Wednesday afternoon, 4:14 PM. The CFO sends the comp model for a full-time CMO hire. Six months of equity plus base plus signing bonus. The runway math doesn't survive the calculation.
Built for Series A-B Bay Area startup CEO ($5M-$30M ARR). Applies to Heads of Growth, founder-led marketing operators, post-Series A operators between in-house CMO hires, and similar embedded leadership buyers.
Fractional CMO is a Bay Area specialist engagement priced at $15,000-$20,000/month. Format: 6-12 months · weekly call + onsite quarterly + performance reporting. Deliverable: Embedded strategic CMO seat with weekly cadence, quarterly onsite, monthly performance reporting. Built for Series A-B Bay Area startup CEO ($5M-$30M ARR). Reached through ICP pages, problem pages, and referrals when the buyer has matched their situation to the offer. Each engagement is fixed-scope at the start and cannot drift mid-engagement.
A Series A AI infrastructure company in Mountain View hired Fractional CMO instead of a full-time CMO at month four post-Series-A. By month nine, the founder had a clear succession brief for the in-house CMO hire, three quarterly board readouts in the format the lead investor wanted, and a clear reduction in CAC payback pressure. The succession hire landed in month 11.
Cost structure and commitment. Full-time CMO is 6-month equity + base + signing + benefits, often $400K-$600K total comp first year, with a 12-18 month equity vesting cliff. Fractional CMO is $15,000-$20,000/month with no equity, no benefits load, no severance risk. It is the right format when the team is not ready to commit to permanent senior hire but needs senior strategic ownership now.
Weekly 60-minute strategy call with the founder. Quarterly full-day onsite. Slack and email access between meetings. Direct ownership of strategic decisions on positioning, pricing, GTM, and demand generation. The fractional CMO sits in the executive team's strategic context, not as an outside vendor.
Yes. Fractional CMO includes succession planning when the team is ready to hire internal. Transition document covers hiring brief, first 90 days, retained relationships. Most Fractional CMO engagements run 6-12 months. Some run longer when the founder prefers the fractional format permanently.
AI compounding and strategy compounding both take 90 days to show a useful pattern. One-month engagements produce no signal. Three months produce a measurable trajectory. Six months produce compounding. Founders sometimes want shorter; we decline shorter scope because it is set up to fail.
Yes. The same senior strategist runs the engagement end-to-end. No delegation to junior staff. No team handoff. The board reading the report and the founder on the weekly call see the same person who built the strategy.
The quarterly onsite is the constraint. Bay Area operators get an in-room cadence; Bay Area operators get the in-room cadence this offer is built around. Companies outside that focus should use the general Stan Consulting path instead.
Strategic team architecture: yes (recommendations on what roles to hire, in what sequence, with what brief). Hiring execution: shared with the founder and any internal recruiter. Ongoing team management: not included in Fractional CMO; that is internal to the founder. The seat is strategic, not operational.
$15,000-$25,000 · For a complete strategy reset before committing to embedded leadership.
Open the tier →$25,000-$50,000/quarter · For VC firms buying fractional leadership across multiple portcos.
Open the tier →Fractional CMO · $15,000-$20,000/month · 6-12 months · weekly call + onsite quarterly + performance reporting. Bay Area engagement, fixed-scope at intake.
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