Nick Tong at his desk, laptop and warm plants around him

Having Nick as a CTO is genuinely transformative for a team.
Meg Porter, VP of Product, Turn Studio

25+Years in tech

Seed–ASweet spot

Tech for goodPrimary focus

A Partner at the Table, Not Just a Technical Hire

What my clients tell me sets me apart isn't the technology, it's that I take the time to understand their business first. How it operates, what's driving the numbers, where the real pressure points are, what the team is genuinely trying to achieve. Once I have that picture, technology decisions become straightforward: I can make sure they serve the business, and I can explain them back in language that founders, boards, and non-technical teams can act on. The work is technical; the value is in being a partner at the table.

25 years, technology for good

Over more than 25 years I've held CTO and senior technology leadership roles across funded startups, scale-ups, and established businesses, with a particular focus on technology for good. I've worked across employee wellbeing, ethics & compliance, fintech, risk management, and e-commerce, navigating the full arc from early-stage product to enterprise scale.

Building the team

One of the things I do consistently well is build high-performing teams, from scratch when there's nothing in place, or by identifying the one or two strategic hires that change everything. Whether that's a data scientist who opens an entirely new product direction, a product leader who brings discipline to a purely engineering culture, or a senior engineer who lifts everyone around them, I know how to spot what's missing and act on it.

Under pressure

I also bring psychological safety to teams under pressure. Post-raise environments can be brittle; people are cautious, uncertain, and often stretched. I create the conditions for honest conversation and clear thinking, and that changes what teams can achieve together. My approach is direct and data-driven. I give founders and boards an honest picture of their technical position, and then roll up my sleeves to improve it.

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What People Say

From the teams and founders I've worked with directly.

"Nick led with empathy, logic, and quiet confidence. He gave the engineering team room to think and took the time to understand the nuances of our work before suggesting changes. He navigated the sometimes tricky dynamics of working within a team where relationships were already established, with real care and professionalism. He tackled difficult conversations head-on (situations most people would sidestep) with clarity and kindness. He brought out the best in people. I left many of our 1:1s feeling genuinely motivated and more capable than when I walked in. Having Nick as a CTO is genuinely transformative for a team."

Meg PorterVP of Product, Turn Studio

"Nick played a transformational role in our company. He joined at a critical inflection point and helped us rebuild the technical function (both the team and the culture) from the ground up. His calm, strategic presence and ability to earn trust across the organisation made a lasting difference. I'd work with Nick again without hesitation."

Neta MeidavFounder & CEO, Vault Platform

"Nick has an exceptional ability to align technical direction with business goals in a way that's clear, credible, and immediately actionable. He brought real rigour to our technology decisions and gave us the confidence to move fast without cutting corners. He's the kind of CTO-level thinking that most early-stage companies simply can't afford to hire full-time, which is exactly why the fractional model works so well with someone of his calibre."

Mark DeaneCEO, ETS Risk Management

What Changes When I'm Involved

A sample of outcomes from real engagements, anonymised at client request. Detailed case studies coming soon.

Ethics & Compliance · SaaS

Built the technical foundation for a successful exit

An underperforming engineering function was quietly becoming a strategic liability, slow delivery, mounting technical debt, and a team that had lost confidence in its own direction. By restructuring the team, modernising the platform architecture, and establishing the delivery culture that high-performing engineering teams rely on, technology transformed from the company's biggest risk into one of its most valuable assets. It played a direct role in a successful acquisition.

Employee Wellbeing · SaaS

A single strategic hire opened up a new product direction entirely

A fast-growing wellbeing platform needed a clear path to AI leadership, before competitors caught up. The key was identifying the right person: a data scientist who understood both the product and the opportunity. By making that hire at the right moment, we unlocked conversational AI and bot technology capabilities that the team hadn't been able to reach before. That technical positioning became a genuine competitive differentiator and a meaningful thread in the investment narrative that followed.

E-commerce · Consumer

Freed a year of product investment by reducing the cost to run

Engineering capacity was being consumed by the cost of maintaining an ageing platform, leaving almost nothing for growth. By rearchitecting critical systems, rationalising cloud spend, and improving developer tooling, we significantly reduced operational overhead. The savings unlocked a programme of new product features that had previously been out of reach, and the team shipped more in the following six months than in the previous two years.

Enterprise SaaS · Security

SOC 2 Type II, faster than our auditors had seen before

Enterprise contracts were stalling on security certification requirements. By treating SOC 2 as an engineering problem rather than a compliance checkbox (with clear documentation, explicit ownership, and the right tooling from day one) we achieved certification in a fraction of the typical 12–18 month timeline. The enterprise pipeline it unlocked was immediate.

On-demand Labour · Marketplace

Built an engineering team from nothing, and gave a product the team it needed to ship

A fast-scaling marketplace had technical ambition but no engineering function to execute it. Starting with no team in place, the entire hiring process was designed from scratch, from the interview pipeline to the culture brief. Within months, a cohesive engineering team was delivering product at pace. The right people, in the right shape, with the right leadership, and the platform investment that followed wouldn't have been possible without it.

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