PRIVATE EQUITY
CTO-as-a-Service engagement that professionalized the technology function and delivered 3x valuation increase ahead of a successful exit.
A PE firm had acquired a B2B SaaS company with strong revenue but a fragile technology foundation. The platform was built by the original founding team with no formal architecture — a single Rails monolith running on bare metal servers with no CI/CD pipeline, no automated testing, and mounting customer complaints about reliability. The PE firm needed to professionalize the technology function, stabilize the platform, and position the company for a 3x+ exit within 24 months. They had no internal technology leadership to drive this transformation.
Fleet Studio deployed an Embedded CTO (4 days/week) who became the de facto technology leader from week one. The engagement began with a comprehensive technology due diligence — the same methodology we use for M&A advisory — applied to the PE firm's own portfolio company. This gave the board a clear-eyed view of the technical debt, team capabilities, and investment required.
Code review, CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, deployment standards
Recruited and built a 12-person engineering team (4 senior, 4 mid, 4 junior) with clear career ladders
Migrated from bare metal to AWS with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform) and containerization (ECS)
Decomposed the monolith into 8 core services, prioritized by customer-facing impact
Sprint cadence, roadmap process, stakeholder communication
KPIs, risk dashboard, investment tracking
Valuation increase at exit (18 months ahead of plan)
Platform uptime (improved from 97%)
Release velocity (increased from quarterly)
Customer churn reduction (tied to reliability improvements)
Engineering team NPS (increased from 22)
The right technical leader speaks the language of board metrics, exit multiples, and investor return. Technical excellence is table stakes — value creation is the game.
The clarity that comes from a rigorous assessment — what's broken, what's at risk, what needs investment — transforms the relationship between the board and the technology function.
Talent compounds. The engineering team you build during your PE ownership becomes the foundation for post-exit growth. Invest in structure, growth, and retention.
When the board understands technical progress in terms of business value and risk mitigation, technology becomes a strategic lever, not a cost center.
Whether you're preparing for an exit or need to stabilize a platform, let's discuss how embedded technical leadership can unlock value. We'll assess your technology position, identify the highest-impact improvements, and outline a path to a successful exit.