WAVECT vs IN-HOUSE

Wavect or hire in-house. Which makes sense before product-market fit?

An in-house hire is a twelve-month commitment plus equity dilution if you are early. We are the wedge to bridge the gap until you know the right hire. Different time horizons, different costs. Hire post product-market fit. Use us before.

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“We almost hired a CTO before we knew if the product was the right product. We would have burned eighteen months of runway on the wrong technical bet.”

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Decision snapshot

VerdictHire in-house when the role is permanent, full-time, and well defined. Use Wavect before that point to reduce the risk of hiring the wrong senior person for a product that is still moving.

Wavect is best when

  • You need senior judgement now, but the eventual role is not yet clear.
  • The next ninety days decide what kind of CTO, lead engineer, or founding engineer you actually need.
  • Runway makes a mis-hire materially dangerous.

The alternative is best when

  • You have product-market fit, recurring work, and a stable mandate for the role.
  • The job requires daily internal presence, people management, and long-term ownership.
  • You have a known candidate pool and can afford the ramp.

Questions to ask before you choose

  1. Would the first hire spend most of their time building, leading, hiring, or deciding what to build?
  2. What evidence proves this is a twelve-month role, not a twelve-week gap?
  3. How will the role change if the current product bet is wrong?

Commercial risk to watch

  • Salary is only one part of the cost; recruiting, onboarding, equity, and termination risk matter.
  • A premature senior hire can become expensive organisational gravity around an unproven direction.

Evidence notes

  • The numbers on this page are planning ranges, not salary advice or hiring-market guarantees.
  • Validate compensation, notice periods, and equity norms with your own recruiter, lawyer, and jurisdiction.
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How they actually differ

Six dimensions, plus a seventh for the most expensive case: when the bet is wrong.

WAVECT DIMENSION ALTERNATIVE

€400 to €20,000 per week. Weekly outcome fee.

PRICING MODEL

€120,000 to €180,000 per year plus 1-3% equity plus benefits plus onboarding cost.

Four to twelve weeks per sprint, then re-evaluated.

ENGAGEMENT LENGTH

Twelve months minimum as a mental model. Often longer once equity vests.

Founder plus engineer. Two perspectives in the room.

WHO YOU ACTUALLY TALK TO

One person, full-time presence.

We push back on scope. We own the outcome of the sprint.

SCOPE OWNERSHIP

They build what they are hired to build. Roadmap ownership depends on seniority.

Cancel any week.

EXIT TERMS

Severance, equity vesting, dilution, references, possible legal exposure.

Refund the last week. Total exposure: one week.

WHAT IF IT FAILS

Reabsorb, train, or terminate. Total exposure: three to six months of runway.

Next-day start when scope is clear and senior capacity is available; discovery begins immediately when it is not.

TIME TO HIRE

Three to six months for a senior technical leader.

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The real difference, in practice

A full-time senior hire is the right answer eventually. It is also a twelve-month commitment plus equity, made at the exact moment you have the least information about what the role actually needs to be.

We exist to bridge that gap. Before you know whether you need a founding CTO writing code or a scale-up CTO managing twenty engineers, hiring either one is a bet you can lose for eighteen months. A fractional operator gives you senior judgment now, without the runway exposure, and makes the eventual hire sharper, because by then you will know the real shape of the role.

Post product-market fit, with a clear mandate and the revenue to support it, hire. A permanent person compounds in ways a fractional cannot, and we will tell you when you have crossed that line. Before that point, the wedge is cheaper and reversible.

If the right permanent hire is still unclear, that is exactly the window where a fractional CTO beats a premature one.

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When each is the better call

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When Wavect is the better call

  • Pre product-market fit. You do not yet know what shape of technical leader you actually need.
  • Runway-constrained. A wrong twelve-month hire would burn meaningful runway.
  • You need the role for six weeks, not six years. Wedge the gap until clarity arrives.
  • You want pushback and execution from the same operator. A new full-time hire takes months to earn pushback rights.
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When hiring in-house is the better call

  • Post product-market fit. The strategy is set. You need long-term tenure to build a team and own a roadmap.
  • You can afford a wrong twelve-month bet. Runway and revenue make a mis-hire survivable.
  • The role needs full-time presence: deep customer relationships, on-call ownership, leading a team.
  • You have a clear seat shape and a known candidate pool. The discovery cost is mostly behind you.

If the bullets on the right describe your situation, hire the person. If the bullets on the left describe it, talk to us first.

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Relevant Wavect work

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FAQs

Yes, post product-market fit . The math flips dramatically pre-PMF. A €150,000 hire who builds the wrong product for nine months costs more than €400 per week for as long as it takes to find the right product. The runway delta is the real number. We walk the full build-vs-buy math in freelancer vs agency vs in-house .
No. We do not place full-time hires. What we do is hand off cleanly: documented architecture, defensible test coverage, hiring brief for the role we kept warm. The next CTO walks in to a real codebase, not a hand-wave.
We work alongside one. If you have already hired a CTO and the question is whether we add capacity around them, the answer is sometimes yes. Often the cleaner play is a staffing firm; we will tell you when that is the case.
We can keep one to two senior engineers on rotation through a transition. That is a separate scope, priced as a continuation retainer , capped in time. We are not a long-term staffing solution.
A real technical co-founder takes equity, commits a decade, and shares the cap table. We take cash, commit a sprint , and leave the cap table alone. If you can find a co-founder you trust, the co-founder is almost always the better long-term answer. Most founders cannot find one in time; we are the bridge.
Our Fractional CTO Austria pillar. Wedge the gap with a senior operator on a defined Austrian engagement until the full-time CTO bet is ready. Transparent pricing tiers, hybrid Innsbruck or remote across Vienna, Graz, Linz, Salzburg, and Tirol, no twelve-month commitment.
Last reviewed: byKevin Riedl wiki ↗

Still weighing the options?

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