Taking on new engagements

You don't need to figure out the technical side alone

I'm Rigest, founder of OrAnd. I help early-stage founders make the right technical decisions and ship the product to prove them. Part-time CTO, full-time builder.

If you just raised your first round, you're probably worried about at least one of these:

  • Hiring the wrong first engineer and losing months
  • Building something that breaks the moment users show up
  • Getting locked into architecture you can’t change later
  • Burning runway on rewrites because nobody flagged the issues early
  • Being the person in the room who can’t evaluate technical decisions

These are reasonable fears. And you don't need to bet €150K on a full-time hire to address them.

Services

Three Ways to Work Together

Whether you need ongoing leadership, a shipped product, or a one-time second opinion — I adapt to what your startup needs right now.

1

Fractional CTO

Part-time technical leadership

As low as 10% of a full-time CTO salary

The situation

You raised a round. You have a product idea and maybe a prototype. But you don’t have a technical co-founder, and you’re not ready to bet €150K on a full-time CTO hire you can’t yet evaluate.

What I do

I embed in your team part-time. I make architecture decisions, vet engineers, set the technical roadmap, and translate between your board and your codebase. You get CTO-level judgment without CTO-level burn rate.

What's included

  • Architecture decisions and tech stack selection
  • Engineering hiring — writing specs, screening, technical interviews
  • Technical roadmap aligned to your fundraising milestones
  • Vendor and tool evaluation
  • Board-level technical communication
2

Product Delivery

Idea to shipped product

As low as a single senior hire

The situation

You know what to build but not how to get it built. You’ve seen founders burn months and six figures on agencies that deliver something that doesn’t scale, can’t be maintained, or doesn’t match the spec.

What I do

I own the entire delivery — architecture, development, QA, deployment. I bring in vetted contractors when the scope demands it and manage them so you don’t have to. You get a shipped product, not a handoff of someone else’s technical debt.

What's included

  • End-to-end product development
  • Managed delivery with vetted contractors
  • CI/CD pipelines and production infrastructure
  • QA processes and automated testing
  • Post-launch iteration and maintenance
3

Technical Advisory

Short-term, high-impact engagements

As low as a day's consulting fee

The situation

You’re about to close a deal, sign a vendor contract, or make a technical decision that’ll be expensive to reverse — and you need a second opinion from someone with no conflicts of interest.

What I do

Short engagements with clear deliverables. I review your codebase, audit your architecture, assess your team’s technical approach, or run due diligence for investors. You get an honest assessment, not a sales pitch for more consulting.

What's included

  • Codebase and architecture audits
  • Tech due diligence for investors
  • Security and GDPR compliance assessments
  • Performance and scalability analysis
  • Technical debt evaluation with remediation plans

Who this is not for

  • Enterprises with procurement departments and 6-month vendor selection cycles
  • Founders looking for a yes-man who’ll validate bad technical decisions
  • Companies that need a team of 50 engineers — I’m one person with a network
  • Anyone who wants "an app like Uber" built in two weeks
The Math

Full-Time CTO vs. Fractional

Full-Time CTO
Fractional (Me)
Annual cost
€180–240K + equity
From €18K/year
Commitment
12+ months, hard to undo
Month-to-month, cancel anytime
Time to start
3–6 months to hire
This week
Wrong fit risk
Severance + lost time
Cancel next month
Products

Systems That Run at Scale

Not slide decks. Production systems handling real users, real data, and real compliance requirements every day.

2
Universities running on our systems
100+
Schools on platforms I built
13+
Years building and operating at scale
📚

Pluggamatte

K-12 Learning Platform

Digital learning platform with interleaving and spaced repetition. Built end-to-end and deployed to hundreds of schools across Sweden. GDPR-compliant from day one.

VueTailwindLaravelPostgreSQLRedisDocker
🎓

Bedër Information System

University Platform

University-wide administrative platform for student records, scheduling, and institutional workflows. Built from scratch, maintained for years.

ReactAlpine.jsTailwindLaravelJavaPostgreSQL
🏫

SMART

University Management System

Born from the Bedër–WBU collaboration. A university management system built and implemented by OrAnd for Western Balkans University.

ReactTailwindLaravelPostgreSQLRedisDocker

Why an Estonian company?

  • Registered company in Estonia (EU)
  • GDPR-compliant by default — built systems for student data
  • Real infrastructure, real uptime, real users
  • European timezone, European regulatory understanding

OrAnd OÜ is a registered Estonian company. Real address, real registry number, real accountability. Not a ghost LLC.

20 minutes. No pitch deck. No NDAs.

Just a conversation about what you're building and whether I can help. If I can, I'll tell you how. If not, I'll point you in the right direction.

Email directly

rigest@orand.io

Based in

🇪🇪Tallinn, Estonia

Book a 20-Minute Call