Ocean tech companies hit a growth ceiling when technical founders try to handle marketing, growth, and go-to-market on top of building the product. Hiring a full-time C-suite executive takes 6-12 months and costs $300K+ before they produce anything. We put senior operators in your company within weeks, not months.

The Problem

Technical founders running marketing by default

Your CTO is writing press releases between firmware updates. Your CEO is managing the website between investor meetings. Neither has the bandwidth or expertise to build a real marketing function, but nobody else is senior enough to own it. The result is reactive, inconsistent marketing that doesn't match the quality of your technology. Every month this continues, you fall further behind competitors who have dedicated marketing leadership.

Full-time executive hires take too long and cost too much

Finding a CMO or CRO who understands ocean tech, government procurement, and technical product marketing is an extremely small talent pool. The search takes 6-12 months. The compensation package is $250K-400K before benefits. And there's real risk the hire doesn't work out because they came from a different industry and can't adapt to the pace and constraints of ocean tech. That's a year of lost momentum and potentially a year of salary with little to show for it.

Junior marketing hires without strategic direction

Some ocean tech companies try to solve the problem by hiring a marketing coordinator or manager. These roles are fine for execution, but without senior strategic direction, they end up producing random acts of marketing. Social posts nobody reads, trade show booths that don't generate leads, websites that list features instead of telling a story. You end up paying for activity instead of outcomes because there's nobody experienced enough to set the strategy.

Board and investors asking about growth with no clear plan

Your investors want to see a go-to-market plan, pipeline projections, and a marketing roadmap. Your board is asking about customer acquisition costs and lifetime value. You can answer the technical questions about your product all day, but the commercial growth questions require a different skill set. Without someone who can own that conversation credibly, you're losing confidence from the people who fund your company's future.

How We Help

We place fractional CXO-level operators inside ocean tech companies. These aren't consultants who hand you a strategy deck and leave. They're experienced marketing, growth, and product leaders who integrate with your team, attend your standups, and own outcomes. They've built go-to-market functions for technical companies before and know how to operate within the constraints of ocean tech: long sales cycles, government buyers, technical credibility requirements, and small marketing budgets.

The engagement starts with a rapid diagnostic. In the first two weeks, your fractional CXO assesses your current marketing and growth capabilities, audits your pipeline and sales process, reviews your competitive positioning, and identifies the highest-impact opportunities. They produce a 90-day action plan that prioritizes the work that will actually move commercial metrics, not a wish list of marketing activities.

Execution begins immediately. Your fractional CXO builds or restructures your marketing function: hiring the right junior staff, selecting and managing agencies, establishing processes for content production, demand generation, and sales enablement. They own the marketing budget and are accountable for how it translates into pipeline. For ocean tech companies selling to government and defense, this includes building the proposal support and capture management processes that turn marketing activity into contract wins.

They also serve as the senior commercial voice in leadership meetings. When your board asks about customer acquisition strategy or an investor wants to understand your market positioning, your fractional CXO is the person who fields those questions with credibility and data. This takes an enormous amount of pressure off technical founders who should be focused on product and engineering.

As the marketing function matures, the fractional CXO helps you plan the transition to a full-time hire. They define the role, help recruit, and onboard your permanent executive. This transition planning is built into the engagement from the start so there's no dependency on us that outlasts its usefulness.

The key difference between our fractional CXO model and traditional consulting is accountability. Our operators own metrics, not deliverables. They're measured on pipeline growth, marketing efficiency, and commercial outcomes, the same way a full-time executive would be. The difference is they bring years of pattern recognition from working across multiple companies, so they avoid the mistakes that a first-time CMO in ocean tech would make.

What we deliver

Fractional CXO placement — senior marketing, growth, or product operator embedded in your team 2-3 days per week
90-day action plan — prioritized roadmap of commercial growth initiatives with clear metrics and milestones
Marketing function build-out — team hiring, agency management, process design, and budget ownership
Transition planning — full-time executive role definition, recruitment support, and structured handoff

Ocean tech companies don't have a marketing problem. They have a leadership gap. The difference between random marketing activities and a functioning growth engine is one senior person who knows what to build, in what order, and how to measure whether it's working.

