Garrett Fritz has built something remarkable, but not in the way most people define success in tech.

Rather than chasing the next AI model or racing to the bottom on MVP pricing, Garrett has been obsessed with a comparitvely unglamorous problem: Helping companies retire the spreadsheets that (in many cases) may have historically ran their entire business.

The Real Problem Nobody Wants to Talk About

Garrett brought an aerospace degree from MIT to the DoD, building helicopter simulators. Then he moved to LA and spent years in Silicon Beach, building social networks for Major League Baseball and Liverpool FC. He's been CTO for startups, led product teams, and at this point knows the tech world inside and out.

But the problem that keeps him up at night isn't elegant code or cutting-edge architecture; it's that companies are still running mission-critical operations on spreadsheets.

MetaCTO: The Holistic Partner, Not the Dev Shop

Garrett and his co-founder Chris Fitkin founded MetaCTO on a simple premise: You shouldn't have to choose between building a product and transforming your operations.

When Securing Degrees came to MetaCTO, they asked for "a better spreadsheet." What they got was completely different: An end-to-end SaaS platform that automated the matching process, provided an interface for students, sent deadline notifications, and auto-created application documents.

What brought Garrett and his team success was what happened next.

The business went from processing one student at a time to onboarding entire school districts and corporations. Now MetaCTO is building AI agentic workflows to do intelligent scholarship matching; not just exact GPA matches, but creative combinations of leadership, athletics, and creativity.

That's transformation that's more than just a dev shop outcome.

The AI Problem Everyone's Ignoring

"Why aren't we faster? Just use AI."

That's the mandate coming down from executives and board members everywhere. Everyone wants AI, but nobody knows what that means.

What you end up with is chaos, with one team using this tool, another team using a different process, and no harmonization or way to measure the actual impact across stakeholders. AI mandates often boil down to pressuring businesses to move faster with a technology nobody understands.

Garrett saw Google's "agentic enterprise" announcements at Google Next and noticed that their own case studies came with asterisks. "We expect to achieve a 20x increase in productivity." Not "we have."

Even the companies with teams of people working on this haven't figured it out yet.

MetaCTO's approach is different. They don't ask "how can we apply AI here?" Instead, they ask "where are the real pain points, and is AI actually the solution?"

Then they build the infrastructure, complete with enterprise context engineering, data governance, agent permissioning and safety guardrails. That is, the stuff that keeps you from burning through thousands of dollars in credits in five minutes, while helping prevent epic failures.

The Real Edge: You Don't Start at Zero

When a company comes to MetaCTO, they "start on second base" because MetaCTO has already done the troubleshooting. They've learned what works, and have built the architecture that keeps agents safe, governed, and scaled.

Whereas a traditional dev shop says "tell us what you want, we'll build it," MetaCTO says "tell us your problem, we'll design the solution."

Why This Matters for Your Business

This is exactly what Boast does for R&D tax credits.

The mandate comes down from the CFO: "We need to maximize our R&D funding." But the R&D team doesn't want to learn tax code, the finance team doesn't want to learn software development, and nobody wants to spend 50-100 hours documenting their innovation just to file a claim.

That's where infrastructure and having a partner who's already solved the hard problems matters.

Since 2011, Boast has helped 2,000+ companies across North America access over $900 million in R&D tax credits. We combine AI-powered technology with deep tax expertise so your experts can stay in their lane and focus on what they do best: innovating.

Whether it's Canada's SR&ED program (up to $6M in annual eligible expenditures, $2.1M in refundable federal credits, plus provincial top-ups) or the US federal Section 41 credit plus 37+ state-level programs, non-dilutive government funding is part of your capital stack. But it requires infrastructure, expertise and a partner who's already done the hard work.

What's Next

MetaCTO is all-in on agentic workflows for the next year and beyond. But they're not targeting Fortune 500 companies with their own teams of engineers. Rather, Garrett's team is focused on services companies (ie. lawyers, financial services, construction firms) with lots of data, no developers, and no need to hire one up.

These companies have the most to gain from transformation, but they need a partner to get there.

Same for R&D tax credits. The companies that benefit most are actively investing in product development, AI, manufacturing, hardware, and software. The companies that are tackling technological uncertainty but require a partner to actually claim what they've earned.

Listen to the full episode to hear Garrett's complete story; from aerospace engineering to Silicon Beach to helping companies finally, finally retire those spreadsheets.

 

About What the Tech from Boast

What the Tech features conversations with brilliant minds building transformative solutions. Hosted by Paul Davenport, Boast.AI's Head of Content.

Learn More About MetaCTO

If you're a business owner with domain expertise but need technical partners to transform your operations or build AI-enabled products, visit MetaCTO.

Learn More About R&D Tax Credits

Since 2011, Boast has helped 2,000+ companies across North America access $900M+ in non-dilutive R&D tax credits. We handle the complexity of federal, provincial, and state R&D tax credit programs so you can focus on what you do best: innovating.

In Canada: SR&ED enhancements (effective 2026) now offer up to $6M in annual eligible expenditures with $2.1M in maximum refundable federal credits. Capital equipment is eligible. Provincial top-ups vary by province.

In the US: Federal Section 41 R&D credit plus 37+ state-level programs. Form 6765 Section G project-level reporting is mandatory for tax year 2026 and beyond.