Hundreds of companies, large and small, trust our technology consulting, due diligence, and leadership. We identify root causes, plan strategy, and execute to success.
We don't just consult — we partner with you. Our team members have built and led technology organizations at companies like eBay, PayPal, and Salesforce. We bring real-world operational experience, not just theory.
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Companies don't need more consultants. They need partners who understand persistent structural challenges and know how to fix them.
Technology consulting, due diligence, leadership, and training services for companies of all sizes.
Comprehensive evaluation of product architecture, organization, and development processes for M&A and investment decisions. Know what you're getting before you invest.
Learn MoreEnd-to-end technology consulting to make solutions faster, better, and cheaper. We help organizations speed time to market, increase quality, and reduce cost.
Learn MoreExperienced interim CIO, CTO, and COO leadership for technology product companies. We architect and lead significant product enhancement and transformation projects.
Learn MoreProven accelerators — 2–4 day courses for executives, directors, engineers, and architects. CTO Bootcamp, Architect Workshops, and custom team training programs.
Learn MoreHelp your team organize for speed and quality. We help structure teams, clarify ownership, and bridge the gap between business strategy and engineering execution.
Learn MoreGuide your organization's transformation with a connected data, technology, and engineering environment. Cloud consulting and delivery coaching to scale effectively.
Learn MoreAnyone can talk technology. We show how our expertise, experience, and track record prove it.
We think your business through end-to-end and don't walk away. AKF stays through execution. We can serve as interim C-level and drive real results.
Our founders literally wrote "The Art of Scalability" and "Scalability Rules" — industry standard references used by engineering organizations worldwide.
We partner with your existing technology organization to build capabilities and transfer knowledge, not create dependency on external consultants.
We measure success the same way you do: faster time to market, lower cost, higher quality, and better scalability — with numbers to prove it.
Private equity firms and strategic acquirers trust AKF to evaluate technology architecture, teams, and processes before major investment commitments.
We don't work on your time. Our team brings direct operational experience from leading technology at eBay, PayPal, Salesforce, and other top-tier companies.
Our founders are published authors of industry-defining books on technology scalability and leadership — used by engineering organizations worldwide.
The definitive guide to scaling technology architecture, used by engineering organizations worldwide as the industry standard reference for scale.
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50 principles for scaling web sites. Practical, actionable rules drawn from real-world experience at top technology companies around the globe.
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The newly discovered drivers of viral growth — product misuse, self-identity, and technological features — presented as simple, actionable principles.
Learn MoreTo support our rapid international growth and need for scalable and reliable systems, we wanted guidance from a leading technology expert with real world experience. Marty very quickly understood and assessed the specific requirements of our business and systems, then provided extremely valuable advice tailored to our situation. I can highly recommend Marty.
Working with Kevin Fortuna has helped us tremendously on our business development efforts. The combination of his network, pristine reputation and ability to create true win-win deals is a rare find. Kevin's contribution to the company goes far beyond deal making - he's helped us crystallize our pitch and refine our strategy in ways that are impossible to do for the entrepreneurs that are in the trenches. I would highly recommend AKF as a partner to any entrepreneur looking to seriously scale their business.
AKF has made a tremendous difference in Achieve's business. I would unreservedly recommend their services to any entrepreneur or start-up management team. What is unique about AKF is their ability to deliver value and expertise in all critical areas of our business: IT, financing, and business development. They share the entrepreneur's focus on the nitty-gritty details, dealing in concrete rather than vapor. It's a good feeling knowing that they are in our corner.
Shutterfly is growing rapidly, and so we engaged AKF to help us with a plan to scale our technology operations with our business growth. AKF quickly understood our business objectives, technology and architecture, and provided useful insights in many areas, including: technology, process, and organization. In addition, AKF's breadth and depth of client projects provided a window into some of the best practices in the industry — ones from which we can benefit, here at Shutterfly.
Marty's ideas come from the real world, not from academia, and not from the old world of custom or shrink-wrapped software products. It's invaluable for a web-based software company like us to learn insights from the leading online companies that only a person with Marty's first-hand experience can provide.
We're big believers that a fresh pair of eyes can put things in perspective. AKF did just that - they came in and took a long hard look at several key areas of our business. Their findings, based on impressive industry knowledge and experience with scalability issues, were perceptive and their suggestions were constructive. Marty Abbott provided very good value through validating and fine-tuning existing concepts but also through creative thinking and offering new perspectives on how to solve problems in a different and easier way.
We rely on Marty Abbott and AKF to help make our critical technical hiring decisions and help validate our technical strategy and approach in scaling our mission critical systems. I absolutely would not use anyone else when it comes to making critical IT decisions.
