Neurotech companies need executive-level marketing and commercial expertise to hit their next milestone, but most can't justify or wait for a full-time C-suite hire. We embed fractional CMOs, CROs, and CGOs who've built go-to-market functions in regulated healthtech — and can do it again for you in 90 days.

The Problem

Your founding team is brilliant at science but stretched thin on commercial strategy

Most neurotech founders are neuroscientists, engineers, or clinicians. They built the technology but were never supposed to also build the go-to-market function. Yet here they are, making brand decisions, managing marketing agencies, and trying to figure out sales strategy between FDA submissions. The result is a commercial function that's reactive, unstructured, and consuming time that should go toward the product.

You can't attract a top CMO or CRO at your stage

The kind of commercial executive who's built a go-to-market engine for a medical device or healthtech company expects $300K-$500K in base compensation plus equity. At Series A or B, that's a massive commitment for a function you're still defining. And the hiring process takes 4-6 months through an executive search firm. Meanwhile, your product launch timeline doesn't pause for recruiting.

Junior marketing hires don't know what to build

Many neurotech companies hire a marketing manager or director as their first commercial role. These people are often talented executors, but they need strategic direction. Without a senior leader who's done this before in a regulated environment, junior hires end up guessing at strategy, copying competitors, or burning budget on tactics that don't connect to revenue. You end up frustrated, they end up burned out, and the function stalls.

Agencies aren't filling the strategic gap

You may have a branding agency, a PR firm, and a digital marketing vendor. Each one is executing in their lane, but nobody is owning the overall commercial strategy. Agencies optimize for their scope of work, not your business outcomes. Without an executive who sits across all those workstreams and connects them to revenue, you're paying for activity without strategy.

How We Help

We embed a fractional executive — typically a CMO, CRO, or CGO depending on your needs — who operates as part of your leadership team. This isn't advisory. Your fractional CXO attends your leadership meetings, owns commercial KPIs, manages your marketing team and agency relationships, and is accountable for outcomes. The difference is they work 2-3 days per week instead of five, at a fraction of a full-time executive's cost.

The first 30 days are a diagnostic and quick wins phase. Your fractional executive audits your current commercial function — team, agencies, budget allocation, pipeline, positioning, and sales process. They identify the three to five things that are most broken or most impactful and start fixing them immediately. In neurotech, the quick wins often involve tightening your investor narrative, restructuring your sales materials for different buyer personas, or killing marketing spend that isn't connected to pipeline.

Days 31-60 focus on building the commercial operating system. This includes defining your ideal customer profile, building or refining your sales process for the neurotech buying cycle, establishing content and marketing strategies, and setting up the measurement infrastructure so you can track what's working. For neurotech companies approaching FDA clearance, this phase often includes building the pre-launch marketing plan and channel strategy.

Days 61-90 shift to execution and team development. Your fractional CXO gets the machine running, trains your internal team to operate it, and establishes the cadences and dashboards that keep everything on track. The goal is to build a commercial function that works — not one that depends on any single person, including the fractional executive.

Throughout the engagement, your fractional CXO brings pattern recognition from other neurotech and healthtech go-to-market builds. They've seen what works and what doesn't in regulated markets with long sales cycles and technical buyers. That experience compresses your learning curve by months.

We also handle the talent planning dimension. If and when you're ready to hire a full-time commercial executive, your fractional CXO helps define the role, builds the job spec based on the actual function they've built, and can even participate in the hiring process to make sure you get the right person. No agency can do that because they've never sat in the seat.

The engagement is flexible by design. Some clients run a 90-day sprint and transition to a full-time hire. Others keep a fractional executive on retainer for 6-12 months as the company scales. We structure it around your needs and your runway, not a rigid contract.

What we deliver

Commercial audit and 90-day strategic roadmap with prioritized initiatives and budget recommendations
Go-to-market operating system — ICP definition, sales process, marketing strategy, and measurement framework
Team and agency management — direct oversight of internal staff and external vendors aligned to commercial goals
Talent planning — role definition, hiring roadmap, and transition support when you're ready for a full-time executive

Neurotech companies don't fail because of bad science. They fail because they hire their twentieth engineer before their first commercial leader. A fractional CXO gives you the strategic leadership to commercialize without betting your runway on a premature full-time hire.

