starax
Fractional CTO · Prague and remote

Your product stopped moving. I find out why and fix it with your team.

For owner-led companies of 5–100 people. A fixed-price diagnostic first, then fees tied to a result we agree upfront.

Book a free 30-minute call See results
Oleksii Starovoitenko
Oleksii Starovoitenko
Ten years in engineering, seven of them leading it. Payments, platforms, automation.
2 days
to find the cause of a client escalation that had run for 3 months
5 → 1
incidents a week after fixing how changes reach production
~$55K
of cloud savings found across 12 initiatives
3×
more data handled by a fleet platform after a redesign
Sound familiar?

Most owners call me when one of these has been going on for months.

The developer left, and nobody dares to touch the code.
Every release breaks something, and customers notice first.
Your people copy data between tools for hours every week.
The cloud and software bill keeps growing, and nobody can say why.
A big client keeps complaining, and the team can't find the cause.
You need someone to own the technical side, but not a full-time CTO.
Services

Four ways to work together. Each one has a price and a result we agree before I start.

5 working days · €2,400

Platform diagnostic

Your systems, processes, vendors and costs, reviewed with your people. You get the 10 biggest losses in hours and money, and a priced 90-day plan.

Fee credited in full if we continue.

from €2,000 a month · 2 days

Fractional CTO

I own the technical side with you: priorities, vendors and contractors, hiring, incidents, roadmap.

Goals for each quarter in writing.

from €3,000 per process

Process automation

Orders, CRM, reports, documents, customer replies. AI agents where they pay off, plain software where they don't.

Half at the start, half after 30 days of running against the agreed baseline.

25% of savings · 12 months

Cloud and IT cost cut

For cloud, licence and contractor spend above €3,000 a month.

Billed only after the savings show on your invoices.

Results

What changed, in numbers. From platforms that move real money and from my own company.

Every number below is from work I led. Where a client asked for privacy, the name stays out.

B2B iGaming platform · technical audit
1 week → 1 day

Leadership asked two questions: why is development so slow, and why can't we onboard new operators? The audit found the answer: launching a brand was a manual process, and team processes wasted time. After automating brand setup, a new brand went live in one day instead of a week.

Kiwi.com · problem bookings
~1/3 lost → ~5%

About a third of problem bookings were getting lost, because nobody could see the whole process. My team of seven rebuilt it as a state machine on Camunda, so a case can no longer drop out unnoticed. In six months losses fell to about 5%.

Swiss financial services · new sales channel
~35% of new applications

When COVID stopped face-to-face sales, the client had only an internal system and no way to sell insurance packages. I audited that system, then built an online sales platform that sends every application straight into it, growing the team from just me to 10 engineers. Live in about six months; around 35% of new applications moved to the new channel.

Moon Flowers, Prague · my own company
+40% orders · −75% manual work

A floral studio I co-founded. I built its whole operating system with AI agents and no dev team: an ordering bot, an online shop, stock and every order in one place, automatic replies to reviews.

AI agents in engineering
−30% time per ticket

Engineers spent hours on routine configuration tickets. I put an AI coding agent into the workflow: it prepares each change as a ready merge request, and engineers only review it. Time spent on these tickets fell by about 30%.

Contractors and outstaffing
+70% utilization

When an outsourced engineer wasn't working out, I replaced them quickly instead of waiting and hoping. Utilization of the contracted team went up by 70%, so the company paid for work actually done.

See all 18 results in numbers →
Where the experience comes from

15 industries. Chances are I've seen your problem before.

Products for markets in South Africa, the US, Israel and the EU. From a car marketplace and a birthday app to 5G roll-out and real-money platforms.

How it works

I start every engagement the way I started every role: with an audit.

  1. 01
    A free 30-minute call
    You tell me what's stuck. I tell you honestly whether I can help.
  2. 02
    Diagnostic, 5 days
    Read-only access and talks with the people who do the work. You get the losses in hours and money, and a priced plan.
  3. 03
    A result in writing
    Every agreement states the result, the baseline and how we measure it.
  4. 04
    Fix it with your team
    I work with your people and contractors. Progress is measured against the baseline, not hours.
Oleksii Starovoitenko
About

I'm Oleksii. I've spent ten years on systems where a bug costs real money.

Most recently I ran engineering for the casino side of a B2B iGaming platform: 40 engineers in 5 teams. Before that I built a payments team from 2 to 20 people at an EU operator. I also led engineering at Kiwi.com, and earlier built products for ironSource, Goodyear, IQVIA and Maven Machines, and took a fintech product from zero to Kubernetes.

In every role, the first thing I did was an audit of the systems, the processes, the vendors and the costs. Starax is that habit turned into a service for companies that can't hire a full-time CTO.

I also co-own a floral studio in Prague and built its operations myself. So I know what a small company can actually afford, and what it doesn't need.

Based in
Prague, working across the EU
Languages
English, Ukrainian, Russian, working Czech
Education
PhD, Kyiv Polytechnic Institute

I don't resell software or staff, so my advice has no commission behind it.

Questions

Before you book

Do you only work with tech or iGaming companies?

No. E-commerce, clinics, schools, agencies, logistics: any company where software or processes slow the business down. Payments and iGaming are where I have the deepest experience.

What if the result isn't reached?

For automation, the second half is due only after 30 days of running against the agreed baseline. Cost cuts are billed only from savings on your invoices. The diagnostic is always paid, because its result is the plan.

Will you replace my developers or agency?

Usually not. I work with the team you have. If someone has to change, you'll see why in the diagnostic, with numbers.

The developer left and nobody has access. Can you take over?

Yes, as a fixed-price takeover after a diagnostic, so the scope is known before we start. For IQVIA I designed the replacement for a doctors' conference platform that nobody maintained any more and that could no longer take new features.

On-site or remote?

On-site in Prague, remote anywhere in the EU.

Tell me where it hurts.

30 minutes, free. If I can't help, I'll say so and point you to someone who can.

Book a free 30-minute call or write to intro@starax.io