BDBrent DurstTechnology & Growth Advisory

Services

Pick a specialty, or bring me on as your fractional exec.

Eight focused practice areas, all backed by hands-on delivery — not slideware.

01 — Leadership

Fractional CTO

Part-time senior technical leadership for startups and scale-ups that need a steady hand on strategy without a full-time executive cost. I plug in where the technical decisions carry the most risk.

  • Technical strategy & architecture — stack selection, build vs. buy, monolith vs. microservices
  • Scalability and technical-debt assessment
  • Security & compliance posture — SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR readiness
  • Engineering hiring, interview processes, and org structure as you grow
  • Process & delivery — agile, code review standards, CI/CD, reducing bus-factor risk
  • Investor & board-facing work — technical due diligence and translating eng progress into board language
Engagement Interim, ongoing, or project-based technical leadership.
Architecture auditsDue diligenceTeam building

02 — Media

Music Licensing & Distribution

Deep, standards-level expertise in the music supply chain. Through my work with DDEX I helped companies including Sony Music, Rhapsody, AOL Music, Microsoft, and Napster implement systems for licensing and distributing audio and video content.

  • Licensing and royalty reporting workflows
  • Metadata standards and DDEX message implementation
  • Streaming and content-distribution architecture
  • Sales and messaging standards across the distribution chain
DDEX · Rights · Royalties The distribution chain, from metadata to payout.
DDEXRoyalty reportingMetadataStreaming

03 — Growth

Marketing

Technical products fail when buyers can't understand them. I craft positioning and messaging that make complex platforms legible — the same discipline I used to define the partner and consumer promise for Deep Seats.

  • Positioning and category definition
  • Messaging frameworks and value narratives
  • Go-to-market strategy for technical products
  • Content that builds credibility with technical buyers
Positioning Make the complex obvious.
MessagingGTMNarrative

04 — Revenue

Sales

Years as a pre-sales solution architect and trusted C-level advisor mean I can carry the technical sale end to end — from discovery workshops to executive briefings that close.

  • Enterprise sales motion design and technical pre-sales
  • Customer-facing discovery workshops
  • Executive-level briefings and technical proof
  • Pitch narratives that translate engineering into business value
Technical Pre-Sales From discovery to signed deal.
DiscoverySolution designExec briefings

05 — Growth

Business Development

I identify and build new revenue channels grounded in market research and technical reality. I ran the market research for Deep Seats and defined the economic model behind its five-layer intelligence strategy.

  • Market research and opportunity sizing
  • New revenue channel and monetization strategy
  • Expansion and scaling strategy
  • Commercial modeling grounded in what ships
Market Strategy New channels, validated by research.
ResearchMonetizationExpansion

06 — Growth

Strategic Partner Development

Partnerships unlock distribution and data leverage — but only when they're structured well. I design the partner value proposition, build the sales narrative, and manage relationships through to signed agreements. I built the entire partner sales framework for Deep Seats.

  • Partner strategy and value-proposition design
  • Partner sales narrative and enablement materials
  • Structuring data-sharing, governance, and commercial terms
  • C-level relationship management through close
Alliances Partnerships that compound.
Value propGovernanceEnablement

07 — Delivery

Managing Technical Integration

Integrations are where projects stall. With a career leading complex API and systems-integration initiatives — coordinating with thousands of partners for content integration at Microsoft — I own the plan from discovery through delivery.

  • Custom data-source onboarding and API-based integrations
  • Hybrid and SaaS environment integration
  • End-to-end transaction tracing and root-cause remediation
  • Program management from inception through delivery
Integration & APIs Where systems meet, done right.
APIsOnboardingProgram mgmt

08 — AI

AI Integration

Most companies know they should be using AI but aren't sure where it's safe, where it pays off, and how to connect it to their own data. I help you adopt AI responsibly — augmenting how your team works, grounding models in your proprietary data, and keeping governance and security front and center.

  • AI-augmented development workflows — using AI to accelerate how your engineers design, write, review, and document code
  • Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers — connecting custom and proprietary data sources to LLMs so answers are grounded in your reality, not generic training data
  • Data governance & security for AI — controlling what models can see, preventing leakage of sensitive data, and enforcing access, audit, and compliance
  • Platform setup on AWS Bedrock and SageMaker — standing up managed foundation-model and ML infrastructure, plus Microsoft Copilot adoption
What MCP unlocks: connect an internal knowledge base to an LLM so support and sales answers cite real, current documents instead of guessing — or expose a proprietary catalog and pricing database so the model quotes live data with permission checks, not stale training data.
Where my domain fits: I'm designing an MCP server for music rights and royalties — exposing licensing terms, splits, and royalty data to an LLM so it can answer "can we use this track, in this territory, for this purpose, and what does it cost?" with accurate, sourced answers grounded in the actual agreements. It's a natural extension of my DDEX and distribution work, and exactly the kind of proprietary-data-meets-AI system I can build for you.
Applied AI AI grounded in your data, governed by design.
MCP serversBedrockSageMakerCopilotRAGGovernance

AI in practice

Enterprise Copilot adoption program.

A repeatable framework for helping enterprises evaluate and roll out AI responsibly — the same discipline I bring to Bedrock, SageMaker, and MCP engagements.

The challenge

Enterprise customers were interested in Microsoft Copilot but struggled with its value proposition and security implications — especially how LLMs would interact with their corporate data. As a Microsoft partner, we needed a structured way to help them evaluate and adopt it responsibly.

What I built

A comprehensive adoption framework: a technical assessment of Microsoft Graph maturity and data readiness; SME-led workshops on Graph integration, security and compliance controls, data-handling safeguards, and licensing/ROI; proof-of-concept programs for document summarization, meeting intelligence, and code assistance; and deployment-planning templates for security config, network requirements, adoption strategy, and success metrics.

5
Enterprises piloted & rolled out
50%
Faster adoption timelines
$2M+
New licensing revenue
1
Repeatable methodology, org-wide

How engagements work

Flexible models that fit your stage.

Cash-light for early startups, or substantial involvement when the stakes are high.

Monthly Retainer

The most common model. A few hours a week up to 2–3 days a week of ongoing leadership and delivery.

Advisory Day Rate

For focused advisory-only engagements — strategy sessions, board prep, technical reviews.

Project-Based

Flat fee for a defined scope like an architecture audit or technical due-diligence review.

Advisor + Equity

For early, cash-constrained startups, a partial-equity component alongside reduced cash rates.

Pricing scales with scope, stage, and involvement. Get in touch for a tailored proposal.

Not sure which service you need?

Most engagements start with a short call to scope the problem. We'll figure out the right shape together.

Book a call