One senior engineer.
From architecture to shipped code.

Usually not. That is largely why this practice exists: I act as your technical leadership, from architecture decisions through production deployment, and you keep full ownership of everything built. If your product genuinely needs a technical co-founder, I will tell you that too.

Research groups, labs, and established companies are often a better fit than startups. Analysis pipelines, internal tools, technical audits, grant-funded software, and product rebuilds are all normal work here — the common thread is needing senior engineering judgment without a full-time hire. Institutional paperwork (PO, W-9, COI, BAA) is routine; say so on the first call and it moves in parallel.

Perfect — a napkin sketch or a five-minute voice memo is a fine starting point. The discovery process exists to turn a rough idea into a scoped, buildable product, and it's the part where cutting scope saves you the most money.

Scoped features in days; a focused MVP in 8 to 12 weeks. Timeline depends entirely on scope, and you see working software every week rather than a status percentage — which is how scope problems surface in days instead of at the end.

Eric Hassey — me. IN2Labs is deliberately a one-person senior practice in Boston, so the person you meet on the first call is the person who designs your architecture and writes your code. There is no bench, no hand-off, and nobody junior learning on your budget. Where a project genuinely needs a specialist I do not cover, I say so and help you find one rather than quietly staffing it.

Yes — in production, and on an ongoing basis. Eric has served as fractional CTO of Preventa since 2019, now through IN2Labs: a HIPAA-compliant health platform with encrypted PHI, queryable audit logging, role-based access over health records, and BAA-covered infrastructure. Full disclosure, since it is the example I lean on most: I am a co-founder of Preventa and have a financial interest in it beyond the engagement fee, so it is not an arm's-length client reference. If your product touches health data, I already know what compliance actually requires.

Concretely: fractional CTO retainers run $5,000–$12,000/month depending on days per week, with regulated work (HIPAA, medical AI) at the upper end. A fixed-price Technology Health Check is $2,500 for a two-week review with written findings, credited against a retainer if you go ahead — details at /technology-health-check. Once we are both serious, I write a proper SOW before anything is signed — scope, deliverables, and exclusions in writing, so there are no surprises either way. Full MVP builds typically run $25,000–$80,000. You work directly with one senior engineer — no account managers, no bench overhead, no junior devs on your dime — so you are paying for engineering, not for the org chart around it.

Fair question, and worth asking directly. Two things make it manageable. First, you own everything from day one — the code, the repositories, the cloud accounts, the domain — and every engagement ends with documentation and a walkthrough, so nothing about your product depends on IN2Labs continuing to exist. Second, a one-person practice has hard capacity limits, which means I take a small number of engagements and say no when the calendar is full rather than quietly stretching. If your product outgrows what one senior engineer can carry, the right move is your own in-house hire — and helping you scope, interview, and onboard that person is part of the fractional CTO work, not a threat to it.

Often the best arrangement. I embed alongside your developers for code review, architecture, and the features nobody senior has time for — and a large part of the fractional CTO role is raising the bar of the team you already have.

Yes — cash, equity, or a combination, though equity works as an addition to a cash floor rather than as a discount. If I believe in what you are building, I am open to sharing the upside.

I do not disappear at launch. Maintenance retainers cover monitoring, bug fixes, and feature work, and ongoing development is available if you want it. You are never locked in: you own the code and the accounts from day one, so continuing is a choice rather than a dependency.