The CTO you hire
& the team that ships.
We ship production software with production-shaped teams, which, most of the time, is two people who take it personally. Custom apps, integrations, and the strategic-CTO reality checks you've been putting off. No handoffs. No deck theater.
pick a mode, not a package.
// same two engineers either way. only the engagement shape changes.
fractional CTO
Sit in your planning meetings. Review PRs. Unblock your vendors. Call the shots you don't want to make alone.
- roadmap & tech hiring
- vendor triage & audits
- on-call for leadership
custom software
Web apps, integrations, dashboards, back-office tools. Built to last past our involvement, documented so your next hire can take over.
- full-stack web apps
- APIs & integrations
- internal tools
our products
We build our own tools between client work. Some are for sale, some are live, some will never see a landing page. The rest are on the work page.
- stacmarkit - marketing
- stacpros - ops (soon)
- where's the food - vendor tracking
/etc/values.yml
v4.2 · signed
The senior on the call is the senior on the code.
You talk to the people writing the software. There is no sales engineer, no offshore team, no "our delivery partner." It's us. That's kind of the whole thing.
Ship in weeks, not quarters.
We cut scope before we cut corners. Your first working version lands inside the first month or we've scoped it wrong and we'll say so out loud.
Boring tech, sharp humans.
We pick stacks that'll still be maintainable in five years (Node, Postgres, Vue, Nuxt, the unglamorous standards) and save the creativity for the product.
The exit plan is the onboarding plan.
Every engagement includes a handoff doc from day one. The goal is for your in-house team (current or future) to pick up where we left off without a summoning ritual.
No dark patterns, ever.
We'll push back if a design asks users to be tricked. Short-term conversion wins age badly and we plan to still be here in ten years.
a few things we actually shipped.
Coolie Hi, profiles + NIL mentorship for athletes.
Verified athlete profiles, NIL fundamentals, and mentorship from vetted pros and agents. Parent-approved by design.
TC Tiki Tours
Booking site for a tiki-boat company on the Great Lakes. Yes, that's a real business. Yes, we love it.
StacPros, ops for tradespeople.
Customers, quotes, jobs, invoices, inventory. One system, one team. In development.
Three tidy ways to
get help.
Pick the engagement that matches where you are. We'll tell you if you picked wrong, that's part of the first call.
- weekly leadership standup
- architecture + hiring reviews
- vendor & contractor triage
- async on-call for the CEO
- roadmap & capex planning
- light hands-on-keys when needed
- shipped v1 in the first month
- paired directly with both founders
- weekly demos, no dog-and-pony
- full handoff docs & runbooks
- post-launch support window
- fixed fee, no padding
- code & infra audit
- findings doc + priority matrix
- 30-day triage plan
- vendor / contractor sanity check
- one debrief call with your team
- no obligation to continue
Why only two of you? +
Because adding people adds meetings, and meetings are how projects die. We'd rather grow sideways (more tools, sharper processes) than upward into a pyramid.
Do you take equity? +
Occasionally, as part of a reduced cash rate, if the company is one we'd bet on anyway. Default is cash.
What about AI work? +
We use LLMs in the building and we've shipped LLM-assisted features. We will not sell you a chatbot that doesn't need to exist.
Where are you based? +
Temecula, CA and Kalaheo, HI. We work with clients across the US. On-site occasionally, remote mostly.
Things we shipped,
things we own.
Client work, our own products, and a few side projects. Grouped so you can tell who paid whom.
StacMarkit
A marketing platform bundling tools and services for small businesses growing their online presence.
StacPros
Business management software for tradespeople: customers, quotes, jobs, invoices, inventory in one place.
Where's the Food
Track mobile food vendors nearby, get notified when they arrive. Good bones, looking for a new operator.
TC Tiki Tours
Booking site + brochure for a Great Lakes tiki-boat company. Yes, really.
Ballard Allen
Rebuild for an automotive marketing agency. Faster, editable, cleaner.
Invoice Bacon
Invoicing for freelancers and small shops. Designed for people who'd rather not do accounting.
Her Village
A community platform for mothers. Mutual support, shared resources, meaningful connections. Heavy on trust, light on algorithm.
Coolie Hi
Verified profiles for young athletes: share highlights with parent approval, learn NIL fundamentals, and get guidance from a vetted mentor network of former and current pros, certified agents, and sports professionals. For minors, live mentor sessions are joined through the linked parent account.
We're Miles and
O'Brien. Hi.
We met writing code for other people's companies. Got tired of watching good ideas get bad implementations, so we started doing it ourselves in 2022.
O'Brien McQuade
Full-stack engineer obsessed with clean code and the craft of taking a messy business process and turning it into something a user can love. Runs point on client relationships and product direction.
Miles Inada
Full-stack engineer with a soft spot for hardware, networks, and the layers most people pretend don't exist. Runs point on architecture, infra, and the "but why is it slow" questions.
Stacware exists because the usual agency math (account manager + project manager + three juniors + a subcontractor) produces software nobody is proud of. We picked a different constraint: two engineers, a small list of clients, long engagements, strong opinions. So far, it works.
We also mentor new devs, open-source the parts we can, and try to leave the local tech scene a little less lonely than we found it.
Start a
conversation.
Tell us what's going on. We read everything that lands in this inbox. Usually reply within a business day.
Email the humans.
The fastest path. Include context, timeline, and whatever you'd say on a first call.
- → what are you trying to ship?
- → what's the deadline (real one)?
- → what's already tried?
- → what happens if nothing changes?
or send a brief.
Fill in whatever's easy, we'll follow up with the rest.