Our Methodology

The 90-day sprint model works particularly well for fractional CXO engagements because it forces prioritization. In the first 30 days, the fractional executive has to diagnose the entire commercial function and start delivering value — there's no six-month 'learning the business' period. This mirrors how the best operators work: they assess fast, decide fast, and correct fast.

The sprint is structured around weekly priorities with a 30/60/90 checkpoint cadence. At each checkpoint, we review progress against the initial diagnostic, adjust the roadmap based on what we've learned, and ensure the engagement is on track to deliver standalone commercial capability. The fractional executive presents at your board meetings and owns the commercial narrative with your investors.

What makes this different from traditional consulting is accountability. Your fractional CXO doesn't write a report and leave. They own the outcomes, manage the team, and make the decisions. When something isn't working, they fix it — they don't send you a memo recommending that you fix it. That operational ownership is what makes the 90-day model produce real results instead of another strategy deck.

How We Work

A fractional CXO engagement typically involves 2-3 days per week of executive time, including one day on-site or in your primary meeting rhythm and 1-2 days of asynchronous work. The executive is available for ad hoc needs outside those days — investor meetings, board prep, urgent decisions — because that's how real leadership works.

The team structure depends on what you need. A fractional CMO focuses on brand, content, demand generation, and marketing team management. A fractional CRO focuses on sales process, pipeline management, and revenue operations. A fractional CGO combines both. Some clients start with one role and expand as the commercial function grows.

Cadence includes weekly leadership team meetings, bi-weekly commercial reviews, and monthly board-level updates. Your fractional executive also runs whatever internal cadences the commercial team needs — marketing stand-ups, pipeline reviews, agency check-ins. They bring the operating rhythm, not just the strategy.

Expect your fractional CXO to challenge assumptions, kill sacred cows, and push your team to move faster than they're comfortable with. That's the point. Neurotech companies are used to methodical, evidence-based processes in their R&D — commercial execution requires a different tempo, and the fractional executive sets that pace.

Structured commercial function with defined strategy, process, and measurement
Faster path to revenue through experienced leadership that compresses the go-to-market learning curve
Clear hiring roadmap and organizational design for scaling the commercial team

If your neurotech company needs fractional cxo leadership, we should talk.

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Frequently asked questions

How much does fractional CXO cost for neurotech companies?

A fractional CXO engagement typically runs $20K-$40K per month, depending on the level of involvement and the executive's seniority. That's roughly one-third to one-quarter of what a full-time C-suite hire would cost when you factor in base salary, bonus, equity, and benefits. You get the same caliber of strategic leadership without the long-term commitment or the six-month search process.

How long before we see results from fractional CXO?

Quick wins typically emerge within the first 30 days — tighter positioning, better sales materials, redirected marketing spend. Structural improvements like a functioning sales process, content engine, and measurement framework take 60-90 days. The full impact of a fractional CXO engagement compounds over time as the commercial function they build starts generating predictable pipeline.

How does the fractional CXO team integrate with our existing staff?

The fractional executive operates as a member of your leadership team, not an outside consultant. They manage your marketing and sales staff directly, run meetings, set priorities, and hold people accountable. If you have agency relationships, the fractional CXO manages those too. The goal is to operate exactly like a full-time executive would, just with a more efficient time structure.

What makes Winston Francois different from a traditional fractional CXO agency?

Most fractional executive services match you with a generalist from their bench. We specifically place executives with healthtech and regulated market experience because neurotech commercial strategy is fundamentally different from SaaS or consumer. Our executives understand FDA timelines, clinical evidence hierarchies, and how hospital procurement works. That domain knowledge means they're producing value from week one, not spending months learning your industry.

How do you measure ROI from a fractional CXO engagement?

We measure against the commercial KPIs established in the first 30 days. Common metrics include pipeline created, sales cycle length, cost per lead, investor meeting conversion, and marketing ROI. We also track qualitative markers like team capability, process maturity, and organizational readiness for a full-time hire. The fractional executive reports on these metrics monthly, the same way a full-time CXO would report to the board.

What type of neurotech company is the right fit for this service?

The best fit is a neurotech company between Series A and Series C that has a product approaching or in commercialization and knows they need commercial leadership but aren't ready for a full-time C-suite hire. If you have revenue under $10M, a small or nonexistent marketing team, and a CEO who's spending too much time on commercial decisions, a fractional CXO will have immediate impact. Companies with an established commercial team and a clear full-time hire timeline may be better served by executive search.