Frequently Asked Questions

What is a fractional CMO?

A fractional CMO is a senior marketing leader who works with your company part-time or on a project basis, rather than as a full-time hire. You get the strategic thinking, hands-on execution, and cross-functional leadership of an experienced CMO, at a fraction of the cost and commitment of a full-time role.

For early-stage companies, it is often the smartest way to build marketing properly from the start, without the overhead of a full-time hire you may not be ready for.

How is a fractional CMO different from a consultant or agency?

A consultant hands you a deck and leaves. An agency runs campaigns inside a defined scope. A fractional CMO runs your marketing function.

That means owning the strategy, building the narrative, setting priorities, coordinating with product and sales, and being accountable for outcomes, not just deliverables. The work is embedded, not transactional.

Who do you typically work with?

Early-stage founders, usually at the pre-seed to Series A stage, who have a product worth believing in but have not yet built a marketing function. Often they are technical or operational by background and need someone who can think in brand and narrative without losing sight of commercial outcomes.

Most engagements are in AI, B2B SaaS, fintech, or DeFi, though the approach translates across industries. If the product is genuinely interesting and the founder is serious about growth, it tends to be a good fit.

What does an engagement look like?

It depends on what the company needs. A typical engagement starts with a discovery and messaging foundations phase: understanding the product, the market, the audience, and what the brand needs to say and stand for. From there it moves into execution, whether that is GTM strategy, brand and voice, content and comms, or marketing infrastructure, depending on priorities.

Engagements are usually structured as a set number of days per month, with a minimum commitment of three months. Some clients stay for a defined project, others for a longer ongoing partnership.

What happens in the first few weeks?

The first weeks are about listening and mapping. Understanding the product deeply, the competitive landscape, what has and has not worked, and what the founder's vision actually is underneath the pitch deck version. Most positioning problems turn out to be clarity problems. Getting that clarity early makes everything downstream easier and faster. A messaging foundations document forms the backbone of all creative and strategic work that follows.

Where are you based? Do you work remotely?

I'm a fractional CMO based in Zürich, Switzerland. Most work is done remotely, which means geography is rarely a constraint. For Zürich-based clients, in-person sessions are easy to arrange. For international clients, the work runs across time zones without friction.

What does it cost?

Ongoing engagements are priced based on time engagement, scope, and outcome rather than hourly rates. Project-based work is scoped and priced individually. The first conversation is always free.

How quickly can you start?

Usually within one to two weeks of an agreement being in place. For urgent situations, sooner is often possible.

What industries do you have experience in?

DeFi and Web3, institutional crypto and Bitcoin, fintech and trading infrastructure, B2B SaaS, AI, gaming, fashion, and prestige goods including wine and Champagne. The thread across all of them is zero-to-one brand building, narrative architecture, and getting early-stage companies to sound and look like they belong in the room.

Do you only work with startups?

Primarily, yes. The work is most valuable at the stage where marketing has the highest leverage: before the brand hardens, before the wrong narrative gets baked in, before the wrong channels get scaled. That is typically pre-seed through Series A, though the right later-stage company with a genuine repositioning challenge can also be a good fit.

What makes your approach different?

A narrative-first methodology. Most marketing problems are actually positioning and story problems in disguise. Fixing those first makes everything else, whether that is content, campaigns, or conversion, dramatically more effective. The other difference is that the work is genuinely hands-on. Strategy that does not ship is not strategy.

How do I know if I need a fractional CMO or something else?

Some signals: you have a product but no clear story for it. You are spending on marketing but cannot explain why it is or is not working. You keep putting marketing off because you do not know where to start. You hired a junior marketer but they have no one to learn from or report to. A fractional CMO is not the right fit if you need someone to manage a large existing team full-time, or if you are looking for purely executional support without strategic input.

How do I get started?

Get in touch.