Why Semiconductor + AI Hardware CEOs Bring Jeff Fryer In as Their Fractional CMO

I’ve been called in at the breaking point more times than I can count.

It often starts the same way. The lab lights are still warm from the demo. The engineers are celebrating. The board is smiling. For one night, it feels like the mountain’s been climbed.

But by morning, the room changes. The CFO’s spreadsheet shows eight months of runway. The pipeline is thin. Deals are stalling. Investors are circling, but circling isn’t closing.

The applause is gone. The silence is heavier.

And that’s when the call comes to me from the CEO.

Why Not Someone Else?

Some CEOs bring in a former head of IoT from a Fortune 100. They know how to manage big budgets and polish a story, but they’ve never had to fight for traction when no one’s buying yet. Others lean on consultants. You get a deck. A few logos. Maybe even a keynote slot. And then they disappear.

Those moves don’t work when you’re turning a technical breakthrough into a commercial one. Not when the board is out of patience. Not when investors want results, not promises.

I know because I’ve been called in after those choices — when the pressure is highest, and survival is on the line.

What Makes Me Different

Everywhere I’ve stepped in, I’ve been the first to take ideas to the finish line:

• The first GTM engine at an advanced packaging innovator — taking it from $12M to $50M in under 18 months, now scaling toward $100M.

• The first digital trust platform at a $2B chip leader — growing developer engagement 5× and making it the industry benchmark through acquisition and IPO.

• The first AI-native strategy division inside a technical agency — embedding GenAI into GTM before anyone else, adding $2M in new revenue with full P&L.

These weren’t inherited systems. They were built from zero. With teams who sometimes didn’t think it could be done.

Why That Matters

Because CEOs don’t call me when things are smooth. They call me when traction has to happen now.

I don’t come in to just manage what’s already working. I come in to build what isn’t there yet. To take a company from “who?” to “we know them.” To translate silicon complexity into growth the board can measure, investors believe, and customers adopt.

And I don’t live behind a slide deck. I leave behind systems the team can run the next day, and the next quarter, without me in the room. That’s why the call comes to me. Not to make the story prettier. To make survival possible.

And when I step in, the boardroom conversation shifts. It stops being, “Will this company make it?”

It becomes, “How far can we take this.”