I'm Max Keeler. I spent nearly 30 years at The Motley Fool playing the role needed at every stage of growth — CTO, SVP, Chief Projects Officer, project manager, software developer, AI systems builder. The common thread is that I work at the intersection of business problems and technology solutions.
§ IWhat I do
I design and build AI assistants that connect a company to its own scattered information — the tools you already use, like Jira, GitHub, Confluence, and your CRM. The goal is always the same: faster decisions, less time hunting for answers.
Executive-level technical leadership without the full-time commitment. I've held the CTO role, reported to the CEO, run company reorganizations, and built teams that actually work well together.
I built the portfolio management process at Motley Fool from scratch — quarterly planning, resource allocation, Scrum adoption across the whole org. I've also spoken at Agile conferences about it. It works.
I've built data warehouses from the ground up, evaluated and selected BI platforms, and created the frameworks leaders use to know what's working. I like data that connects directly to decisions.
I find the places where people are doing manually what a computer should be doing, and I fix it. Past work: 3× editorial output, 10% traffic increase from syndication, customer service repositioned as a revenue center.
I build software that runs in production and stays up — not demos, not prototypes. The toolkit: AWS, Google Cloud, React, React Native, Python, and C#.
§ IIExperience
Nearly 30 years at The Motley Fool, in a lot of different roles. Rather than list titles and dates, here's what that time produced.
I designed and built ProjectBall — an AI assistant that gives company leaders instant answers from their live data across Jira, GitHub, Confluence, Braze, ChartHop, and more. It searches by meaning rather than just keywords, pulls from many systems at once, sends executives automatic summaries, and is monitored so problems surface early. I built it end-to-end as the primary engineer.
I've reported directly to CEOs, run company-wide reorganizations, led global expansion across multiple markets, and managed a technology team through a reduction from 120 to 16 people without losing operational continuity. I know what it takes to make organizations work and what it looks like when they don't.
I built the portfolio management process at The Motley Fool from nothing — quarterly planning, resource allocation, Scrum adoption across every engineering team. Engineering output increased 50%. I've spoken at Agile 2009, APLN, and STAR West on how to actually do this, not just theorize about it.
I find the places where an organization is doing by hand what should be automated, and I fix it. This usually involves both understanding the business problem and building the technical solution — which is why it tends to work better when one person does both.
I built the company's analytics infrastructure from scratch — chose the web-analytics and reporting platforms, oversaw construction of the data warehouse, and created the framework for assigning a dollar value to editorial content. I like data that connects directly to decisions, not data that just exists.
I've been writing production software since 1996. Started as one of a handful of technical people handling everything, grew into leading an R&D team building enterprise-scale systems. Today: Python, React, React Native, C#, AWS, Google Cloud. I build things that run, not things that demo.
§ IIIAsk the AI assistant
A dedicated AI assistant that knows my background, services, and approach. It answers your questions instantly, drawing only on this site and my own reference materials — and you can keep asking follow-up questions.
Open the chat →§ IVContact
I take on a small number of engagements — advisory, fractional, project-based, longer builds. If you've got a problem that needs both clear thinking and real technical follow-through, reach out.
Send an email