Fractional CTO · Based in UAE · Working globally

Your fractional CTO for the 0 → 1 climb.

I'm Sourav Chandra: 2× YC founding engineer, ex-Speechify lead engineer, 3× founder. I've shipped products to 1M+ users and $1M+ per month in revenue. Now I help founders build AI-native products that hold up at scale.

Book a free 30-min technical call → See the track record
2 fractional slots open this quarter
architecture / production_sketch shipping
CLIENT web · mobile EDGE / LB tls · rate limits API go · grpc QUEUE jobs · retries LLM GATEWAY routing · cache WORKERS autoscaled ×N POSTGRES primary + replica EVALS quality gates 1M+ MAU p99 42ms $1M+/mo rev
// the kind of system I design: boring, observable, hard to kill.
Built and led at
Y Combinator logoY Combinator
Speechify logoSpeechify
Henry AI logoHenry AI
Yuna logoYuna.io
DocTalk logoPulse (DocTalk)
$1M+/mo
revenue from the Chrome extension I built at Speechify
1M+
users on that same extension, from zero
2M+
Android installs on the app my team shipped
$60kMRR
audiobooks line, taken from experiment to flagship
2×
YC founding engineer (Henry AI S24, Pulse)
10+yrs
shipping 0 → 1 across backend, web and mobile
Who I work with

Three kinds of people call me.

If you see yourself below, we should talk. If not, I'll happily point you to someone better suited.

01

Founders without a technical co-founder

You have the vision, maybe the funding, and no one to own the build. I take architecture, hiring and shipping off your plate so you can sell.

02

AI startups that need to move fast

Ship an AI-native MVP in weeks, with eval pipelines and inference costs under control, minus the tech debt that kills version two.

03

Investors who need the truth

Technical due diligence in one to two weeks: what's real, what's risk, and what it actually costs to fix. A report you can act on.

Services

Productized. Scoped. No "it depends."

Three ways to work with me, each with a clear deliverable. Every engagement starts with a free 30 minute call.

Most engagements

Fractional CTO Retainer

Ongoing technical leadership, typically two days a week.

  • Architecture and roadmap ownership
  • Hiring: from job spec to final round
  • Cloud, vendor and AI cost control
  • Board and investor ready reporting
Book a call →
Fixed scope · Fixed price

AI MVP Sprint

From idea to a working AI-native product, not a demo.

  • Scope locked in week zero
  • LLM integration with an eval pipeline
  • Production infrastructure from day one
  • Handover docs your next hire will thank you for
Book a call →
For investors & acquirers

Technical Due Diligence

A one to two week read on any codebase, team and architecture.

  • Architecture and scalability review
  • Code quality and security posture
  • Team, process and velocity assessment
  • A written report you can invest on
Book a call →
Track record

Proof, not promises.

A few things I've built and led. Problem, what I did, and the number it produced.

Speechify Chrome Extension
Lead Full Stack Engineer
2021

ProblemSpeechify needed a wedge into the browser: a listening product that could convert at massive scale.

BuiltDesigned and built the extension from scratch, then the growth infrastructure around it: tracking, experiments, retargeting, performance and web vitals.

0 → 1M+ users
$1M+/month in subscription revenue · 750k weekly active payers
Speechify Android
Android Engineering Lead
2020 · 2022

ProblemNo Android presence, no Android team, and a market waiting.

BuiltBootstrapped the app from zero. Hired and led the squad, built CI/CD from scratch, ran OKRs, and wired Sentry pipelines so quality never slipped.

2M+ installs
$100k/month revenue · 4.3★ on the Play Store
Speechify Audiobooks
Lead Software Engineer
2022 · 2023

ProblemA highly experimental bet with no guarantee of product-market fit.

BuiltLed the 0-to-1 build and the scaling work that turned an experiment into a flagship product line.

$0 → $60k MRR
experiment to flagship
Henry AI
Founding Engineer
YC S24 · 2024 · 2025

ProblemCommercial real estate runs on pixel-perfect PDFs and maps. Nothing off the shelf came close.

BuiltCo-created V1 in two months. A Playwright based high-fidelity PDF render pipeline, and a fully custom Mapbox editor with drag-and-drop UX, 3D, satellite and road rendering.

V1 in 2 months
founding engineer, architecture owner
About

A decade of 0 → 1, on every layer of the stack.

Sourav Chandra
Sharjah, UAE · GMT+4

I've spent 10+ years as the engineer founders call when a thing has to exist, and then survive its own success. Founding engineer at two YC companies (Henry AI, S24, and Pulse, formerly DocTalk). Lead engineer at Speechify through its hyper-growth years. Three times a founder myself: CTO at Dogether (0 to 1M+ users), CEO at Pyza Labs (bootstrapped to $500k), co-founder at Countd.

My depth is in Go, distributed systems and AI infrastructure: queues, schedulers, job runners, databases, and the LLM plumbing modern products need. My breadth covers iOS, Android, React and Node, so nothing on your stack is foreign to me.

I've hired and led teams of 5 to 16, and helped scale Speechify's tech org past 100 people. Today I'm a Staff Software Architect at Yuna.io, and I take on a small number of fractional engagements. I'm based in the UAE (GMT+4): full-day overlap with Europe and India, and US East Coast mornings.

depth: go · distributed systems · schedulers & job runners · llm infra · postgres
breadth: react / typescript / nextjs · swift / swiftui · kotlin / compose · react native · node
2015
CTO & Founding Member · Dogether
0 → 1M+ users, raised $80k, team of 16
2017
Engineering Lead · Pulse (DocTalk, YC)
7+ products shipped, team 4 → 10+
2019
CEO · Pyza Labs
bootstrapped consultancy to $500k gross
2020
Lead Engineer · Speechify
Chrome extension, Android, audiobooks
2024
Founding Engineer · Henry AI (YC S24)
V1 in 2 months, CRE platform architecture
Now
Staff Software Architect · Yuna.io
+ fractional CTO, 2 slots per quarter
The newsletter

Field notes from the 0 → 1.

One email, most weeks: what I'm building, what broke, and what I'd do differently. No fluff, no funnels. Read the essays →

Read by founders and engineers at YC companies. Unsubscribe anytime.
FAQ

The questions founders actually ask.

How does a fractional CTO actually work with my team?
Like a part-time executive, not an agency. I join your Slack, the standups that matter, and your board prep. Typically one to two days a week with clear ownership: architecture, hiring, delivery. Your team ships; I make sure it's the right thing, built the right way.
What does it cost?
Less than a bad senior hire. Retainers are scoped by days per week; the due diligence review and the AI MVP Sprint are fixed price. For context, a full-time CTO in the UAE runs AED 400k+ a year before equity. We'll put exact numbers on a 30 minute call.
Do you work remotely? What about timezones?
Most engagements are remote-first. I'm in the UAE (GMT+4): full-day overlap with Europe, comfortable overlap with India, and US East Coast mornings. Dubai and Sharjah teams can have me in the room.
How is this different from hiring a dev agency?
An agency sells hours and owns nothing. I sit on your side of the table. I've been the founding engineer and the founder, so I optimize for the decisions that matter at your stage, including telling you what not to build.
Do you still write code, or just advise?
I ship. Architecture reviews are worth little from someone who stopped coding years ago. Depending on scope, I prototype, pair with your engineers, and review pull requests.
Next step

I open 2 fractional slots a quarter.

If you're building something AI-native and want it to survive its own growth, let's talk. Worst case, you leave the call with a clearer technical roadmap.

Book the free 30-min call →
30 minutes · free · no deck required