The fractional COO and CTO building a community for the UAE's fractional executives

Rhys Holding met Sam Loyd at a Dubai networking event where they discovered they had the same complaint: there was no community for people like them — fractional C-suite executives — in Dubai. This, coupled with a gap they found in the market in the GCC, prompted them to launch a platform they called Fractional: a 350-strong collective of fractional executives in the UAE, with three community events a month and a fresh expansion into Singapore.

Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a member of the community starts their day — and throws in a couple of questions just for fun. This week, we sat down with Rhys (LinkedIn) and his co-founder Sam (LinkedIn). Edited excerpts from our conversation:

EnterpriseAM: Let's start with introductions.

Rhys: My name is Rhys Holding, I'm co-founder of Fractional. I’m originally from the UK, and was a business owner in Singapore. I lived out there for 18 years, and have been in Dubai for coming up to three. I was previously a fractional COO — which is how Sam and I met, him being a fractional CTO, and then we came together to form the two co-founders of Fractional.

Sam: I've been involved in startups pretty much my entire career, in different forms. At the start of my career it was actively building companies as a founder or co-founder, and then over the last five to seven years, it's been as a fractional CTO, working with startups predominantly based out of the UK — bringing the experience that I had running a tech-enabled business to other startups at different points during their journey.

EnterpriseAM: What made you feel there was a gap — and appetite — in the UAE for fractional executives?

Rhys: The model is proven internationally — it's been around for decades. Globally it's a USD 5.7 bn-a-year industry, growing at roughly 14% year on year, and most of that demand is driven by SMEs. In the UAE and the GCC, it just hasn't taken off yet. Ninety-four percent of all UAE businesses are SMEs. Giving them access to a solution they weren't aware of, and to the experience these executives bring — that's the goal.

Affordability comes into it, but so does supply and demand: if you're an SME building a product and want a CTO, you don't always need a full-time hire. Two days a week is often enough.

EnterpriseAM: Walk me through how the platform actually works — how do you vet executives, and who’s eligible?

Sam: It starts with an application on our website, where executives expand on their experience — specific problems and challenges they've solved, how, and in what industry. On the client side, we get on a call to dig into the problem, the business, where they want to get to. All of that, plus our own notes, feeds a system that runs a preliminary AI match against our database.

Because we're an executive search, not just putting CVs in front of people, we then hand-curate around six to eight candidates and interview them individually, before putting forward usually two — sent to the client anonymously, so they only have the experience and the proposed approach to go on. Sometimes we add a third, our own “pick,” someone we feel would be exceptional even if they don't match the exact spec. More than half the time, clients go with that pick.

Rhys: The advantage over full-time hiring is that our executives take on multiple roles at multiple times, forever — so we get to know the same people again and again, and see their performance inside real client businesses. We invest in our clients by investing in the collective: every month we run a business event, a social event, and a sporting event, so fractionals connect for peer collaboration and shared learning. If the executives make each other better, the client is the ultimate beneficiary.

EnterpriseAM: The launch comes at a moment when a lot of SMEs are cost-cutting given the broader climate. Does that change the calculus for adopting a model like this?

Rhys: It's forced people to look at things more creatively, and that creates an opening for someone who wouldn't have considered fractional six months ago. Affordability is a value-add — you're looking at 30-60% more affordable than a full-time hire — but we don't like to lean into price, because the real value is matching what you need with who you can get it from at that moment. It's not fractional versus full-time; full-time will always have its place. It's about accessing talent you didn't have access to before.

EnterpriseAM: Onto routines — Sam, walk me through your morning.

Sam: Coffee, first — I don't do dairy, so it's always black, and the quality really shows in a black coffee in a way it doesn't in a flat white. I still keep a couple of fractional CTO clients alongside Fractional, so my day splits naturally: they're based in Europe and the UK and don't come online till noon or 1pm Gulf time, so my morning is Fractional — checking in on the business, planning with Rhys, reviewing materials. Afternoons shift to client work: fortnightly catch-ups, more contact around the start and end of a sprint, less in between.

EnterpriseAM: Rhys, what does your morning look like?

Rhys: I meditate, take some quiet time, then hit the gym. I do a lot of intermittent fasting — one meal a day, five days a week — it keeps me sharp and avoids the afternoon crash. I was a fractional COO myself until a few months ago, when Fractional's traction pushed me full-time. I'm client- and executive-facing day to day — discovery calls, curation calls, event logistics — and I push the business from a delivery standpoint.

EnterpriseAM: And in the evening — how do you two wind down?

Rhys: My fiancée makes me stop working, and we walk Dubai Marina, where we live — then dinner and a show. Quality time is what shifts me down a gear.

Sam: Mine's often interrupted, since clients are four hours behind me. When I do switch off, my wife and I watch TV shows — usually after a fight over who picks.

Rhys and Sam's favorites

Rhys is reading: The Cold Start Problem — a book about the “networking effect,” the balancing of two opposite sides of a market. “An example the book gives is the founding team of Uber — you've got drivers on one side and riders on the other, and the balance between those two markets needs to be correct, or it leads to a breakdown of the business model. Obviously a very different industry, but very similar to what we do.”

Sam’s favorite book: A Guide to the Good Life by William Irvine — the only book he's ever given as a gift. “It's a philosophy book about how to find joy through stoic principles, and it was very important to me in my early 20s — understanding how to be happy in the face of the fact that everything changes constantly, and finding constant in that.”

Rhys is watching: Little House on the Prairie, on Netflix, with his fiancée.

Sam is watching: The final season of The Boys, on Amazon Prime.

Sam’s coffee roaster of choice: Nightjar, in Al Quoz — specifically the Candyman blend.