Scale faster with fractional CTO leadership and AI enablement
Electica is a fast-growing company specialising in political campaign advertising. To better serve their clients, Electica developed a self-serve ads platform called Advocate, which democratises access to cutting-edge political targeting tools and technology. After two years of strong market validation for their Advocate platform, Electica’s product team faced a unique challenge: while they understood their users and market well, they needed additional technical leadership and a mature product development approach to scale effectively.
https://electica.io
Electica’s product team was rich in domain expertise but needed additional senior technical expertise to complement their strong product leadership. They understood their users and market intimately, resulting in a wealth of good product ideas. However, this translated into a scaling challenge.
The team faced the common scale-up challenge of prioritising their abundant good ideas into a focused roadmap. Their release cadence had become inconsistent, with some sprints focused heavily on planning rather than shipping; a clear sign that their existing processes needed to evolve to match their growth trajectory.
They recognised they didn't need more developers to implement features; they had a good team. What they needed was an experienced strategic partner who could provide structure, validate their direction, and instil best practices without becoming overly hands-on or disrupting the existing team culture.
“Rafael brought the technical leadership we needed to unlock our full potential; we’re now averaging 3.5 releases per week. The mix of structural discipline and AI enablement has completely changed how we work.”
Mae Dobbs, Director of ProductWhitesmith’s engagement began with Rafael's embedded role as a Fractional CTO. His first month was dedicated to a comprehensive audit, during which he interviewed everyone from the CEO and COO to the product director and developers, and conducted a deep dive into the codebase. This holistic research culminated in a strategic proposal that balanced immediate impact with long-term transformation.
For quick wins, we recommended shifting from two-week to one-week sprints. This single change immediately injected a new level of agility and responsiveness into the team’s workflow, delivering huge effects. For the long term, we mapped out a vision for a new team organisational structure, a strategic goal that was methodically worked on over the course of the year.
Crucially, Rafael became the central communication hub, which the client described as a "glue role." By speaking with every level of the business, he could connect the dots between high-level business goals discussed with the CEO and the technical debt known to the developers. This unique position allowed him to provide advice that was both strategically sound and grounded in the team’s day-to-day reality. He also proactively championed AI adoption, moving the conversation from a theoretical possibility to a practical, weekly discussion in sprint planning. He guided the team in testing and selecting the right tools, building a culture of AI-enabled efficiency that transformed both developer and product management workflows.
The results of this collaboration were visible quickly and grew stronger over time:
— Efficiency gains: By adopting one-week sprints and role clarity, the team became significantly more productive
— Higher output: Electica set a goal to ship 2 features per week; under Whitesmith’s guidance, they averaged 3.5 features per week (150% above target). Some weeks reached up to 12 shipped features
— AI adoption at scale: Within a year, Electica transitioned from limited AI adoption to comprehensive AI-enabled workflows across development and product management. This led to faster PRDs (reduced from a full day to just one hour) and accelerated roadmap delivery
— Cross-company alignment: Rafael’s ability to engage leadership and the development team alike created a rare “glue role” that bridged strategic goals with execution
— Confidence to scale: By the end of the first year, Electica was positioned to handle the high-growth demands of an election year, with foundations in place for both technical and organisational scalability
For Electica, the coming year is critical as they anticipate doubling or tripling their user base. Building on the foundations laid, the focus is now on scaling product onboarding with AI, executing an ambitious growth roadmap, and continuing fractional CTO support to balance strategic direction with executional discipline.
Electica’s collaboration with Whitesmith demonstrates the power of fractional CTO leadership combined with AI adoption. By bridging strategy and practice, Whitesmith helped Electica turn a promising product into a scalable platform ready for explosive growth.
Project
Electica
Categories
fCTO
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