01
CTO Advisory
For founders who already have builders and need a senior technical voice. Roadmap and architecture reviews, vendor and hiring decisions, investor-ready technology reporting. Fixed monthly retainer.
— CTO Services
A CTO you can afford. A team that can build.
Hiring a full-time CTO costs a seed-stage company a senior salary, equity, and six months of searching — and they still have to build a team. Outsourcing to a dev shop gets you code, but nobody owns the decisions. wGrow gives you both: a named CTO accountable for your technology, backed by eighteen years of production engineering.
wGrow CTO Services gives early-stage companies a fractional Chief Technology Officer together with the engineering team to execute — architecture, product build, AI systems, infrastructure, security and compliance — under one accountable engagement. Founded in Singapore in 2008, wGrow has delivered 400+ production systems under PDPA controls and works with founders across Singapore and Asia.
01 Your options
Comparison of CTO options
| Hire a full-time CTO | Outsource to a dev agency | wGrow CTO Service | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to start | 3–6 months | 2–4 weeks | 2 weeks |
| Owns technical decisions | Yes | No — you do | Yes |
| Engineering team included | No — must hire | Yes | Yes |
| Equity required | Usually | No | No |
| Security, ops, compliance | Depends on the person | Rarely | Included |
| Exit path | Resignation risk | Vendor lock-in | Handover to your in-house team |
02 Is this you?
Built for founders who know their market, not the codebase.
- 01
The domain expert.
You know the industry, the customers and the problem. You do not have a technical co-founder, and every agency quote sounds the same because you can't tell them apart.
- 02
The funded founder.
You've raised a round. Investors are asking “who's your CTO?” and the honest answer is “I'm looking.”
- 03
The stuck founder.
You already have an outsourced team. Delivery has slowed, the bugs are multiplying, and nobody is steering.
- 04
The technical founder who wants their job back.
You built v1 yourself. Now you're doing servers, security questionnaires and hiring instead of product.
03 What a CTO does
Everything a CTO is accountable for. One engagement.
- Architecture & roadmap
- Product architecture, technical roadmap tied to your business milestones, build-vs-buy calls.
- Delivery
- Web, mobile, backend, API, database and integration delivery by our engineers, under the CTO's direction.
- AI strategy & systems
- Where AI actually earns its place in your product; agentic systems, RAG, model selection, evaluation and cost control.
- Infrastructure & security
- Cloud or dedicated hosting, hardening, access control, patching, monitoring, backup and disaster recovery.
- Compliance
- PDPA, security questionnaires, audit readiness for enterprise and government customers.
- Vendors & team
- Vetting agencies and hires, contract review, technical interviews, onboarding your first engineers.
- Board & investors
- Technical due diligence packs, board-level technology reporting, honest answers in the data room.
- Cost
- Cloud, AI and tooling spend kept in line with revenue, not headlines.
04 Meet your CTOs
A named person, not a ticket queue.
-
Timothy Mo
CEO · co-founder
Twenty years in IT delivery, much of it as a solution architect. NUS School of Computing (2002), SMU Master's (2010). Now spends most days running our embedded delivery crew and arguing with the agents.
-
Scott Li
CTO · Architect
NUS School of Computing (2002) — same batch as Timothy. Long-time collaborator on wGrow engineering work.
Every engagement is led by one of them. They make the decisions, sit in your investor meetings when needed, and are accountable for what our team ships.
05 Engagement models
Four ways to work with us.
02 Core engagement
CTO + Build Team
A named CTO plus embedded wGrow engineers building your product, running your infrastructure and owning security — one monthly fee, one accountable partner.
03
CTO Rescue
For products stalled with another vendor. We audit the codebase, infrastructure and contracts, give you a plain-language report, and take over delivery if you want us to.
04
Transition to in-house
When you're ready to hire your own CTO and team, we help you recruit them, document everything, and hand over cleanly. We don't believe every company should outsource technology leadership forever.
06 The first 30 days
What happens after you say yes.
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Week 1
1. Discovery
Product, customers, existing code and contracts, current risks. You get a written technical assessment.
-
Week 2
2. Roadmap
Architecture decisions, a prioritised delivery plan tied to your next business milestone, and a cost plan for cloud and AI.
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Weeks 3–4
3. Build begins
Engineers embedded, environments and security baseline in place, first shippable increment scoped.
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Ongoing
4. Cadence
Weekly CTO check-in, monthly board-ready report, and a named person you can call.
07 Why wGrow
Why wGrow
-
2008
Eighteen years of shipping production software from Singapore.
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400+
Production deployments under PDPA controls, for startups, enterprises and regulated entities.
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AI-native
We rebuilt our own studio around AI agents; we know where AI works in production and where it doesn't.
-
We invest
Through wGrow Ventures we put capital and engineering into founder companies — we know seed-stage from the other side of the table.
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SG · JB · ID
Regional delivery, Singapore accountability.
08 FAQ
Straight answers.
What is a fractional CTO?
A senior technology leader who works with your company part-time, taking ownership of technical strategy, architecture, security and team decisions without the cost of a full-time executive hire.
How is this different from outsourcing development?
A development agency builds what you specify. A CTO decides what should be built, how, with which tools, and what should not be built at all — and is accountable for the result. wGrow CTO Services combines both roles under one engagement.
How much does a full-time CTO cost in Singapore?
An experienced startup CTO in Singapore typically commands a senior executive salary plus meaningful equity, and takes months to recruit. Our engagements are a fixed monthly fee with no equity. Talk to us for a proposal sized to your stage.
Do you take equity?
Not for CTO Services. Separately, wGrow Ventures makes seed investments in selected companies; that is a different conversation.
Can you work with developers I already have?
Yes. Under Advisory or Rescue we lead and review your existing team or vendor rather than replacing them.
Who owns the code?
You do. Source code, infrastructure accounts and documentation are in your name from day one.
What if we want to hire our own CTO later?
That is the goal for most clients. Our Transition model covers recruiting, documentation and handover.
Which industries do you work in?
Healthcare, legal, aquaculture and deep-tech, eCommerce, logistics and government-adjacent systems, among others.
Are your services eligible for Singapore grants?
Some engagements can align with schemes such as EDG or IMDA programmes. We'll tell you honestly what applies.
How quickly can you start?
Discovery usually begins within two weeks of agreement.
Tell us where your product is stuck.
Thirty minutes with Timothy or Scott. No deck, no pitch — we'll tell you what we'd do first and whether we're the right fit.