The invisible problem kills you.
Act before it's too late.
Find it. Fix it. Forget it.
You know the symptoms, but not the problem:
- Your team ships, but the business isn’t moving faster.
- You’re spending on AI but nothing reaches production.
- Your architecture can’t scale to the next stage of growth.
Something is wrong and nobody can name it. That’s the invisible problem. It compounds every month until you fix it.
Fractional CTO for growth-stage companies
William Baxter has spent 25 years helping organizations work past the obstacles they didn’t know existed. He has seen the patterns, and can find the invisible problem, help your team build a plan to fix it, and guide them through executing a fix. He makes your technical leadership more effective.
Diagnosis
Two days, one constraint
Two days inside your organization, talking to your team, reviewing architecture, observing process. The goal: find the invisible problem. Trace it to its root cause.
Beyond symptoms
The thing that’s actually wrong is rarely what it looks like from the outside. Slow delivery might be an architecture problem. Stalling AI adoption might be an org design problem. The diagnostic cuts past the symptoms to the problem structure.
Deliver findings
The binding constraint, its root cause, and the plan for addressing it. Clear enough to act on. No ongoing commitment required. The diagnostic earns the next conversation, or it doesn’t.
Planning
Prioritized
The diagnostic produces an ordered list of steps to take. Your team knows exactly what to do first.
Actionable
Written for those who will execute them. Architecture changes, process changes, team changes — focus on whatever the constraint demands.
Goal-oriented
A path to the goal, not a wish list. Dependencies identified and expectations set at each stage.
Resolution
Align
The team understands the constraint and owns the plan. They are ready to address the real problem.
Execute
Architecture gets rebuilt. Process gets restructured. Teams get realigned. Whatever the constraint demands, your team knows how to get it done.
Win
Structural fixes, not just work-arounds. Your team can move on.
Results
| What was wrong | What changed | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Failing platform depresses revenue | Structural bottleneck identified and rebuilt | 10x traffic, 14%/yr revenue growth |
| Slow predictive modeling stymies growth | Processing architecture optimized | 50-fold speed improvement |
| Bottleneck delays code contributions | Source-control integration reimplemented | 5x contribution rate for 1700 devs |
| No path to digital securities | Built SEC-compliant traditional & digital platform | 100k+ investors, $500M+ AUM |
Credentials
- 25 years building scaling platforms across fintech, email, reservations, and infrastructure
- PhD Mathematics, UC Berkeley
- Founded Austin CTO Club (220+ members)
- Advisor to Antler VC portfolio companies
- 100+ published articles on AI strategy, engineering leadership, and economics of technology
“The rare and valuable combination of business and people-savvy technologist.” — Dave Hendricks, CEO, Vertalo
“Excelled at solving business problems with innovative technology.” — Frederik Lindberg, SVP, Experian
“As a consultant, he is exceptional.” — Gary Levitt, CEO, MadMimi
“The point person for the most complex projects.” — Shubha Chaudhuri, Bloomberg L.P.