Ed Shadi
Fractional CTO · AI-Native Engineering Advisor · Speaker
I help founders and engineering teams build AI-native — shipping at the pace of organizations many times their size.
The problem I work on
Going AI-native is a team problem, not a tooling problem.
Most teams are shipping faster than ever — and trusting it less. The tools changed overnight; standups, sprints, and code review didn't. The bottleneck didn't disappear. It moved.
The model was never the hard part — the team is. Figuring out what actually works, in production with a small team, is the work I do at WOW AI, and bring to teams making the same leap.
What I do
Ways we can work together
I take that same playbook into other teams as a fractional CTO and advisor — setting technical direction, re-architecting how the team works around AI, and staying close enough to the code to prove it works. I also speak about building AI-native engineering organizations.
Fractional CTO
Senior technical leadership without the full-time hire. I own technical direction and keep delivery on track.
- —Architecture, infrastructure, and engineering strategy
- —Hiring, team structure, and engineering operations
- —Hands-on where it matters — I still ship code
AI-Native Consulting
Rebuild how your team works around AI so a small team ships like a much larger one.
- —AI development workflows and orchestration systems
- —Testing, automation, and deployment pipelines
- —Pragmatic adoption — velocity, reliability, maintainability
Speaking
Talks and workshops on building AI-native engineering organizations from someone doing it in production.
- —Running lean teams at outsized scale
- —AI orchestration in real production systems
- —What actually changes when you build AI-first
Building now
Products & ventures I run
Runstream
We build your software. You watch it ship.
An AI-native software studio that takes products from scoping to deployment — AI speed with CTO-level review and agency-grade quality, at software economics.
WOW Webinar
We build your webinar in 10 minutes. You generate leads & sales.
Turns a URL into a complete, branded webinar funnel — landing pages, ad creatives, hosting, and multi-channel reminders — done for you in minutes.
WOW AI
An AI-native product company.
A 500 Global-backed company building AI-native products and the engineering systems behind them, run by a lean, highly-leveraged team.
Speaking
Talks for teams making the leap
Ed Shadi is a hands-on CTO with 20+ years building and scaling engineering teams (Typeform, CoLearn) and is now running WOW AI, an AI-native product company where a 5-person team ships at the pace of organizations many times larger. He speaks candidly about what it actually takes to make a team AI-native — beyond the demos.
Going AI-native is a team problem, not a tooling problem
Why dropping Claude Code into an old process fails, and how to redesign the way a team plans, builds, reviews, and ships around AI.
Shipping at outsized scale with a tiny team
How a 5-person engineering org operates at the pace of a much larger one — the workflows, orchestration, and trade-offs that make it real.
Agile vs. meetings vs. AI agents
The rituals that survive the AI shift, the ones that don't, and how to keep humans in the loop without drowning the team in process.
Staying hands-on as a leader in the AI era
Why technical leaders should still ship code — and how AI changes what 'hands-on' even means.
Track record
Where I've built
Two decades building and leading engineering teams — from scaling Director of Engineering at Typeform to founding and running AI-native companies.
Contact
Fractional CTO, consulting, or a talk for your team?
Tell me what you're building and where you're stuck. I reply to every serious inquiry.