Fractional Talent Isn’t a Trend. It’s What Your BigCo Needs to Survive

Danny Nathan is a Fractional Innovation and Product exec as well as the founder of Apollo 21. He and his team specialize in helping ambitious enterprises and promising entrepreneurs to develop and translate innovation strategies into new ventures, products, and technologies. Past clients include Bank of America, Ray LaMontagne, Teton Ridge, and more.

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Corporate orgs love to overthink hiring. 

They’ll spend six months deciding whether to backfill a role.
Then spin up internal hiring committees.
And then create 30 slides rationalizing the need to post a JD.

Meanwhile, the product backlog grows, the strategies become dated, and the market realities shift under foot.

You need results NOW, not a new hire next quarter.

And that is precisely where Fractional talent fits in.
Not as a placeholder. Not as a stopgap. And certainly not as a press release.

Fractional work isn’t just for startups anymore (not that it ever truly was). 

Savvy orgs, small and large, know that Fractional talent is the fastest path to real momentum. 

(The not-so-savvy are busy scheduling another round of meetings to discuss new hire approvals.)

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You Don’t Need a Full-Time Hire. You Need Immediate Results.

Hiring a full-time exec is a process. It’s slow, expensive, political, and inflexible. 

Inevitably, you end up spending 6 months recruiting, sitting through round after round of interviews, navigating compensation conversations, and building a 30/60/90 plan for how this person might demonstrate value. 

And all you really wanted was someone who could make material progress on the initiative you needed done yesterday.

Fractionals operate differently. We drop in, assess fast, and focus on delivering value, immediately.

There’s no turf war because VPs won’t feel like their job security is threatened.
There’s no playing the politics game because fractionals aren’t angling for a long-term relationship.
And there’s no “just give me a few months to ramp” because we’ve been here, done this before. 

You get executive-level strategy and roll-up-your-sleeves execution from day one.

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When Should You Pick Up the Bat Phone?

It might start with a feeling. Or a sense of dread.
A team is underwater.
A key initiative has stalled.

Eventually the team reaches a realization: We have a problem.
But no one has the time, the clarity, or the mandate to fix it.
And the more critical it is, the more likely that it gets endlessly passed around. 

Not because no one cares, but because no one’s positioned to take it on.
You don’t just have a resource gap.
You’re missing the core leadership and expertise to fix the problem.

Of course, some roles and needs are more easily solved by Fractional talent than others. Here are some of the ideal places to pick up the Bat Phone.

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‍Innovation and R&D

Need to explore something new without disrupting core ops? Fractional.

Innovation is one of the most difficult to support roles in a large organization. BigCos are designed to maintain the status quo with the utmost efficiency. They are purpose-built to wring every dollar out of every penny in. And, in that environment, experimentation is crushed by process and buried in efficiency. 

A Fractional exec can step in with a mandate to color outside the lines.

Skunkworks & New Business Lines

Too early for a team but too important to ignore? Fractional.

When you’ve got a nascent idea that doesn’t fit anywhere on the org chart — something that could be a new revenue line or a business model evolution — you need someone who can tug that thread without dragging the full corporate machine into the conversation. 

A Fractional exec can explore, validate, and pressure-test the opportunity without disrupting your existing teams or demanding premature headcount. We can determine whether the idea is worth investing in, and if it is, we can build the roadmap and get the early wins that earn buy-in across the org.

Product & GTM

Stuck between a solid product idea and no internal team to push it? Fractional.

You know the opportunity is real. Maybe it’s a new vertical. Maybe it’s a 2.0 version of a legacy product. But your internal teams are maxed out, and no one’s signing up to take it on. 

That’s where a Fractional operator drops in to own product, positioning, packaging, delivery. We validate the market, map out the GTM, and execute what matters: making sure this thing sees daylight before it gets buried by quarterly priorities.

Organizational Safety Valve

Can’t get consensus to move? Bring in someone who doesn’t need it.

Sometimes, everyone agrees something is broken, but no one agrees on the fix. Internal ownership is murky. Politics are in play. And nothing happens. 

