Michal Maťovčík

The higher you are in an organisation, the more filtered your view becomes. Teams surface what they think you want to hear. Problems get softened in translation. What you feel — that something isn't quite right — rarely has a clean name until it's already cost you months.

I work with CTOs, VPs and founders who need an outside perspective they can trust — someone who moves between their reality and the ground reality of their teams, and surfaces what's being lost in between.

A recent VP brought me into a critical rewrite project — a team in limbo, "lost confidence in themselves" after losing direction. What I found was "the real challenge that had not been identified by anyone in the team, nor the product trio." Hidden scope, quietly making predictability impossible for months. Once named, it became solvable. As he put it, I "see the problem beyond technology" and am "willing to get hands dirty to tackle the challenges where others would shy away."

AI adoption is one place where this pattern shows up visibly right now. I've worked hands-on with agents since 2024 and built adoption strategies for engineering organisations — my view is that AI accelerates the work, but a human must stay the owner.

How we work together depends entirely on what you need. Sometimes it's a single call to pressure-test a decision or get a sharp second opinion. Sometimes a few hours a month as a regular outside voice. Sometimes the situation calls for something more embedded — working alongside your teams directly until things are moving again.

I'm based in Europe and work primarily across the European market. Geography rarely stands in the way of a good conversation.