Ken Ahrens

Ken Ahrens is the Co-Founder and CEO of Speedscale, a company he started in January 2020.1 Speedscale helps companies detect and fix application issues in production environments more efficiently by providing realistic, performant non-production environments.1

Professional Background

Ken has extensive experience in the technology industry, spanning over two decades:

• Prior to founding Speedscale, he held leadership positions at New Relic, Inc., including Sr. Director of Solution Architects and Principal Architect.1
• He worked at CA Technologies as Sr. Director of Presales, managing the Application Delivery Presales team for North America.1
• Earlier in his career, he held roles at companies like Pentaho, iTKO, Inc., and CA | Wily Technology Division.1

Achievements and Expertise

• Ken was recognized as the Enterprise Technical Sales MVP at New Relic in both 2016 and 2017.1
• He has significant experience in areas such as Application Performance Management (APM), Service Virtualization (SV), and cloud-native application architectures.12
• Throughout his career, Ken has focused on helping companies develop and manage complex web applications.3

Education

Ken holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.1

Entrepreneurial Journey

As the CEO of Speedscale, Ken is working on automating API testing for cloud-native applications, particularly those running on Kubernetes.2 The company launched in August 2020 and has received backing from notable investors including YCombinator, Sierra Ventures, and Tech Square Ventures.2

Personal Interests

Outside of work, Ken enjoys outdoor activities such as mountain biking with NICA (National Interscholastic Cycling Association) and camping with the Boy Scouts.2 He's also interested in technology projects at home, like programming Raspberry Pis, and enjoys reading science fiction and fantasy.2