A Fractional exec can step in without the historical baggage, without internal turf to protect, and without the need to convince a dozen stakeholders to make a move. We act as a pressure release valve, pushing through work that’s too sensitive, too risky, or too "weird" for the system to handle. And when we’re done, we leave.

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Admitting You Need Help

Every time I’ve answered the call, the internal teams weren’t blind or oblivious.
They knew something was off. They knew they had a problem to solve.
But they were too deep in the weeds — or too bound by politics — to act on those problems.

Fractional execs don’t just show up with ideas.
We bring unique expertise and the deep knowledge necessary to create action and deliver value.
We help you envision your company’s future, and bring that future to life today.

Here are a few of the calls I’ve answered…

“Help, we’re drowning in email.”
A financial services client called with what they thought was a communication problem.
But what they really had was a process problem.
Email wasn’t just where work happened — it was how work happened. 

Approvals, handoffs, audit trails, and customer interactions were all happening in the inbox.
(No wonder they were drowning.)

The outcome was a structured, trackable management system that guided employees through the use of these workflows and maintained guardrails (all without ever touching the inbox).

“We have product/market fit, but we can’t scale effectively.”
In the video security space, a client was overwhelmed by alert traffic and latency in video feeds. 

Their teams were too busy reacting to cat videos (literally, cats triggering security cameras) to think about how to rebuild their operational tech stack. 

The outcome was a real-time workflow engine that cut alert response times from 12 to 2 seconds while triaging inbound notifications via computer vision and machine learning analysis, maximizing the number of properties that could be monitored by a small team.

“We have a ton of data, but it’s all sitting in CSVs where we can’t make use of it.”
For a fast-growing sports and media brand, the challenge was that data lived everywhere.
Business units were operating in silos, and leadership was unable to make data-driven decisions. 

The outcome was a platform designed to operationalize their data lake by ingesting, normalizing, and visualizing the aggregate and future data, connecting the dots across marketing, product, media, and strategy. It was a decision-making engine, offering the executive team the clarity needed to lead proactively, not reactively.

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The New Executive Class

It’s important to remember that Fractional execs aren’t consultants. We’re not selling slide decks or abstract frameworks and then leaving you to handle the execution. 

We’re scalpels. We’re operators. We’re builders. 

We’ve led teams, shipped products, and launched new ventures.
And we know how to get things done in and around the enterprise.

Most of us are battle-tested across both startups and corporate orgs. We know how to move fast and play nice with legal, compliance, and brand. We’ve been the weirdos with the new idea and the ones who have proven ROI to members of the board.

When you bring us in, you're not just getting a little extra horsepower. 

You're getting an experienced do-er who comes with no internal bias, no political baggage, and a mandate to deliver immediate, tangible value.

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Why BigCos Still Don’t Do This (Yet)

Most large orgs are still wired to believe that if you’re not a full-time employee, you’re not committed to the work. If you’re not sitting in the office and collecting a W-2, you can’t lead substantive change.

That thinking is outdated.
The world has changed.
So has the way that work gets done. 

Look at any fast-moving, high-performing company today and you’ll see fractional DNA all over it. It’s how the best work gets done: outside the bounds of legacy structure and inside teams that care more about what ships than who gets credit.

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Fractional Talent Is a Strategic Weapon.
Wield it Wisely and Well.

Hiring fractionally isn’t a money-saving endeavor (though you will likely spend less).
It’s also not a stopgap measure while you recruit long term (though it could help you through a crunch.) And no, fractionals aren’t your fall guys. (If that’s your plan, don’t bother calling.) 

Fractional talent is your path to speed, clarity, and focus.

When you hire me fractionally, you’re not buying “advice” for 10-20 hours per week.
You’re not getting a consultant to drop some ideas and leave you to figure out how to execute them.

You’re hiring an executive partner who’s built dozens of products, led zero-to-one ventures for orgs large and small, and who knows how to deliver value while making problems disappear.

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If you're a fortune 500 exec and you need a Fractional Innovation & Product leader, reach out to Danny at dn@apollo21.io.

If you're in need of another kind of Fractional exec, that's where Fractional Jobs can help. We help startups, SMBs, and increasingly large enterprises hire Fractional talent across about 10+ different function areas. Book a call with Fractional Jobs founder Taylor Crane to learn more.