CTO Advisor

Overview & who it's for

CTO Advisor gives founders and executives recurring access to senior CTO judgment without hiring an operational technology leader. You bring the decisions that keep you up at night: architecture bets, roadmap sequencing, hiring, vendor choices. You get direct, experienced counsel with no agenda other than your outcome.

It is designed for leaders who own execution themselves but want a trusted, independent technical authority reviewing direction, challenging assumptions, and helping avoid expensive mistakes.

This service is available to professional and business customers only.

What's included

• Architecture and technical decision support
• Product and technology trade-off analysis
• Technical roadmap guidance
• Cloud, infrastructure, security and scalability guidance
• Engineering organisation and hiring advice
• Vendor and technology evaluation
• Selected technical document and architecture review
• CEO / founder sounding-board support

Capacity & scheduling

Advisory capacity is a boundary, not the value proposition. It defines the volume of substantive advisory work included each month.

• Up to 4 hours per month of advisory capacity.
• Capacity covers meetings, preparation, substantive async advice, and architecture or document review.
• Short administrative exchanges (scheduling, logistics, quick confirmations) do not consume capacity.
• Typical cadence: around 2 strategic sessions per month, plus async advice between sessions.
• Substantive async work is accounted in 15-minute increments.
• Async requests are normally answered within 1 business day. Advisory capacity is not an on-call or emergency-response service.
• Advice is provided to your designated contacts; the number of designated contacts is not capped.
• Unused capacity does not roll over; work beyond the included capacity requires explicit prior agreement or a separate scope.

What's not included

CTO Advisor is an advisory engagement. The distinction matters: TRENDev advises, your team decides and executes.

• Operational ownership of systems, teams or delivery
• On-call duty or incident response
• Routine coding or hands-on implementation
• Sprint or project management
• Routine team management
• Unlimited code or document review

Billing & taxes

Price: €1,500 per month, excluding applicable taxes.

• Monthly subscription, billed in advance at the start of each billing period.
• Public prices are stated excluding applicable taxes. The applicable VAT or tax treatment is determined at checkout and on invoices, based on your business's country of establishment and tax status.
• Professional and business customers only: this service is not offered to consumers.

Cancellation

• Cancel anytime, with no long-term commitment.
• Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current paid billing period; the service remains available until then.
• No refunds and no prorated credits for the current paid period.
• Unused advisory capacity does not roll over to the following month.

Before you subscribe

A free CTO consultation is the required first step before subscribing. It confirms mutual fit, clarifies your context, and makes the first month productive from day one.