fabricaFractional CTO
I help early-stage teams build great products.
I'm Ken Ono. For almost four decades I've worked hands-on with founders — from architecture and hiring to writing code. I go deep with a small number of clients on hard, interesting problems.
What I do
Hands-on building
Full-stack architecture and development. React, Node, AWS, GraphQL — I ship code alongside your team, not just advise from the sidelines.
Technical leadership
CTO-level strategy for teams that aren't ready for a full-time CTO hire. Technology roadmaps, vendor selection, architectural decisions.
Team building
Recruiting, assessing, and "right-sizing" engineering teams. I've built high-performing teams from scratch and turned around struggling ones.
Recent writing
- An Evidence-First Scorecard for AI EngineeringMay 22, 2026
An evidence-first AI engineering scorecard for small teams: have the agent inspect the repo, workflow evidence, automations, and agent instructions before asking humans how mature they feel.
- Native from Web — When the Spec Is Already RunningMay 11, 2026
Using a working web app as the behavioral spec for an Expo React Native app: hooks vs components, when cheaper models break down, and why parity needs a written trail for the next agent.
- Making SuperSubset: It's All About the SpecMay 2, 2026
Building SuperSubset taught me that the bottleneck in agentic development is the spec. The charts looked great. The tests passed. The product still failed.