Fractional CTO in Nashville
Expert technical leadership for Nashville startups. CTO services in CST timezone with 6 hours overlap. Build, scale, and transform your product without full-time CTO costs.
Why Nashville Startups Choose Fractional CTO
Nashville is one of the fastest-growing tech hubs in the US, known as the IT healthcare capital. The city is also home to a unique Music Tech ecosystem thanks to its status as the country music capital of the world. Startups specialize in HealthTech, Music Tech, FinTech, logistics, and enterprise SaaS solutions.
The Nashville market offers significant advantages: favorable business environment, lower costs compared to coastal cities, and access to the healthcare industry through major networks like HCA Healthcare. However, CTO salaries ($180K-$320K) are still significant for early startups, making the fractional model particularly attractive.
Common Challenges
- CTO salaries of $180K-$320K make full-time hiring expensive in early stages
- Limited pool of experienced technical talent compared to major hubs
- High HIPAA compliance requirements for HealthTech
- Specific music industry requirements for Music Tech
- Need to scale for enterprise healthcare clients
- CTO salaries of $180K-$320K make full-time hiring expensive in early stages
- Limited pool of experienced technical talent compared to major hubs
- High HIPAA compliance requirements for HealthTech
- Specific music industry requirements for Music Tech
- Need to scale for enterprise healthcare clients
How Fractional CTO Solves Them
- Access to experienced CTO without Nashville salary premiums ($100K-$240K+ savings annually)
- Start immediately—no 3-6 month hiring process
- Expertise in healthcare technologies (HIPAA, HL7, FHIR)
- Remote work expertise for building distributed teams
- Global best practices for local market
What I do
- Tech stack selection for Tennessee talent market
- Launch in 3-4 months with scalable foundation
- Architecture with HIPAA compliance support for healthcare
- Handle 10x growth without downtime
- Technical debt management and refactoring
- Prepare for Nashville VC technical due diligence
- LLM integrations for healthcare and music industry
- ML systems for clinical decision support
- Strategy, implementation, and MLOps
- Code quality and architecture review
- Prepare for Southeast VC due diligence
- Risk map and recommendations
- Comprehensive technical risk assessment
- Team and product scalability analysis
- Reports for investment committees
- Navigate Tennessee talent market
- Build hybrid teams (local + remote engineers)
- Establish engineering culture
Pricing
Packages for Nashville Startups
Advisor CTO
$3,600per month
~6 hours per week of dedicated time
For early-stage startups with an MVP or an idea that need oversight and support without full-time involvement.
How we work:
- Bi-weekly strategy session with founders (90 min)
- Technical stack and architecture review - are you building on the right foundation?
- Code review of critical decisions and risky PRs
- Candidate screening: resume review, interview structure, hire/no-hire recommendations
- Infrastructure and tooling spend review - are you overpaying for cloud and third-party services?
- Async access via Slack (48-hour response time)
What you walk away with:
- Technical assessment report - honest evaluation of your codebase, infrastructure, and risks
- Technology roadmap - prioritized recommendations for the next 6 months
- Hiring scorecard - what to look for in your first 3-5 engineers
Outcome
Confidence that your technical decisions are sound and a clear plan to build on - without costly mistakes.
Month-to-month, cancel anytime
Growth CTO
Most popular$5,800per month
~10 hours per week of dedicated time
For Post-Seed to Series A startups actively building product and scaling their team from 3 to 10 engineers.
How we work:
- Weekly sync with founders - priorities, blockers, technical strategy
- Code review and architecture ownership - I'm in your codebase, not just on calls
- Hands-on hiring: job descriptions, sourcing strategy, technical interviews, offer calibration
- Technical debt triage - identifying what slows the team down and what can wait
- CI/CD and developer productivity review - testing strategy, deployment pipeline, dev environment
- Engineering delivery oversight - sprint reviews, velocity tracking, quality gates
- Production incident support - emergency availability during critical outages
- Async access via Slack (24-hour response time)
What you walk away with:
- 90-day technical roadmap, updated quarterly
- Architecture Decision Records - documented rationale for every major technical choice
- Hiring playbook - leveling criteria, interview process, scorecards, onboarding checklist
- Monthly strategic memo - progress, risks, recommendations
- Technical debt register - prioritized list with estimated impact and effort
- Team OKRs - quarterly goals tied to business outcomes
Outcome
A solid technical foundation and team ready for rapid product growth without chaos.
3-month minimum commitment
Scale CTO
$11,000per month
~20 hours per week of dedicated time
For Series A+ startups with 15-20+ engineers preparing for the next funding round.
How we work:
- Everything from Growth CTO package
- Daily involvement in engineering operations - standups, planning, escalations
- Executive team participation - board prep, investor meetings, due diligence support
- Engineering management development - coaching team leads into engineering managers
- Organizational design - team topology, processes, rituals, communication structures
- Vendor strategy - cloud cost optimization, service negotiations, contractor management
- Technical debt strategy - refactoring roadmap balanced against product delivery
What you walk away with:
- Engineering handbook - culture, standards, processes, expectations
- Leveling and compensation framework - career ladders and salary bands
- Engineering metrics dashboard - DORA metrics, velocity trends, code quality
- Incident management playbook - on-call rotation, severity definitions, postmortem process
- Technical due diligence package - investor-ready architecture and security documentation
- Security and compliance assessment - SOC2, GDPR, HIPAA readiness evaluation
- Engineering headcount plan and infrastructure budget forecast
Outcome
A mature engineering organization ready for due diligence and the next funding round.
3-month minimum commitment
How Remote Work with Nashville Startups Works
- Time overlap: 6 hours overlap with Nashville (CST) business hours for synchronous calls
- Communication rhythm: Weekly strategic calls, regular team syncs, asynchronous via Slack and email for continuous productivity
- In-person visits: Quarterly visits to Nashville available for Scale CTO+ packages, available for board meetings and investor presentations
How it works
Week 1: Onboarding and Audit
5 daysTeam introduction, codebase review, identify critical issues, create initial roadmap.
Month 1: Quick Wins and Foundation
4 weeksAddress critical issues, set up development processes, code reviews, begin architectural improvements.
Month 2-3: Scaling and Growth
8 weeksImplement architectural improvements, optimize performance, hiring and team mentorship.
Understanding the Nashville Startup Ecosystem
- HealthTech and Digital Health
- Music Tech and Entertainment
- FinTech and Payments
- Logistics and Supply Chain
- Enterprise SaaS
- HR Tech
- Familiar with Southeast VC expectations
- Understanding Martin Ventures, Frist Cressey Ventures, JumpStart Foundry requirements
- Understanding healthcare-focused investing
- HIPAA for HealthTech startups
- HL7/FHIR for healthcare integrations
- SOC2 Type II for enterprise clients
- Music licensing and royalty payment compliance
Frequently asked questions
Related services
Ready to Work with a Fractional CTO in Nashville?
Start with a free 30-minute consultation. We'll discuss your goals, challenges, and determine how I can help.