live incident
Who this is for
A company past the point where monthly advice is enough. A funded startup scaling into enterprise customers who ask harder questions than the last cohort did. A company midway through an integration. A company whose CISO or CTO just left, and where the honest answer to "who owns this now" is nobody.
What's actually wrong
Advice has a delivery problem. Somebody still has to hire the people, kill the projects that are not working, sit in the standups, own the budget, and take responsibility when a decision turns out wrong. That is a different job from having the right opinion once a month, and no amount of advisory hours closes the gap. What is missing is not knowledge. It is an owner.
What you get
- An executive actually in the seat. The title, the authority to use it, and the accountability that comes with both. Your team reports into a real chain, not a consultant.
- Team leadership. Hiring, structure, performance, and the conversations a founder should not have to have about their own engineers.
- Program ownership, not recommendations. The roadmap is mine to deliver, and the failure to deliver it is mine to explain.
- Board and customer representation. As your executive, in your name, in the meetings where it counts.
- Budget and vendor authority. Including cancelling the things you are paying for and not using.
- A succession plan from day one. Part of the job is hiring the person who replaces me.
How it runs
One to two days a week, inside your calendar — standups, leadership meetings, board prep, the incident bridge if there is one. Not a monthly call with homework. Because engagements are deliberately limited, the time is genuinely reserved rather than notionally allocated.
What this isn't
Not the Executive Advisory Retainer — that is roughly two days a month of judgment, at a third of the price, and it is the right answer for most companies. Not a permanent hire, and not pretending to be one: the goal is to make the role fillable and then fill it. And not "fractional" in the sense of attention divided across a client list. Engagements are kept deliberately limited, and if there is no capacity when you call you will be told so rather than sold a diluted version.