KYE Ventures, Newport Beach
Know what the code is worth before the money moves.
Signed technical due diligence in five business days, fixed price from $4,500. Fractional CTOs with a bench behind them, from $5,500 a month.
- 25
- years building software
- 8
- acquisitions and mergers
- 4
- regulated industries: banking, mortgage, security, employee benefits
Who this is for
Investors and acquirers
A letter of intent is signed and the exclusivity clock is running. Get a signed read on the code, the security and the team before the wire, with every finding cited to file and line.
Founders raising a round
The investor's reviewer will read your code. Read it first, fix what matters in the right order, and walk into diligence with a named CTO beside you.
Companies without a CTO
The product is in market and the technical decisions are piling up with nobody senior to own them. A CTO from the bench takes the architecture, the hiring and the board conversation, on retainer.
The report, in one picture
Five axes, each rated and backed by evidence. The buyer reads the picture; the engineer reads the findings underneath it.
Fixed prices, published
Three offers carry a price list. All are agreed in writing before any work starts.
Technical Due Diligence
Three fixed prices. Pick by the size of the codebase and the deal, not by how worried you are.
Express
$4,500
5 business days
- One repository under about 50,000 lines.
- Deals under about $250,000.
- Executive summary, five-axis rating and findings with evidence.
Standard
$9,500
5 business days
- One product, up to three repositories.
- Full report: findings, dependency and license inventory, 30, 60 and 90 day plan.
- 45-minute readout call.
Deep
$16,500
5 business days
- Multiple repositories or a compliance-heavy target.
- Interviews with the engineers and a call with the deal lead.
- Two rounds of questions after delivery.
- Add-ons
- Seven days of post-report remediation questions by message and one call: $2,500.
The first two engagements are offered at the Express price for any tier in exchange for a named testimonial.
Prototype to Production
Three fixed prices, agreed in writing before work starts.
Readiness Audit
$4,500
5 business days
- Signed report and a fixed-price quote for the fix.
- Credited in full toward a sprint booked within 30 days.
Stabilize Sprint
$11,500
2 weeks, audit included
- Data access and secrets.
- Authentication and payments.
- Backups and a separate staging environment.
Production-Ready Sprint
$19,500
30 days, audit included
- Everything in Stabilize.
- The data model, tests, CI/CD, hosting and monitoring.
- Cost review and handover.
- Up to about 100 engineer hours, capped in writing.
Sprints cover one web app, one repository and one database, up to about 50,000 lines. The Production-Ready Sprint has a written scope cap of about 100 engineer hours. Larger work gets a written quote after the audit. After the sprint, a Fractional CTO retainer can keep it that way: Core from $5,500 a month, or the Team retainer at $25,000 a month with two senior engineers to keep building.
Fractional CTO
Three retainers. All start with an onboarding audit in month one so the first conversation is about facts. Your CTO is Nathan Biles or another CTO from the KYE Ventures bench, matched to your stack and industry and named in the agreement.
Core
$5,500
per month, about four hours a week
- Pull request review within one business day.
- A standing weekly 30-minute session with the founder.
- A monthly architecture and security report in plain language.
Plus
$8,500
per month, about eight hours a week
- Everything in Core.
- Your named CTO on vendor, agency and hiring calls.
- Ownership of the technical roadmap and board-ready reporting.
Team
$25,000
per month, your CTO plus two senior engineers
- Everything in Plus.
- Two senior engineers from the KYE Ventures bench, full time, directed and reviewed by your CTO.
- For the company that needs the product built and shipped, not only reviewed.
Three-month minimum. Month one includes a cut-down Technical Due Diligence of what you already have.
Eight ways to work together
Most start with a short, fixed-scope look at where you really are. Three publish fixed prices.
- Compliance-ready AIAI-assisted development, architecture and controls designed so your company passes its own SOC 2 and HITRUST audits and meets HIPAA requirements, without giving up the speed.
- Fractional CTOA CTO on retainer: the architecture, the hiring, the vendor calls and the board conversation, for a company that is not ready to hire one full time.
- Technical AdvisoryA senior second opinion on architecture, AI, build-or-buy and team decisions, for leaders who have a CTO or are about to become one.
- Technical Due DiligenceA signed codebase, security and infrastructure report in five business days at a fixed price, written for the buyer who has to decide, not for the engineer.
- Prototype to ProductionAn app built with AI tools, made production-ready in 30 days: a signed audit, then the fixes to security, data, tests, hosting and cost, at a fixed price.
- AI consulting and implementationFrom "we should do something with AI" to a working system your team runs, with honest answers about what it can and cannot do.
- Application DevelopmentWeb and mobile software built by senior engineers directing AI coding agents, from the first version to a product that runs in production.
- Code ModernizationBring an older system to a state your team can change safely: tests, structure, upgrades and a path off whatever is holding you back.
Every engagement runs the same four phases, beginning with Ethos Discovery. The method in detail
The record
Credibility here comes from the record, not from adjectives. Nathan Biles leads the firm and has built software for regulated industries like banking, mortgage, security and employee benefits.
- CTO, TZ UnitedThe U.S. partner for institutions building on the Tezos blockchain.
- ClickEngine, now powering CIMAThe attribution platform Nathan built in 2019, now the foundation of an AI-first marketing platform for mortgage lenders.
- CTO, TendA neobank serving the U.S. and Mexico, with deposit accounts in both countries.
- Open Threat Exchange, AlienVaultBuilt OTX from zero to over 100,000 users. AlienVault was acquired by AT&T.
- Architect, security startup backed by Michael DellIts merger into Secureworks became Taegis.
- KYE Ventures, the originBegan as the vehicle through which Nathan funded his own companies, BGiving, ClickEngine and Know Your Ethos. Today the firm on this site.
Bring the deal, the raise, or the team you cannot evaluate.
One message, read by Nathan, answered by email. No sales call.