Technology that keeps up with your growth.
I'm a fractional CTO for small and growing businesses. I help you decide what to build, buy, and fix, lead the people doing the work, and make sure your technology moves the business forward instead of holding it back.
Where I help
- Technical strategy
- A roadmap that ties every technology decision to where the business is going, and the judgment to know what to skip.
- Leading developers and vendors
- Someone on your side who can scope the work, review it, and tell you whether you're getting what you paid for.
- Systems that talk to each other
- Connecting the tools you already run, like accounting, payments, scheduling, and CRM, so your data lives in one place.
- Automation and AI
- Finding the work your team repeats every week and taking it off their plate, with people still in charge of the decisions that matter.
- Software reviews
- An honest look at what you've built or bought: what's solid, what's risky, and what it will cost you to keep running.
- Building your tech team
- Knowing when to hire, who to hire, and how to tell a strong engineer from a confident one.
How we work together
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Start with the business
We map where you're trying to go and where technology is slowing you down, from the tools your team uses to the code your customers touch.
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Make a plan
You get a plain-language roadmap: what to build, buy, fix, or leave alone, and what each one is worth to the business. No jargon, no upsell.
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Lead the work
I stay on as your part-time technical lead, steering developers and vendors, making the calls, and keeping every project tied to results.
Who you'd be working with
I'm Michael Stiles, a software engineer and founder in Nashville. I co-founded ArvoFlow, a work order and vendor management platform, and took it from an idea to a live product on web, iOS, and Android with paying customers.
That meant more than writing code. I sold to customers, managed a team, worked with sales partners, and made the call on what to build next with real money on the line. Before that, I built healthcare software at Eva Health, where protecting patient data wasn't optional.
So I understand both sides of the table: what the technology can do, and what the business actually needs from it.
Constantly building, occasionally faceplanting, and too stubborn to leave a problem half fixed.
Let's talk about where you're headed.
Book a time and tell me what you're building toward. If I can help, we'll figure out what that looks like. If I can't, I'll say so and point you somewhere better.