How can I help?
Three ways this usually goes. If yours doesn't fit neatly into one of these, email me anyway.
Fractional Leadership
You need someone to actually lead, not advise from a safe distance.
VP or Director-level, a few days a week or full-time for a stretch, in the room making the calls.
This is for the gap between leaders, the tough calls that needs someone with no baggage in the room, or the stretch where you need senior judgment and don't have the headcount for a full-time hire yet. I embed properly. I'm in your roadmap reviews, your hiring loop, your escalations. I don't just give you a strategy document and leave. I make the calls, I make the tradeoffs, I make the hires, and I make sure your team is set up to succeed after I'm gone.
Phone a Friend
You need someone who will give you honest & clear advice.
One honest hour on your specific problem, or a standing arrangement where I'm around to support you for the harder calls, over a multi-month engagement.
A lot of what people actually need isn't a strategy document, it's someone who has actually sat in the room where this kind of decision gets made, and seen the long term impacts. Bring me a specific problem: a hire you're unsure about, an architecture decision, a reorg you're about to announce, a co-founder conflict you don't know how to name out loud. I'll give you my honest read, not the diplomatic one.
Put Me in Coach
I still write code, and I genuinely do not care whether I lead or build.
If what you need is someone who can sit down and build the thing, not just talk about the thing, I'm in. TL or IC, whichever gets it shipped.
Somewhere along the way, leadership tracks and IC tracks got treated like a one-way door. I never bought into that. If your team needs an extra pair of hands that can actually ship code, not just review other people's PRs from a leadership seat, I can do that. I'm not trying to prove anything by staying hands-on, it's just genuinely the part of the job I never wanted to give up.