For startups

Zero to one,
and everything after it.

Almost every technology partner stops at build. We keep going through the raise and, if it comes, the sale.

What Makes Us Different

We are not just a dev shop.

You get the leadership and the team to build it right.

Your CPO figures out what should be built. Your CTO makes sure it is built the right way. Your CIO handles the systems, security, and infrastructure behind it. And the development team comes with them.

CPO

Chief Product Officer

Helps you decide what to build, who it is for, and what to cut. Not every feature is worth building.
CTO

Chief Technology Officer

Decides how it gets built so it scales as you grow. Leads the engineers who write the code.
CIO

Chief Information Officer

Makes it work in the cloud with the data and security rules you need in place.

One team. Senior leadership, product strategy, technology, infrastructure, and the developers to actually build it.

The Plan

Our formula. Idea to exit.

All five steps, start to finish. The first three build the product.
The last two are the ones almost no other technology partner will do with you.

01

Product strategy

Before anyone writes code, we get clear on what you are building, who it is for, and whether it is worth building at all.

What to build and why
Who it is for
Who else is doing it
A plan you can see
02

Build

The foundation goes in first, then the product gets built in short cycles you can actually see.

Set up the foundation
Build in short cycles
You see it every two weeks
Tested before it ships
03

Pilot

Real users, not a demo. This is the step most partners skip, and it is the one that tells you the truth.

Put it in front of real users
Watch what they do
Fix what breaks
Proof that it works
04

Funding

We help you tell the story, back it with numbers, and answer the question every investor asks about who actually built the technology.

The story investors need
The numbers behind it
Answers on who built it
We sit in the room
05

Exit

The technology gets cleaned up and the business gets ready, so the hard questions have answers before anyone asks them.

Get the business ready
Clean up the technology
Answer the hard questions
Support through the sale
IDEA
EXIT
Product strategy Build Pilot Funding Exit

Product strategy

Build

Pilot

Funding

Exit

Most partners stop after Pilot. Funding & Exit decide whether the company is worth anything.

Investors Question Who Built It

Who Built the Product?

During diligence, investors and buyers want to know who owns the technology, how it was built, and whether it can scale. A product with no senior technical leader behind it creates questions fast.

When we build it, you have a US-based CTO who knows the architecture, the decisions, the risks, and the roadmap — and can answer for all of it.

The Team

Meet the team who takes you
from Zero to 1.

Rick Cabrera

FOUNDER

25 years launching products, from two-person startups to the Fortune 500. Five U.S. patents. Led product and technology work at Dell, Univision and Verizon.

Ritesh Patel

TECHNOLOGY

20 years building systems that hold up when they get big, and leading the engineers who build them. Has done it in startups and in large companies.

Ignacio Kassis

PRODUCT & TECHNOLOGY

Two decades building software and leading technical teams across the United States, Spain and Latin America. Founded and still runs Web Systems.

Dr. George Kastner

BUSINESS STRATEGY

Former President of Arthur D. Little Latin America. Decades running strategy and operations for global businesses. Teaches at the University of Miami.

Spend Your Funds Wisely

Executives you do not have to hire.

Hiring them full time

$1.1M to $1.65M

What senior product and technology executives cost per year once you count salary, bonus and stock. That is before the four to six months it takes to find them, and before stock you cannot get back if it does not work out.

Hiring Zero to 1 Experts

From $10,000 a month

That is where it starts and everything is inside it: senior product and technology leadership, a project manager running delivery, and the engineers writing the code. Nothing is billed separately, and you can stop when the product no longer needs it.

Based on published 2026 pay figures for full-time technology executives, including salary, bonus and stock. Sources: Korn Ferry Chief Technology Officer Salary Guide 2026; Go Fractional rate benchmarks 2026.
Questions from founders

Fractional CTO for startups, answered.

Still not answered? Ask us directly. You will speak to the people who would do the work, not a salesperson.

Owns the technical decisions a founder cannot make alone and should not hand to a contractor. A startup fractional CTO decides what gets built and how, leads the software developers building it, and is the person an investor can ask about your architecture. Early on those decisions cost almost nothing to get right and a rebuild to get wrong.

A technical co-founder who is genuinely senior and genuinely committed is better, and rarer than founders expect. A fractional CTO is what you use when that person does not exist yet, or when the one you have is already spent keeping the business running. It also does not cost you equity, which is the most expensive currency you own.

From $10,000 a month, with senior leadership, a project manager and the software developers all inside that figure. Compare it against a full-time technology executive at three hundred thousand a year and up, plus the engineering team you would still have to hire underneath them.

We build it. Product strategy, build, pilot, then funding and exit if that is where you are headed. The fractional CTO and fractional product manager decide what goes in and how it is put together, and our software developers write the code. You get a working product, not a specification.

We bring them. Over fifty senior software developers across Python, PHP, C# and .NET, JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Node.js, Swift and PostgreSQL, directed day to day by the leadership you are working with. You are not running a hiring process while trying to get to a first release.

Stops you building the wrong thing. A fractional product manager pressure-tests the idea, decides who the first version is for and what comes out of it, and keeps the scope honest. Most of what early teams cut later should never have been written.

They care that someone senior owns the technology and can answer for it, and they ask exactly that in diligence. A named fractional CTO who made the decisions answers that better than a full-time hire who arrived last month. We sit in the room with you for those conversations.

No. We do not take equity. You keep your cap table, and you can stop when the product no longer needs us. Equity is the most expensive way a founder can pay for anything, and it never comes back.

Yes, and it is a common starting point. Offshore engineering usually fails for lack of direction rather than lack of skill. A fractional CTO directing your existing software developers often fixes more, faster, than replacing the team does.

One conversation. Tell us what you are building or where it stalled. We will tell you what the team should look like and what it costs. If we are not the right team for it, we will say so.

You bring the idea.
We bring the team to build it right.

© 2026 Zero to 1 Experts   ·   zeroto1experts.com