I build the technology your business runs on. Then I run it.
For the owner who runs a real business and is done with technology that breaks. The two things I am asked for most: the AI you were promised, live and working in the business, and the core systems that keep falling over, rescued and owned.
Built, not advised.
The audit is the front door. Credited to your first month if we go further.
I don’t advise. I build it, and I run it.
Consultants hand you a strategy and leave. Agencies ship and move on. I do the opposite. I build the technology your business runs on, then I stay and run it, so it keeps working long after the invoice.
One senior operator, accountable end to end. You see it working every week. No mystery timelines, no hourly meter, and no team for you to manage. There is no lock-in. You stay because it works.
Recent build - Exhibitio: the commerce layer for exhibitions, live now.
A multi-tenant event commerce platform I designed, built and run. Embedded checkout on the organiser's own site, money settling in their own Stripe account, a live Claude connector, and Meta, Google Ads and GA4 wired in. This is what “built, not advised” looks like shipped.
Money in
The organiser's website
Event pages and checkout, embedded on their own site
Tickets
Sold on the event page
Booths and floor space
Deposit or pay in full
Sponsorships
Collected on schedule
Applications
Approve who can buy tickets, booths and sponsorships
Exhibitio workspace
One place to run the whole event
Claude connector (MCP)
Live
Organisers connect their own Claude to the workspace: revenue, orders, invoices and applications on tap.
The organiser's Stripe account
Sales settle directly in the organiser's own account. Exhibitio never holds the money. Payouts and supplier payments run on Stripe rails, with automatic instalment plans for booths and sponsorships.
Venue
Scheduled payments
Suppliers
Scheduled payments
Crew
Scheduled payments
Money out
Wired into the stack
Meta Ads
Connected
Google Ads
Connected
Google Analytics 4
Connected
Stripe
Money rails
Claude (MCP)
Live connector
Fractional CTO services, from audit to live handover.
Interim CTO cover
Full CTO cover for a fixed stretch: a gap, a transition, or a critical build, then a clean handover.
Part-time CTO
Ongoing senior technical leadership a few days a month, scaled to what the business actually needs.
CTO as a service
The audit, the build, and the running of it on a monthly retainer, with no full-time hire.
The problem - You have been burned before. I know the pattern.
Most owners I meet have lived at least one of these. None of them are your fault.
- The agency that vanished. They shipped, they invoiced, and they disappeared. Now no one knows how it works, and changing anything is a quote and a wait.
- The AI pilot that died. Everyone was excited. It demoed well, then it died in a sandbox and never touched the real business. The budget went with it.
- The system that keeps falling over. The booking system that goes down every weekend, held together by spreadsheets and one nervous contractor you cannot afford to lose.
- The meter that never stops. Every call on the clock, a slide deck where the working software should be, and a bill that grows whether anything ships or not.
What does a fractional CTO cost?
Every engagement starts with a paid audit. It is the entry point and the answer: a fixed read on what to build and what it costs, credited to your first month if we go further.
Audit
the diagnostic · fixed · credited to what comes next
The fastest way to find out if I can help. I assess your systems, your AI, your tooling, and give you a one-page plan with the highest-value moves ranked. Plain English, no sales deck. Credited to your first month.
A$750
The alternative - One senior operator. Not a full-time hire, not an agency.
A full-time hire
A$180k to A$300k, plus equity
A senior salary on the books, carried whether the work is there or not. They tend to direct the build more than do it.
An agency
A team you manage
Capacity across people you coordinate, scoped to a contract, and gone when it ends. The knowledge leaves with them.
Program
Starts with an audit
One operator who builds it and runs it. Fixed scope, no hourly meter, no lock-in. You see it working every week, and you own what I build.
Every engagement starts with the audit. A paid read on what to build and what it costs, delivered as a document you own, credited to your first month if we go further. After that, a monthly retainer priced by mandate, not by the hour: Advisory, One Priority, Your Function, Your Department, or full-time interim cover.
About - Fifteen years in the owner’s chair, ten thousand hours in the build.
I’m Kevin Mack. For fifteen years I sat in the owner’s chair as both CEO and CTO, and I built a national live-events business from the ground up: 150+ exhibitions, conventions and festivals, A$60M+ in revenue, designed, built and run. I know the weight of it firsthand. P&L ownership, board reporting, market timing, making payroll, and putting out the fires myself. Along the way I founded multiple ventures, including a Shopify Build A Business award winner.
I don’t advise. I build the technology a business runs on, then I stay and run it.
I build commerce systems and the revenue engines underneath them, turning a company’s domain logic into working software, SaaS products and private platforms. I integrate AI into real operations and build the agentic systems that do the work around it.
For the last five years I have put more than 10,000 hours into the technical half: custom programming, interface and platform development, applied AI, and integration into the systems a company already runs on, from multi-tenant commerce SaaS to asynchronous semantic-memory agents. I work hands-on with the frontier models from Anthropic and OpenAI, and I bring a company’s data into a structured, secure, integrated foundation built around what the business actually needs.
I built and led the teams as well, and shaped the culture inside them, bringing people onto the technology instead of leaving them behind it, so what I built was always built for the people who had to run it.
I work with owner-led companies that run on software but have no senior technical leader of their own. I solve the whole problem, end to end: built, integrated, trained, and put to real-world use.
I built a national industry from the ground up, and the technology that scaled it.
- 150+
- Live exhibitions, conventions, summits and festivals. Designed, built and run nationally.
- A$60M+
- Revenue generated and managed across those events. Real budgets I grew and answered for.
- 15+ years
- Executive leadership as both CEO and CTO. The owner’s seat and the technical seat at once.
FAQ - The questions owners actually ask.
- What does it cost? Every engagement starts with a paid audit at US$500, a fixed read on what to build and what it costs, credited to your first month if we go further. After that, a monthly retainer priced by the mandate rather than the hour: one priority, your function, or your whole department.
- How is this different from a consultant or an agency? A consultant hands you a strategy and leaves. An agency ships and moves on. I build the technology your business runs on, then I stay and run it. One senior operator, accountable end to end, so the knowledge does not walk out the door when the invoice is paid.
- Do I own what you build? Yes. You own the software and the IP, built for how you actually work. Nothing you rent, no lock-in.
- Is there a lock-in or a long contract? No. Fixed scope, no hourly meter, no team for you to manage. You see it working every week, and you stay because it works.
- What if my build has stalled or my platform keeps breaking? That is a common starting point. The stalled build, the platform held together with spreadsheets, the agency that left. I rescue it, rebuild it, and hand it back to you as something you own and can run.
- How do we start? With the audit. I assess your systems, your AI, and your tooling, and give you a one-page plan with the highest-value moves ranked, in plain English. It is credited to your first month if we keep going.
Built, not advised.
One architect, end-to-end.
A fractional and on-demand CTO, from audit to live handover.