Fractional CIO · CTO · Diligence to Exit
The deal closed. Now someone has to turn the thesis into execution.
Ninety days after close it rarely feels like a technology strategy problem. It feels like too many priorities, not enough people, integration debt from the last three acquisitions, EBITDA pressure now, growth expected, and AI from every direction. Your operating partner is already being pulled toward the next deal. I’m the technology executive who stays.
Today I am fractional CIO to two PE-backed companies — one engaged directly by the sponsor’s operating partner, the other by its management team. Before that, ten years at a healthcare services company through a full private equity cycle — from the initial investment, through the hold period, to exit — carrying the IT P&L.
- ScreenAdd-on acquisition targets
- DiligenceBuy side and target side
- First 100 daysPost-investment
- Hold-period value creationOperator and fractional CIO
- Exit readinessOperator side
- Exit3 business lines, from 1 · priced higher
What I do about it
Build the fact base nobody has. Enterprise client interviews, competitor benchmarks, the company’s first product-line P&L, component-level architecture, and unit economics for every platform.
Tech product division, PE-backed $8B+ healthcare distribution business → 7 client interviews, 5 benchmarks, first P&L — in 8 weeks
Sequence the investment so it funds itself. A staged plan with checkpoints between phases rather than one large upfront ask. You can stop after any stage and still be ahead.
Board-approved with $0 incremental sponsor capital
Then run it. Embedded executive leadership, two to eight days a month. Roadmap ownership, vendor and spend discipline, and board reporting the operating partner can actually use.
Evaluation expanded into a full fractional CTO mandate, including the enterprise AI roadmap
Get technology ready before the buyer opens it. I run the buyer’s diligence on you first, nine to eighteen months out, so findings are remediated on your timeline instead of priced on theirs.
Answer the question almost nobody can. Could something you already built be sold as a product? I have taken an internal IT capability to a priced, margin-carrying product line with its own P&L — and I can tell you quickly when the answer is no.
$900K tech services business → $11M tech product line at 60% gross margin
Where I plug in.
A fast, evidence-based read on the target’s technology and product estate: technical debt quantified, compliance exposure priced, scalability ceiling identified, key-person risk named. Written for an investment committee, in the language of your deal model. I have done this for add-on acquisitions as the platform company’s technology lead, and sat on the other side of the table when private equity invested into the company.
Stabilize, then sequence. What gets fixed now, what gets deferred, what gets funded, and what governance the board needs to see monthly. In regulated healthcare this is where FDA 21 CFR Part 11, HIPAA and SOC 2 exposure surfaces before it becomes a finding.
Embedded executive leadership, two to eight days a month. Roadmap ownership, vendor and spend discipline, product commercialization, AI operationalization, and board reporting the operating partner can actually use.
Typically 9–18 months out. I run the buyer’s diligence on you first. Findings remediated on your timeline rather than discovered on theirs, so technology supports the banker’s story instead of funding a price concession.
I don’t just protect value. I’ve created it.
Most technology advisors in private equity are risk-reduction plays: find the problems, avoid the surprises. Worth doing. At a healthcare services company, I turned a $900K tech services business into an $11M tech product line at 60% gross margin, and stood up two technology business units that together produced 51% of EBITDA within three years and contributed to a stronger multiple at exit. Technology was not the thing we defended in that deal. It was part of what got sold.
Where I’m strongest.
Life sciences, pharma and healthcare services — twenty years. Healthcare supply chain and regulated distribution — where compliance, serialization and traceability are structural rather than optional. Adjacent B2B services businesses where technology is customer-facing and therefore revenue-relevant.
If you are evaluating an asset in any of these, I have very likely already operated the exact thing you are worried about.
Who I’m not right for
I am not the right call if you need a hands-on engineering lead, a managed security vendor, or someone to run a single ERP implementation end to end. I am not useful on a pre-LOI diligence with a seventy-two-hour turnaround. My work needs enough time to talk to your customers, because that is where the answer usually is.
Have a portfolio company that’s drifting, or a target on your desk?
Thirty minutes.
Bring the situation, not a brief.