Fractional CTO Services With Casey Kinnison: A Builder Who Can Check the Work

Casey Kinnison holds the seat, and has written the code

Casey Kinnison holds this seat. Casey is DataCram's founder and lead developer, a builder of custom software applications who does full stack development and relational database management, and has been building for the web from San Antonio, Texas since 1999. That is 27 years. An Arizona State graduate, Casey has also scaled web development companies working with customers across the globe.

Here is why that matters to an owner who will never read a line of it. When a developer says a small change will take a month, Casey can open the code and the database and see whether a month is right. When a vendor blames your data, Casey has designed enough databases to ask for the table and look. An estimate or an excuse gets read by someone who can check it. That is most of what you are paying for.

The second note is risk. Casey worked as a trader at Wells Fargo and Charles Schwab, and the habits carry over better than you would expect. Size the position: no single vendor, developer or server carries more of the company than the company could stand to lose. Set the exit before the entry: know how you would leave a vendor, with your data and your code, on the day you sign. Mark the book to the actual number: a backup is worth what it restored at the last test, whatever the log claims.

Those firms are past employers and have no connection to DataCram's services, and nothing on this page is investment advice. The discipline is applied here to backups, vendors and single points of failure, which are just oversized positions nobody decided to take.

Casey also holds DataCram's fractional CMO seat, and one person can hold both seats for one company. The marketing plan and the systems beneath it then sit in one head, so nobody has to referee between the ad budget and the tracking meant to prove it. Ask hard questions on the call: (210) 346-0848, or send the details and a person will reply.

The technology bill that grows while nobody is in charge of it

Read last month's credit card statement and count the software. A field service platform. A phone system. Two website plugins renewed by an employee who has since left. A developer on retainer whose invoice says "maintenance" and nothing else. An IT company that swears the backups run. Now ask anyone in the building to show you one of those backups restored. The silence that follows is the subject of this page.

None of those vendors has to be bad. Each answers for its own piece and does it well enough to get paid. Nobody answers for the whole: what the company owns, what it rents, what stops on the day one person quits, and where the next dollar should go. At a large company that job has a title. At a $1 million to $25 million company it lands on the owner, somewhere between payroll and a customer complaint.

The title is expensive. Computer and information systems managers earned a median $175,140 a year in May 2025, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That category is broader than CTO, and chief-level pay usually runs higher. Add benefits at the 70/30 split in the June 2026 BLS employer cost report and our own estimate comes to about $250,000, before anyone has fixed anything. The full-time comparison shows the work.

A company can buy everything from vendors except someone willing to say no to them.

What the fractional seat buys once you strip off the vanity

Fractional means part time. Part time CTO means the same thing with fewer syllables, and CTO as a service means the same thing with a subscription button. All three describe one arrangement: a senior technology leader holds the seat for a fixed monthly block of hours, and the company gets the judgment without the salary, the bonus plan or the corner office nobody needed.

The word that matters is seat. A consultant writes a report and leaves. Someone in the seat owns the outcome inside limits the owner sets: the plan, the budget, the vendors and the decision to stop paying for something. Without that authority you have bought an expensive opinion. With it, the vendor who has been billing "maintenance" for three years finally has someone across the table who can read the work and ask what it was.

You will want a number, so here is the market's. Fractionus, in a guide dated June 23, 2026, lists fractional CTO retainers of $9,000 to $22,000 a month. That firm is in the business of fractional leaders, so read it as a vendor's figure. Our own seat starts at $5,500 a month for 15 hours, and more hours cost more. The cost guide has the hours math and a way to budget before anyone quotes you.

Eight jobs Casey takes off the owner's desk

Here is what Casey does in the seat, written as a job description, with nothing added for the resume. The page on what a fractional CTO does walks through a full month of it, including the documents you should demand.

• The plan and the budget. One written technology plan, one number for what it costs, and one person who answers for both.
• The audit. Current systems, code and vendors, reviewed for what works, what is rented, what is at risk and what nobody uses. A free website health check or site audit is a cheap place to start looking.
• Build, buy or leave alone. Most problems deserve one of the last two answers. When custom software really is the right call, Casey writes the specification before anyone writes code.
• Developers and vendors. Casey manages them, reads their work and reports on them.
• Security basics and backups. Each with a written owner, so "I thought they had it" stops being the plan. When a site is already compromised, malware removal and site security is its own job.
• Integrations and data flow. Which system holds the truth and how the others hear about it. API integrations go live the same day, so they rarely deserve a slot on a long roadmap.
• AI with rules. What staff may paste into a chatbot, what an AI agent may do alone, and who checks the output before a customer sees it.
• Hard questions from the outside. Casey sits across from investors, buyers and auditors when technical questions come. Non-technical founders tend to need this one first.

What this seat will not do, and why we would rather say so now

It will not reset passwords or replace a laptop. A managed IT provider does that work, and a good one is worth keeping. It will not be in your building every day. It will not write your code unless you separately hire DataCram to write it. And it will not lend a title to your investor deck. A name on a slide is a different product, and we do not sell it.

Building is a separate bill, with published prices

The hands-on work is a separate purchase. If you choose us, these are the prices anyone can read on our pricing page, as of November 2026, and none of them is the fee for the seat.

Website projects can be paid over time at 0% with 25% down, up to 12 months, through website financing. Hold those numbers against another bid. That is rather the point of publishing them. The page on IT companies and dev shops explains who does what.

From the first call to the monthly page of numbers

1. 1

   A first conversation

   You describe the systems, the vendors and the worry. We ask questions, say whether this fits, and quote the fee based on hours and scope. Sometimes the honest answer is that you need neither us nor the title.

2. 2

   Hours and a contact, set before work starts

   Fifteen hours a month to start, or more if the work calls for it, fixed up front. You name one point of contact on your side, so Casey is not chasing five people for one login.

3. 3

   The audit

   Systems, code, vendors, accounts and backups. The checklist and its order are on the first 90 days page.

4. 4

   A written plan

   What to keep, fix, replace and stop, with an owner and a cost on each line.

5. 5

   A standing meeting

   The same hour every week or every other week. Decisions get made there, and the notes say which ones.

6. 6

   One monthly page of numbers

   Spend against plan, each vendor's performance, open risks and the date of the last restore test. One page, because nobody reads the second.

7. 7

   Review the hours

   Compare the hours with the work on a regular schedule, and change them when the work changes.

The resume line that matters here is not a title. DataCram works with businesses across the US and has shipped and kept running its own software, so the hosting bills, the bug reports and the bad decisions landed on us. Software shipped, ad accounts run, results answered for.

Who should keep their money, and who should call

A smaller group sits in the middle: companies whose software is all rented, whose IT provider is good, and whose only real need is a one-time look. For them, a site audit and an afternoon with their invoices may be plenty. We would rather lose that sale than sell a monthly seat to someone with no monthly work.

Seven pages, sorted by what is keeping you up

If the marketing bill looks a lot like the technology bill, the fractional CMO section covers the same job on that side of the house: one plan, one budget and one page of numbers, reported in dollars. Companies running on old sites may also want the honest debate on leaving WordPress before anyone quotes a rebuild.