Fractional CTO · for founders
The fractional CTO who still ships.
You get a CTO's judgment without the full-time hire. I make the architecture calls, and I build the parts that have to hold.
Founding engineer at Pluto TV Senior engineer at The Block Principal engineer at Cigna
Thirty minutes, free, no pitch. You'll know by the end if I can help.
This is real, shipped work with real users behind it.
I've built the hard parts.
Now I help founders build theirs.
I'm Michael Price, a senior software engineer. I was the founding engineer at Pluto TV, the streaming service Viacom went on to acquire. Today I build at The Block, and on my own I built Nexus City, a full city running in the browser. As a principal engineer at Cigna I architected the insurance enrollment systems that processed hundreds of millions of dollars in policies. I go deep in Rust and full-stack, and I ship.
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Pluto TV
I was the founding engineer, there before the company officially existed. I led the early development that got Pluto off the ground and into its first funding. It grew into the free streaming service Viacom acquired. I know what the first version of a company has to survive, because I built one.
pluto.tv -
The Block
Senior engineer at The Block, a leading digital-assets news platform. Real traffic, real load. I know what gives way when the numbers get big, and how to keep it standing.
theblock.co -
Nexus City
A living cyberpunk city running in the browser: procedural buildings, sector streaming, a real-time economy, all in Rust, WebGPU, and Solana. I take the things people swear can't be done in a browser and I ship them. Whatever your hard part is, that's the part I want.
nexus.ghostnn.ai -
Cigna
As a principal engineer, I architected most of the technology behind their self-service and multi-product enrollment platforms, covering accidental death, medicare supplement, whole life, and term life. Those systems processed every new enrollment and hundreds of millions of dollars in policies. I built the first version, then re-architected it to kill the performance problems and got it running faster and cleaner than most of what the competition had at the time.
Sound familiar?
- You raised on a demo, and now the codebase buckles the moment real users show up.
- The roadmap keeps slipping, and you honestly can't tell if it's the team or the architecture.
- The one thing standing between you and the next raise is the exact part nobody on the team wants to touch.
How I help
Assess
Find out what's actually broken, or what's worth buying.
- Architecture & Code Review. One to two weeks. I read the system, talk to your team, and hand you a ranked list of what to fix first.
- Technical Due Diligence. A straight read before you raise, acquire, or commit real money to a direction.
Lead
Senior technical direction without the full-time hire.
- Fractional CTO & Advisory. I make the architecture calls, set the direction, and clear whatever's blocking the team.
- Team & Hiring. I help you hire the right engineers, run the technical interviews you're not sure how to run, and shape a team that ships without you in the loop.
Build
I build the hard part myself.
- Build Sprints. Time-boxed. I deliver the rewrite, the real-time or 3D piece, the integration that keeps stalling.
- Hands-on Development. I build the foundation your team keeps building on, so it holds when the load shows up.
Not sure which one fits? Book the call. We'll work out what you actually need together.
I'm not your guy if you want a junior to crank tickets, or a yes-man to rubber-stamp a decision you've already made.
How I think
- I build for the team that has to run this a year from now. Boring, documented, and easy to reason about beats clever every time.
- Most "we need a rewrite" is really "nobody wrote down what it does." I figure out which one you've got before anyone touches the code.
- The best architecture is the one your team can debug at 2am without calling you.
Questions
- What happens on the free call?
- Thirty minutes, no pitch. You tell me what's stuck. I tell you whether it's the architecture, the team, or the roadmap, and what I'd do about it. If I'm not the right person, I'll tell you that too.
- Do you actually write code, or just advise?
- I write code. Some weeks the job is making the call. Other weeks it's me in the repo at midnight shipping the thing. You get both.
- Can we start small?
- Yes. Most founders start with an architecture review or a single build sprint before anything ongoing.
- What does it cost?
- Depends entirely on what you need done. Tell me what's stuck, and we'll put real numbers to it on the call.
- Are you available?
- I only take a few engagements at a time, so the ones I take get my full attention.
Let's find out if I can help.
Free. Thirty minutes. No obligation, no pitch. If I'm not the right fit, I'll point you to who is. I take a few engagements at a time.