There is no other firm on the planet that knows more about building and running highly scalable and reliable SaaS platforms and services. AKF is my secret weapon.
I was so impressed with our engagement with Marty Abbott and Tom Keeven that I knew I had to make them advisors to Rearden Commerce. They helped us find the right people, beef up our processes and define our future architecture.
Mike was able to draw comparisons with approaches he'd seen in the past and give us a sense of where and when tradeoffs were acceptable for a business in transition from a startup to a medium-size enterprise were appropriate. His insight, delicacy, and technical insight were appreciated at all turns. The entire management team has profited from the review of best practices, tools, and tips appropriate to the areas of our process, software architecture, quality assurance initiatives, strategic product planning, and network infrastructure.
The professionals at AKF combine business expertise and acumen with world class understanding of and experience in designing, implementing, scaling, and operating online services infrastructure and applications. The AKF team was instrumental in building the technology stack and surrounding operating practices of one of the largest, most successful Internet companies in the world, something very few other firms can claim.
I have the pleasure of working with the principals of AKF for many years. As I became the CEO of LiveOps, I welcomed them in as advisors and guides to our technology team. We have made significant progress and they were instrumental in that success. If you have issues with scale, organizational maturity, architecture or cost I would highly recommend them.
In a fast moving and explosive growth environment like Vibrant's we do not get many opportunities to step back, examine and re-evaluate our technology and operational direction and strategy. But when we do having Mike and Marty be part of that process is invaluable. Not only do they bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to the table but they ask those hard questions which my team and me may not want to ask ourselves. I very much recommend working with AKF to make sure you get those hard issues uncovered!
AKF Partners has been instrumental to Cornerstone OnDemand's development and QA processes and the design of our global, best-in-class network architecture. They have the right expertise to take a high-growth SaaS company to the technological level necessary to operate as a global, redundant, high availability and scalable enterprise. They are a pleasure to work with, flexible and yield high ROI.
Intuit's SaaS offerings have been growing significantly over the last several years and as a result, we have been on a journey to transform our applications, technology and infrastructure to support our vision of being a world-class provider of connected services that deliver better money outcomes for our customers. We leverage AKF to provide an outside executive level perspective for our SaaS initiatives. They provide a level of expertise and perspective that few have with ensuring SaaS products have high availability, scalability, and resiliency.
If you want a clear, complete and actionable assessment of your company's Internet technology, then call AKF. They are outstanding advisors and partners, and helped me and my organization in meaningful ways.
We brought these guys in to validate our approach, but they ended up showing us how to think about scalability from a whole new dimension. The pros from AKF are knowledgeable, insightful, and fun to work with (they made the term goldfish a standard part of our infrastructure discussions). When it comes to scalability, they wrote the book.
We engaged AKF Partners to review our architecture and operations and dove deep with them into the guts of our technology. AKF's background in scaling systems is impressive and we learned a ton around massively scalable tweaks and adjustments as well as whole new ways of thinking about SaaS design and hosting operations. Additionally, AKF brought some methods to the table that have helped us enhance our processes.
Very quickly, AKF came up to speed with what we were trying to do, and provided very practical and substantive advice. In addition to technology design, they also gave us invaluable input on how to build and manage the team to ensure the highest efficiency and accountability.
AKF Partners is my go-to firm for helping our portfolio companies grow their platforms and technology.
We have engaged AKF on multiple occasions at various stages of maturity to ensure we understand and appropriately address our growth and scale needs. Most recently, we partnered with AKF to evaluate our customer facing ecommerce system and our business and warehouse management systems as well as plan for future growth. They quickly came up to speed with our challenges, provided practical and realistic advice and served as an ongoing sounding board for both the technology team and the CEO. The AKF team is our go-to as we tackle scale and growth concerns.
Ellie Mae has been undergoing a significant technology transformation during a period of high growth, so it was very useful to have AKF Partners come in to provide a comprehensive assessment of architecture, process maturity, and organization structure and to provide comparisons with other leading SaaS players. They provided insightful observations in all areas, as well as useful frameworks to consider during our transformation. I really appreciate the great partnership we've had with Mike Fisher and Marty Abbott and the rest of the AKF team.
Stripes has engaged AKF Partners across multiple transactions, and their technical due diligence work consistently sets the bar. Their team brings a rare blend of deep technical expertise and pragmatic business insight from their operating experience — helping us not only understand the scalability and resiliency of a target's architecture, but also assess leadership, security posture, and engineering process maturity. They've become a trusted partner in our investment process.
Whether you need due diligence for an investment, consulting to scale your technology, or interim leadership — we're here to help.
