03Fractional CTO
Who’s making the technical calls?
Two quarters, then reviewHow it works
Pharmaceutical data startup · Stealth · 2023
They asked for help with their technical decisions. Investors wanted proof, not a pitch.
A year with the founders of a stealth pharmaceutical data platform, in 2023: choosing the technology, pointing the early work at real value, and speaking for it in front of investors.
- Year
- 2023
- Sector
- Pharmaceutical data and AI
- Role
- Technical advisor to the founders, from the stack to the investor pitch
- Engagement
- About a year, alongside their team
- Team
- Duncan Platt, with the founders, their developers, and their data experts
- Closest service today
- Fractional CTO
- Medicare prescription records brought into the platform
- 69M
What they asked
Help us make the technical calls.
A stealth startup was building a platform to turn pharmaceutical data into intelligence for the industry’s decision-makers: which products were selling, where, and through which specialties and channels. The founders brought deep experience in pharma consulting, insurance algorithms, and health investing. They had a development team, and experts in data.
They asked for four things: technical decisions that would scale, even when an easier choice was on the table; help thinking the product through, so it solved the right problems; a technical voice in their investor pitches; and help incorporating the company.
What was really going on
Investors would judge the product, not the idea.
Investors want to back something that can grow safely. A savvy one would look at the technology as well as the business, and ask whether it could carry the company.
And investors had stopped signing checks on ideas. They wanted to see a product already giving customers something of value. So the early work had to be real and built to last, and still come together fast.
The call
Choose the stack an investor would trust, even if it starts slower.
The developers wanted an older, lighter framework they could get moving on straight away. We recommended a modern one, built from components that many large platforms run on, which an investor’s technical advisor would recognise and trust. And we pointed the early work at the algorithms and data that gave customers real value, not at features for a demo.
The trade-off: a slower start, while the team built momentum on a framework they knew less well.
What we did
Pick the foundation, prove the value, make the case.
The founders and their team built the product. We made the technical calls with them, and stood beside them in front of investors.
Choose the stack
A modern framework the team could move fast on once they knew it, and that a savvy investor would be comfortable backing.
Put the value first
Algorithms and a data lake that turned raw prescription data into insight a customer would pay for, ahead of anything built only to impress.
Bring in the data
Pipelines pulling Medicare Part D prescription data from CMS, the US agency that runs Medicare: who prescribed which drugs, where, and how often.
Speak for the technology
The technical voice in the founders’ investor pitches, answering how the product was built and how it would scale.
Set up the company
The legwork to incorporate as a Delaware C corporation, the structure US investors expect.
The role
Duncan Platt advised the founders through 2023, alongside their developers and data experts. They built the platform; we made the technical calls with them, and pitched beside them.
The product
Prescribing data, turned into decisions.
The executive dashboard: sales and new prescriptions for each product, the regions, specialties, and pharmacies driving them, and the market news that might change them.
What changed
A foundation that held up.
The platform launched on the stack we recommended, with the Medicare data flowing into the data lake and the algorithms working on it.
The slower start paid off. In 2026, three years on, the codebase is still in good standing, on components that many large platforms still run on.
Afterwards
No round closed, and the project is on hold.
The company didn’t close a funding round, and in 2026 the project is on hold. The founders are working on other projects, but they still believe in it, and it hasn’t been shut down.
If they pick it up again, they’ll start from a sound codebase, not a rewrite.
Who carried it forward
The founders and their team. The codebase is theirs, still sound, and ready if they return to it.
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