Dan Markeloff reviews what your AI tools, freelancer or agency built and gives you a written verdict in plain English.
A 30-minute call first, then a fixed price. No commitment before that.
Read-only access under NDA. Nothing changes in production.
Your next steps, clearly ranked.
SampleRanked by business risk, not by how hard it is to fix.
No senior engineer has read it.
You sign off on work you cannot read.
Customers or investors will look.
Everyone ships, nobody decides.
A Fractional CTO is a senior technical leader who works for your company part time, for a set number of hours a month. They make the technical decisions, review the work of whoever writes the code and answer to you for the result, without the cost of a full-time hire.
At Valletta, that person is Dan Markeloff, and the first step is a fixed-price technical diagnostic of what you already have.
| Role | Owns | Does not own |
|---|---|---|
| Developer | Writing the code for a task. | Deciding what to build. Judging someone else’s work. |
| Project manager | Dates, status, coordination. | Technical decisions. Code quality. |
| Fractional CTO | Decisions, standards, review and acceptance of whoever writes the code. | Writing features, by default. |
| Interim CTO | The same, full time for a fixed period, usually during a handover or a hiring search. | Staying on once a permanent lead is in place. |
| In-house CTO | The same, full time, usually with equity. | Starting next week. Independence from the build. |
Reads the code himself. No automated scan.
Fixed price agreed on a 30-minute call. Read-only access under NDA. Typically one to three weeks.
Executive verdict
Not ready for paying customers yet. Three fixes stand between you and launch. No rebuild needed.
Composite sample. Findings come from published Valletta audits, not from one client.
Why it matters. Anyone who finds the URL can create or change orders.
What to do. Put authentication on every payment route before launch. About a week for the current developer.
api/payments/*Why it matters. Customers pay and receive nothing. Refund requests follow.
What to do. Finish the webhook handlers and test them against Stripe’s test events.
webhooks/stripe.tsWhy it matters. Every past contributor still has them.
What to do. Rotate every key and move secrets out of the repository. One day.
.env, 3 filesWhy it matters. The next deploy may fail or silently drop data.
What to do. Reconcile migrations against production before the next release.
Why it matters. You would learn about it from the customer.
What to do. Add a retry and an alert on failed refunds.
Why it matters. They will carry the next year of growth.
What to do. Keep them. No rebuild.
Why it matters. Sign-in and sessions are handled by a proven service.
What to do. No change needed.
Why it matters. Bugs in the money paths would reach customers first.
What to do. Add tests around payments and refunds first, not everywhere.
Why it matters. Nothing exploitable today.
What to do. Schedule upgrades after launch.
Who you work with
Fractional CTO, Valletta Software
He reads your code, writes the verdict and is the person on your calls.
Published Valletta work, clients anonymised.
Fractional CTO
You have a team or a vendor. You want one person answering for technical decisions.
Does not write features. If a fix needs hands, he says so first and you decide who does it. Hours are agreed per engagement.
Interim technical owner
Your vendor is leaving, or your CTO left before the round.
Commercial terms with the vendor stay with you. Length is agreed per engagement.
Valletta is a company. Dan does the diagnostic and every review, is named in the contract and is not swapped without your consent.
No. Keeping your code and your developers is always an option in the report. No Valletta development is proposed unless you ask.
A developer adds code. A Fractional CTO decides, reviews and answers to you for the result. The comparison above shows who owns what.
Read-only repository and infrastructure access under NDA. You can revoke it the day the diagnostic ends.
By default, no. If a fix needs hands, he says so first and you decide who does it.
A fixed price, quoted on the first call once the size of the codebase is clear.
Founders who want a full-time developer, an equity co-founder or someone on site. For hands-on delivery, see Hire Developers.
Hire DevelopersYour name, email and five quick answers. Dan reads them himself and replies with times for a 30-minute call.