Services

Two engagement shapes. Both built for the work that is actually in front of you.

Everything I do is some combination of writing, conversation, and review. The difference between the engagements is how much time, and how embedded in the team I get.

01 — Embedded

Fractional CTO

From
$10k/ month
1–2 days per week. Three-month minimum, then month-to-month. Stage-appropriate equity available in lieu of a portion of cash.
Schedule intro

What’s included

  • Weekly 1:1s with the founder and senior engineers
  • Architecture and technical strategy documents, kept current
  • Hiring scorecards, senior loop participation, and offer support
  • Board and investor briefings on technical posture
  • An on-call line for the "is this fine?" questions
  • Smooth handoff to a full-time CTO when you’re ready
02 — On retainer

Advisory retainer

From
$3k/ month
Half a day per month, plus async. Six-month minimum. Cancel at any time after.
Schedule intro

What’s included

  • One ninety-minute working session per month
  • Async channel for short questions, written reviews, doc reads
  • Two emergency calls per quarter, on twenty-four hours’ notice
  • Invite to the quarterly peer roundtable (small group, off the record)
  • Access to the private essay archive and tooling library

How it goes

What the first month looks like.

STEP 01

Intro call

Thirty minutes. You describe the situation. I tell you, plainly, whether I can help.

STEP 02

Scope memo

A one-page written proposal: what we’re working on, for how long, and what success looks like.

STEP 03

First two weeks

Listening. 1:1s, code-reading, doc-reading. Output is a written read of where things actually are.

STEP 04

Rhythm

By week four, we’re operating. By month three, you’re asking whether you still need me.

About us

A small team. Senior, hands-on, no layers.

renata.agency is intentionally tiny. The work is done by the people whose names are on the door — directly, in writing, without intermediaries.

Owner

Renata Pozhidaeva

Renata leads engagements at renata.agency. She built the practice after spending her career inside PE-backed healthcare technology companies, first as an engineer, then leading the teams and systems around her. That background is the point: founders get the judgment that usually only comes with a senior full-time hire, available earlier and without the overhead.

She works directly with founders and senior engineering leaders on the decisions that compound quietly: architecture, hiring, compliance posture, PMS integration strategy, AI adoption, and the operational choices that tend to define the next two years more than any single product decision does.

She is calm in a crisis, allergic to theatre, and writes everything down. What she writes belongs to you.

Not sure which fits?

The intro call is for figuring that out.

If neither engagement is the right shape, I’ll often suggest a one-week working sprint or a single deep-dive — and sometimes the right answer is someone else entirely.

Schedule a call