Two Fractional Executives in Dubai Build Platform for Part-Time Senior Leaders

Sam Lloyd and Rhys Holding were both working as fractional executives in Dubai when they realized they had the same problem: there was no professional community built for people like them. That shared frustration, surfaced at a local networking event, became the foundation for Fractional, a platform they launched to connect senior executives who work across multiple companies simultaneously. The collective has since grown to 350 fractional executives in the UAE, runs three community events each month, and has begun expanding into Singapore.

The fractional executive model is not new globally. It has existed for decades and now represents a 5.7 billion dollar annual industry, expanding at roughly 14 percent year on year. Most of that growth is driven by small and medium-sized enterprises, which make up 94 percent of all UAE businesses. Yet across the Emirates and the wider GCC, the model has not yet gained significant traction. Rhys worked as a fractional COO before co-founding the platform. Sam, a fractional CTO, spent five to seven years supporting startups primarily based in the UK. Both understood the core logic: an SME rarely needs a full-time chief technology officer or chief operating officer. Two days a week of senior expertise can solve the problem. The executives themselves, meanwhile, wanted peers who understood the particular demands of working across multiple organizations at once.

The matching process is more deliberate than a typical recruitment search. Prospective executives submit applications detailing their experience, the specific problems they have solved, and the industries they have worked in. On the client side, the team runs discovery calls to understand the business challenge and where the company wants to go. That information feeds into an artificial intelligence matching system that generates preliminary candidates from the database. The Fractional team then hand-curates six to eight of those candidates, interviews each one individually, and typically presents two to the client, anonymously, so the client sees only experience and proposed approach. Sometimes a third candidate is added, the team’s own pick, someone they believe would be exceptional even if the fit is not exact. More than half the time, clients choose that recommendation.

What separates this model from traditional hiring is continuity. The same fractional executives work with multiple clients over time, which allows Fractional to observe their performance across different business environments and sharpen future matches. The platform also invests in its collective through monthly business events, social gatherings, and sporting activities designed to foster peer collaboration. When executives strengthen each other through those connections, the client ultimately benefits.

The timing of Fractional’s growth coincides with a period of cost-consciousness among many SMEs. Fractional arrangements typically cost 30 to 60 percent less than full-time hires, a real advantage when economic conditions are uncertain. Rhys is careful to frame affordability as a secondary point, though. The real value, he argues, is matching a company’s immediate needs with the right senior talent at the right moment. The model does not replace full-time hiring; it opens access to expertise that would otherwise be unavailable or unaffordable.

By contrast, the day-to-day reality of running a fractional practice looks quite different from a conventional executive role. Sam, who still maintains a few fractional CTO clients alongside his work building Fractional, structures his days around time zones. His mornings are for Fractional business, planning with Rhys, and reviewing materials, since his UK and European clients do not come online until noon or 1 p.m. Gulf time. Afternoons shift to client work, with fortnightly check-ins and more frequent contact around sprint cycles. He starts each day with black coffee, a preference he ties to a simple principle: quality shows in an unsweetened cup in ways it does not in a flat white.

Rhys transitioned from fractional work to full-time leadership at Fractional a few months ago as the platform’s momentum accelerated. His mornings begin with meditation, quiet time, then exercise. He practices intermittent fasting, eating one meal a day five days a week, a routine he credits with maintaining mental sharpness and avoiding the afternoon energy crashes that can derail a packed schedule of discovery calls, curation calls, and event logistics. In the evenings, his fiancée draws a firm line on work, and the two walk Dubai Marina, where they live, before dinner and whatever the evening brings. Quality time, he says, is what allows him to shift into a lower gear.

Whether the fractional model will reach the same scale in the GCC that it has elsewhere remains the open question Fractional is betting on answering.