Brad Hefta-Gaub, Technology Leader
Technology Leadership
Brad Hefta-Gaub is a technology leader with more than 30 years of experience guiding startups and growth companies through their most challenging moments. As a Fractional CTO and advisor, he helps teams move faster, reduce risk, and align technology with business outcomes.
His leadership blends product vision, pragmatic engineering, and human connection. He still writes code, debugs the tough problems, and believes the best solutions come from teams who trust each other enough to wrestle with hard problems and stay aligned through the unknown. He also co-hosts the How Many CTOs? podcast, where he talks with fellow leaders about what it really takes to scale technical teams.
Startup & Growth Experience
Brad has lived the full spectrum of startup life: greenfield builds, rapid pivots, scaling pains, and the occasional 2 a.m. production fire. He’s held many titles: CTO, CEO, lead engineer, but is most proud of the teams he’s helped build and the products they’ve delivered under pressure.
Across his career, Brad has:
- Helped grow RealNetworks from 20 employees to over 1,500 and an IPO, while building the fundamental technology of streaming media.
- Built the first behavioral ad targeting platform, managing billions of transactions per day.
- Worked with dozens of founders to get their ideas off the ground, raising more than $100M in venture rounds.
- Scaled platforms to millions of users.
- Modernized brittle systems without disrupting delivery.
- Built engineering organizations that balance speed and sustainability.
What draws him in, time and again, is the messy middle, the stretch when things are unclear and fragile. That’s when he shows up best: bringing clarity, structure, and calm execution so teams can keep moving forward.
View Brad’s Professional Resume
Endurance & Execution
Brad is also an ultrarunner, skier, and avalanche educator. Years in the mountains have shaped his approach to leadership: operating in uncertainty, making decisions with incomplete data, and managing risk when failure isn’t theoretical.
That mindset translates directly to his professional world. Whether he’s scaling infrastructure or preparing a founder for a raise, he brings endurance, humility, and a steady hand to the work.
Philosophy
Brad believes that true success isn’t just the summit or the ship date, it’s measured by the team you bring with you, the problems you solve along the way, and the systems you leave behind that others can build upon.
If you’d like to understand how Brad works with others, read his User’s Manual: a candid, evolving guide to how he sees himself as a teammate and leader.
For more personal insights and detailed background, you can also visit Brad’s personal website.