Do I need a fractional CTO for my startup?

A fractional CTO helps startups make technical decisions, hire engineers, and build scalable architecture without the cost of a full-time executive. It's ideal for seed-stage companies or those needing technical leadership for specific projects.

How do I choose the right tech stack for my product?

The right tech stack depends on your product requirements, team capabilities, timeline, and budget. Native mobile (Swift, Kotlin) gives the best performance. Cross-platform (Flutter, React Native) reduces cost for simpler apps. Web apps scale differently than mobile. An experienced engineering leader evaluates trade-offs across all options rather than defaulting to one stack.

What does a technical consultant actually do?

A technical consultant provides engineering leadership without long-term headcount commitment. This can include architecture design, code reviews, DevOps setup, team mentoring, project management, and hands-on development. Engagements range from strategic advisory to embedded technical leadership.

When should I migrate my legacy codebase?

Migrate when maintenance costs exceed development velocity, when you can no longer hire engineers for the old stack, or when the platform itself is being deprecated. A phased migration strategy reduces risk by running old and new systems in parallel rather than doing a full rewrite.

How do I set up CI/CD for my engineering team?

Start with automated testing on every pull request, then add automated builds and deployment to staging. Tools like GitHub Actions, Fastlane, Bitrise, and Azure DevOps can automate the entire pipeline from commit to production. The goal is fast, reliable releases with minimal manual intervention.

Laughter Consulting

I build platforms and the practice underneath them

Twenty years shipping software for Apple, Google, Rakuten, and startups that outgrew their first architecture. I design the system, stand up the engineering practice around it, and stay until both hold.

Let's talk See the work

$ whoami

nic laughter, engineering lead

$ ls platforms/

mobile/ web/ cloud/ practice/

$ git log --oneline | wc -l

twenty years of commits

$ npm test

all green

Track record

Work with names on it

Apple & Google

App Attestation on contract

Contract platform engineering on Apple's DDL App Attestation work, with earlier platform development at Google. The kind of engagement where the review bar is the product.

platform engineering attestation

Nelnet

Objective-C to Swift, measured

Led the migration of a legacy Objective-C codebase to Swift while the product kept shipping.

build times -90% QA bugs -30%

Jane.com

React Native to native Swift

Rebuilt a high-volume commerce app native, then kept it boring in the way production should be.

99.8% crash-free native rebuild

Brickanize

The product I own end to end

Two native clients and a FastAPI backend, built solo, with the release pipelines and test discipline I bring to client work.

2 native clients FastAPI 4,000+ tests

Services

What I actually do

Platform architecture

Your product ships on rails that don't buckle when the team grows.

Greenfield enterprise platforms from consulting specs to production. Multi-pillar orchestration, integration architecture, and the system-level decisions that keep working after I leave.

Engineering practice

Your team stops firefighting and ships on a rhythm you can plan around.

SDLC from zero. CI/CD, environment separation, testing discipline, review culture, and audit-ready habits, installed on teams that had none of it.

Technical leadership

You get senior technical judgment without the full-time executive price tag.

Fractional CTO and embedded lead work. Strategy, mentoring, hiring, and the delivery management to keep it all on schedule.

Currently building

Brickanize & Shelvanize

Native iOS & Android · In open beta

An app for cataloging LEGO collections, built solo from the Swift and Kotlin clients down to the FastAPI backend, the cloud infrastructure, and the release pipelines. No third-party keys shipping in either app, over 4,000 automated tests, and merges that build and upload themselves.

It's the clearest example of how I build when every call is mine.

How it's built Visit brickanize.com

Shelvanize

Native iOS & Android · In development

An app that catalogs the physical books you own and tells you the order to put them back on the shelf. The second product on the Brickanize playbook, offline-first, with the device as the system of record.

How it's built Visit shelvanize.com

Writing

Things I've written down

Field guide