Our Methodology

Our 90-day sprint model for fractional CXO engagements follows a build-measure-learn cycle adapted for technical companies. The first 30 days are diagnostic and quick wins: audit the current state, fix the most obvious gaps, and produce the strategic roadmap. Your fractional CXO is making decisions and shipping work within the first two weeks, not spending a month gathering information.

Days 30 through 60 focus on building the engine: hiring, process design, content pipeline setup, demand generation programs, and sales enablement infrastructure. This is where the foundation gets laid for repeatable, measurable marketing operations. For ocean tech companies, this phase also includes building government-specific marketing capabilities like proposal support and capture management workflows.

Days 60 through 90 shift to optimization and scaling. The systems are running, data is coming in, and the fractional CXO is now tuning the machine based on what's working. This phase includes the first formal review of metrics against the 90-day plan, strategy adjustments based on real data, and planning for the next quarter.

How We Work

Fractional CXO engagements are structured as 2-3 days per week of embedded leadership, with a minimum commitment of 90 days. The first 30 days are the most intensive, with your fractional CXO spending more time onsite or in deep working sessions with your team. After that, the cadence stabilizes into a predictable rhythm of strategic work, team management, and execution oversight.

You get a single senior operator, not a rotating cast of consultants. They join your Slack, attend your leadership meetings, and are available for async communication on off-days. They build real relationships with your team because that's how they get things done. Ocean tech is a relationship-driven industry and your fractional CXO needs to be a credible representative of your company externally as well.

The weekly cadence includes a leadership sync, a marketing team standup, and dedicated strategy time. Monthly, there's a metrics review and plan adjustment session. Quarterly, there's a board-ready report on commercial progress. Your fractional CXO prepares all of this, so you're not scrambling to build investor updates at the last minute.

Most engagements run 6-12 months, with the final phase focused on recruiting and transitioning to a permanent executive. Some companies choose to extend the fractional model indefinitely because the economics and flexibility make more sense for their stage.

Functional marketing and growth operation built from scratch or restructured
Clear pipeline attribution and marketing ROI reporting
Smooth transition to full-time executive when the company is ready

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

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Frequently asked questions

How much does fractional CXO cost for ocean tech companies?

Fractional CXO engagements typically run $15,000 to $30,000 per month depending on the seniority level and time commitment. Compare that to a full-time CMO at $250K-400K annual salary plus benefits, equity, and the opportunity cost of a 6-12 month search. The fractional model gives you equivalent strategic leadership at roughly one-third the cost with zero recruiting risk.

How long before we see results from fractional CXO?

Quick wins start appearing within the first 30 days: fixed positioning, cleaned-up website, restructured sales materials. Structural improvements like a functioning content engine, demand generation programs, and pipeline tracking take 60-90 days. Measurable pipeline impact typically shows within two quarters. The speed advantage over a full-time hire is significant since most full-time executives spend their first 90 days just learning the company.

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

Your fractional CXO joins your team as a part-time executive. They manage your existing marketing staff, interface with your sales team, and participate in leadership meetings. If you have no marketing staff, they help hire the right junior people and build the function from scratch. They use your tools, follow your processes, and operate like an insider, not an outside advisor.

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

We specialize in technical companies selling to government and enterprise buyers. Our fractional operators have built marketing functions for companies with complex products, long sales cycles, and sophisticated buyers. They know how to navigate ocean tech's unique dynamics: SBIR/STTR programs, defense acquisition timelines, and the balance between technical credibility and commercial messaging. That specific experience means faster ramp-up and fewer expensive mistakes.

How do you measure ROI from a fractional CXO engagement?

We measure the same things you'd measure a full-time executive on: pipeline generated, marketing-sourced revenue, customer acquisition cost, marketing team productivity, and sales cycle acceleration. Your fractional CXO builds the measurement infrastructure in the first 90 days and reports against these metrics monthly. The baseline is what these numbers look like before the engagement starts.

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

Companies between $2M and $50M in revenue that have proven product-market fit but haven't built a real marketing or growth function yet. The classic profile is a founder-led team that's won contracts through relationships and technical reputation but needs to scale beyond that. If you're pre-revenue and still building the product, it's too early. If you already have a full marketing team that needs additional capacity, you need execution support, not fractional leadership.