Fractional CTO · Africa

A trusted technical advisor for your next stage.

I am Abou Koné, an Ivorian American CTO, trusted technical advisor, and player-coach. I help founders structure their teams, make hard decisions, and improve the way product, engineering, and execution move together.

CTO at Pacify · Founder of 100Kode · English and French

The right moment

When to bring me in

Your team is usually 5 to 20 people, and its way of working needs to evolve with the company.
You need a player-coach who can make technical decisions, help set product direction, and raise the level of the engineering team.
You need to hire, reorganize, or right-size the team without losing momentum.
You want to formalize the roadmap, roles, operating rhythm, and accountability so delivery becomes more predictable.

Formats

Engagements matched to your stage

15 to 25 hours over 2 to 3 weeks

Discovery Sprint

A practical assessment of the team, roles, product, and platform, with a 90-day action plan.

Up to 10 hours a month

Pulse

A trusted advisor for hard decisions, key hires, and leadership priorities.

Up to 20 hours a month

Guidance

Team structure, hiring plan, delivery rhythm, and the operating practices that make it stick.

Up to 40 hours a month

Embedded Leadership

An embedded leader to organize the team, establish the right mechanisms, and drive the next stage.

Formats and pricing are set after a first conversation, based on the milestone ahead and the level of involvement that will help.

Experience

How I can help your startup move forward

Grow a team that can deliver

When your company has outgrown informal ways of working, I help clarify roles, priorities, and accountability. At Pacify and Clockwise, I helped teams become more mature and take on bigger goals.

Take back control of your product

If an outside company built your product, I can help you take ownership without slowing down the business. At Pacify, I helped organize the handover and build the internal team that now improves the product every day.

Turn a new idea into a useful product

At Clockwise, I helped build Prism, a new AI scheduling product. I can help turn a promising idea into a clear plan, an organized team, and a product customers can use.

Help your team move faster

I help remove the everyday blockers that slow work down and frustrate customers. At IDDataWeb, Clockwise, and Pacify, I improved how teams deliver, find problems, and solve them.

Hire and grow the right people

I have hired people, supported promotions, and managed performance when it was needed. I can help you decide who to hire, how to assess candidates, and how to develop the people already on your team.

Keep moving through change

After FedEx acquired ShopRunner, I helped teams in the United States, Poland, and India keep delivering together. This experience helps when you are working with several teams or outside partners while the company is changing.

African operating context

International engineering leadership, grounded in Francophone West Africa

My view of the region comes from building, advising, hiring, and staying connected to the people doing the work there.

Architecture for a regional operator

For Orange Sénégal, I advised on the architecture of a home-phone management ERP. It brought the demands of a telecom operator and a local operating environment into the same technical conversation.

Built with Ivorian teams

At AKIL Technologies in Abidjan, I led architecture and an engineering team building enterprise products and services. The work included growing Ivorian developers who delivered for Ivorian, US, and French clients.

A current view of Francophone West African talent

I founded Code d’Ivoire, a developer community in Côte d’Ivoire, and co-host TecPatri, a Francophone podcast featuring technology professionals across West Africa. Those conversations keep me close to the skills, expectations, and talent emerging in the region.

Expertise

What I can take on with you

Architecture, product direction, and CEO or board recommendations

Player-coach leadership, hiring, performance, and progression

CI/CD, observability, issue diagnosis, and migrations

Practical AI adoption and agentic workflows