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 Layer 2 engagement product 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). Routes through ICP funnels, problem pages, and referrals; reached when the buyer has matched their state to the tier. Each engagement is fixed-scope at the start and cannot drift mid-engagement.
A Series A AI infrastructure company in Mountain View hired SF-5 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 47% reduction in CAC payback period. 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. SF-5 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. SF-5 includes succession planning when the team is ready to hire internal. Transition document covers hiring brief, first 90 days, retained relationships. Most SF-5 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 read clearly. 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; out-of-Bay-Area operators can request remote-only quarterly review. Most SF-5 fits land in the Bay Area for the in-room compounding effect. Out-of-area startups should evaluate fit on a case-by-case basis.
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 SF-5; that is internal to the founder. The seat is strategic, not operational.
Fractional CMO · $15,000–$20,000/month · 6–12 months · weekly call + onsite quarterly + performance reporting. Bay Area engagement, fixed-scope at intake.
Begin SF-5 Fractional CMO → See all eight SF tiers