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Fractional CTO & product engineering for startups

Your technical partner.From first build to growth.

  • No tech team? We anchor your build, no hiring headache.
  • Dev team at capacity? We take a full build off your plate.
  • Raising soon? An MVP with the tech edge investors look for.
  • No CTO? Get senior leadership without the full-time hire.
  • AI feature breaking in production? We make it hold up.
  • Billing losing you money? We fix it fast.

Trusted by founders and teams at

  • Zima
  • Vesta

Where are you right now? Pick the one that sounds like you.

Founders

“I have an idea but no tech team.”

We become your CTO and product team, from first version to paying customers.

See how we launch

Growing SaaS

“Our AI or billing keeps breaking.”

We find what's wrong, fix it, and make it stay fixed.

See how we fix it

Companies without a CTO

“I run a company but have no technical lead.”

Senior leadership plus the people to build, starting with one small project.

Start with a pilot

Dev teams at capacity

“We have more to build than people to build it.”

Hand us a whole product or workstream. We build on your existing platform, own delivery and ship in weeks, without managing us day to day.

See what we've shipped

How can we help you? Strategy, architecture and execution for founders who need more than a dev team.

Launch your product

From idea to a first version customers pay for. Your CTO and senior engineers do the build.

4–8 weeks

AI

Add AI to your product

AI features and the systems behind them, built to hold up under real use.

2–6 weeks

AI

AI agents and automation

Agents that handle support, ops and sales tasks end to end, with humans in the loop.

2–6 weeks

AI

Chat with your data

Search and assistants over your docs, database and product, grounded in real answers.

2–5 weeks

AI

LLM evals and cost control

Testing, monitoring and model routing so AI features stay accurate and affordable.

1–3 weeks

AI

Voice and multimodal AI

Voice agents and image or document understanding inside your product.

3–6 weeks

Get paid properly

Billing, payments and pricing that charge correctly and protect your margins.

3–6 weeks

Connect your tools

Your product, payment providers and internal tools talking to each other.

1–4 weeks

Grow without breaking

Backend reliability work so your product keeps up as usage grows.

2–6 weeks

Tech leadership

A fractional CTO for the roadmap, big technical calls, hiring and investor prep.

Monthly

Landing page and SEO

A fast, clear site that ranks, converts and collects early signups.

1–2 weeks

Analytics and onboarding

Auth, onboarding flows and tracking so you know what users actually do.

1–3 weeks

Cloud and DevOps

CI/CD, monitoring and cloud setup that is stable and keeps costs low.

1–3 weeks

Security and compliance

Security reviews and SOC 2 / GDPR readiness for enterprise deals.

2–6 weeks

Not sure which fits? Tell us where you're stuck and we'll point you to the right one.

Book a free call

Selected work. Challenge, solution and outcome.

Industry
AI infrastructure
Region
Silicon Valley
Duration
Ongoing

Multi-provider AI platform with usage billing

Challenge

Use several AI providers without lock-in, and bill customers fairly for usage.

Solution

  • Cost and speed based request routing
  • Secure sign-in and secret detection
  • Usage billing with Stripe

Outcome

3×

request capacity (300 → 1,000)

  • · Half the database load
  • · Seed-stage revenue from the MVP

What happens after you book a call. No surprises, no black boxes.

  1. Day 1

    Free 30-minute call

    What you're building, where you're stuck, and whether we fit.

  2. Within 48 hours

    Written proposal

    Scope, timeline, team and a fixed price for milestone one.

  3. Days 3–5

    Plan and design

    Priorities, structure and screens agreed before building.

  4. Week 1–2

    Build and ship

    Your CTO and a senior engineer join your Slack and GitHub.

  5. Ongoing

    Improve and grow

    Weekly demos, daily updates, clean handover when you hire.

Priced by scope. Not by the hour.

After a 30-minute call you get a one-page written proposal: what we’ll build, by when, who’s on it, and a fixed price for the first milestone. No surprises after that.

Proposal within 48 hours

CTO Advisory

Senior guidance a few days a week. Roadmap, big decisions, hiring and investor prep.

Embedded CTO + Team

Most chosen

Your CTO plus senior engineers inside your team. First working version in two weeks.

Launch Sprint

One clear goal, fixed scope, 4–8 weeks. Built, documented and handed over.

AI makes us fast. Experience makes it last.

We use AI tools on every project to move faster on the routine work. Our senior engineers own what AI gets wrong: security, structure, payments and anything that has to work under real load. You get speed without a fragile product.

  1. 01

    Faster first versions

    Working software in two weeks, not month two.

  2. 02

    Senior review on everything

    Nothing ships that a senior engineer hasn't checked.

  3. 03

    Built to last

    The structure won't need rebuilding at your next funding round.

A small senior team that owns the outcome.

AY Labs is a senior product and engineering team for startups. We own the build, the technical decisions and the delivery, so you don't need an in-house team to ship.

Our focus: AI systems, SaaS delivery and backend reliability.

  • We anchor your tech, so you skip the full-hire headache
  • You talk directly to the engineers building your product
  • We take 3 clients max — your project gets real attention
  • Every decision is tied to a business outcome, not a ticket
Meet the founderAbhigyan TripathiFounder & Fractional CTOLinkedIn

AY Labs isn't for everyone. We'd rather be honest upfront.

Work with us if…

  • You need a technical partner who can lead under pressure
  • You're moving fast and need senior technical clarity
  • You want engineers who've worked inside real product companies
  • You want a team that treats your roadmap like a business decision

Don't hire us if…

  • You want the cheapest option
  • You need a team that only executes tickets
  • You want someone to take orders, not challenge your roadmap
  • You're not ready to make product decisions
Taking new projects

Tell us what you're building

We reply within 24 hours with a first take on what your product needs.

  1. 1We read your noteand reply within 24 hours.
  2. 230-minute callwhere you're stuck and whether we fit.
  3. 3Written proposalscope, timeline and price, within 48 hours.
Book a free call30 minutes · pick a time that works for you

Prefer email? hello@aylabs.tech

Send us a note

Takes about a minute.

We reply within 24 hours. No newsletters, no spam.

Questions founders ask first.

Still have a question?

Ask it on a free 30-minute call.

Book a free call

They own your technical direction part-time: architecture, roadmap, hiring and delivery. You get CTO-level leadership without the full-time salary or equity.

Fixed price per milestone, based on scope rather than hours. Fractional CTO work is a monthly retainer. You get a written proposal within 48 hours of our call.

No. We anchor your technical side, so you skip the hiring headache and the full-time salaries. Hire your own team when you are ready, not because you have to.

That is the goal. We build on a scalable architecture with production-grade foundations, clean code and real metrics, so technical diligence works in your favour.

Usually within a week of signing. The first working version ships within two weeks.

You do. Everything we build lives in your repositories and cloud accounts from day one, and full IP transfers to you on payment.

We join your Slack and GitHub, follow your workflow and report weekly. We can lead the build or support your engineers.

Yes. We start with a short code and architecture review, then fix, extend or rebuild what matters most.

We sign an NDA before we see anything sensitive, use least-privilege access and follow secure development practices. SOC 2 and GDPR readiness is available.

We help you hire, then hand over with documentation, a full walkthrough and an overlap period.

Yes. We work with startups across the US, EU and APAC, and overlap with your time zone.