Fractional CTO · Co-founder of Portium
Senior technical leadership that ships the product itself. Not a deck, not advice from the sidelines: I build your first real version, and the team to own it.
ISO/IEC 27001 certified SOC 2 Type II, KPMG-audited (Portium) Remote · worldwide & Israel
The Equity Trap
Hiring a full-time CTO before Product-Market Fit costs $250k+ and precious equity. But bringing on an "equity partner" often means your startup becomes their weekend side-project.
You lose months waiting for an MVP that never ships, burning through runway and momentum. Real commitment isn't bought with equity; it’s a professional obligation. When you hire Softwine, your product isn't a side project, it’s the top priority.
What a fractional CTO actually covers
Fractional CTO is the whole role. Building the product, its architecture, the strategy around it, and building the team for the long term aren't separate services; they're simply part of the job.
The bets a founder can't make alone: architecture, build-vs-buy, vendor and platform calls, the roadmap. The decisions that are expensive to get wrong.
Derived from your business and constraints, not from whatever's trending.
Hands-on, 0→1. I write the first real version and lay foundations the future team inherits, not a prototype you throw away at Series A.
Cloud, infrastructure and AI depth, applied as proof it’s built right.
Recruit, onboard, mentor, and hand off. You end the engagement with a team that runs without me. That's the point, not a permanent retainer.
No lock-in by design. The goal is to make myself unnecessary.
How the work goes
Turn business goals into a technical plan you can execute and defend to investors.
The right bets, sized to your stage, with nothing you'll have to rip out later.
A product, not a toy. Shipped, in production, in front of real users.
Built so the next ten engineers can move fast instead of firefighting.
Hired, mentored, and handed the keys. You’re independent by the end.
Infrastructure, DevOps, CI/CD, cloud and AI all live here, under “built right.” The means to a shipped product, never the headline.
Proof, not promises
Softwine co-founded Portium, a live, shipping Zero-Trust access platform for libraries, hospitals, and research institutions. I'm doing for my own company exactly what I'd do for yours: the architecture, the build, and a security bar independently audited by KPMG to SOC 2 Type II.
Visit portium.orgWho this is for
Your MVP, the first real version of the product, built to last past your next round, not rewritten at Series A. Top-tier architecture without the cost of a full-time hire.
See related products →Scaling past your stack? Bring in senior engineering leadership to modernize, adopt cloud-native practices, and put the processes in place that let your team move faster with confidence.
See related products →Lead a company without a technical co-founder? I translate business goals into the right technical calls, keep your product on track, and tell you the truth. No equity required.
See related products →About
Bezalel Brandwine
Founder, Softwine · Co-founder, Portium
“Turning a business venture into technology that works, building a product and not a toy, is the whole job.”
I’ve spent my career as a hands-on software architect in fast-paced cloud startups: the person who turns “we need this” into something that actually ships and holds up in production.
Most founders don’t need a full-time CTO yet. They need senior judgment and someone who will actually build, without the $250k+ salary, the equity, or a months-long hire. That gap is exactly what Softwine fills.
And I practice what I sell: I co-founded Portium and built it to the same bar I'd hold your product to. I'm not advising from the sidelines. I'm in the same trenches you are.
What people say
Colleagues, founders I’ve built for, and the people who've interviewed me. Hover any screenshot to read the original.
“You’re a talented, very techy architect — not every startup has someone like you.”Guy MenahemCNCF Ambassador · Solutions Architect @ AWS · View on LinkedIn
“It was a great conversation — you’re a true professional.”Raphael Ben-HamoCEO @ korpro.io · View on LinkedIn
“I have to give Bezalel huge credit — he found a creative, professional fix for a memory problem in my system, something I wouldn’t have thought of on my own. And he reached out on his own initiative.”MaayanFounder · in a founders community
“A naturally gifted architect — Bezalel helped me with everything around managing our data.”Zalman JacobowitzFounder · View on LinkedIn
“Bezalel gave me genuinely professional advice, for free. Sharp, focused, to the point — he immediately came up with a very creative solution to a serious problem I was facing.”MaayanFounder · after a consult
Latest thinking
A fractional CTO sells judgment. Here's mine, unfiltered. The same opinions I'd bring to your product.
Straight answers
A senior technology leader who takes on the CTO role part-time, on demand. You get the architecture decisions, technical strategy, hiring and roadmap of a full-time CTO, without the $250k+ salary, the equity, or the months-long hire. The Softwine difference: this CTO also builds, hands-on.
Pre-seed to Series A, roughly 0–8 engineers, budget under ~$25k/month: a fractional CTO is usually right: senior judgment and execution in under two weeks, at a fraction of a full-time CTO's $200k–$250k loaded annual cost. Go full-time once the org is large enough to need a leader present every day.
A founding engineer is hard to find, expensive, and asks you to judge seniority you may not have. A fractional CTO who's already been a founding engineer many times over gives you the same hands-on building plus the leadership a single hire can't, without the equity or the hiring race.
On paper, equity-for-commitment sounds smart. In practice, equity doesn't buy commitment, it usually buys a side project: your partner still has bills to pay, so your product gets their leftover weekend energy. Real commitment is a professional obligation. When you pay a seasoned team, your product isn't a "cool evening project", it’s the top priority, with full-time focus, hard deadlines, and the standing to demand results. One founder came to me after burning 8 months with a "super-committed" equity partner who got swamped by his day job until the project froze. He hired us at a fixed price, and his MVP was live in 10 weeks, because we were committed to the contract, not just to the idea.
I build. I co-founded Portium, a live Zero-Trust platform already in the field with thousands of users, and engineered it to the same bar I'd hold your product to. Softwine ships the first real version; it’s not a deck-and-Slack consultancy.
Yes. Softwine works remotely with startups and teams worldwide, and locally in Israel, in English and Hebrew. Portium itself ships in four languages, so building for a global market is the norm.
Stop wasting runway waiting for part-time partners. Let's build scale-ready foundations today. Book a 30-minute call. I’ll tell you straight what your product needs, and whether you even need me.