Akkio is the AI workflows platform that automates every workflow across the campaign lifecycle, helping media agencies and data providers activate their data and expertise at scale to deliver better campaigns faster.
Darcey Harrison, Chief Revenue Officer, shares the details on Akkio and what it’s like to work there.
In this Video
We discuss:
- Details about Akkio
- The background story of Akkio
- Use cases / Customer Examples
- The latest at Akkio
- The culture at Akkio
- Why now is an ideal time to join Akkio
Video Transcript
Darcey Harrison: Thanks for having me. At a basic level, Akkio really helps media agencies and data providers activate all of their data and knowledge across workflows to really deliver better campaign results and faster.
Keith Cline: Now, what’s the background story of the company? How did this idea come to fruition that led to what you guys are doing now?
Darcey Harrison: Sure. So the founders and I worked at an industrial 3D printing company. You’d think that has not a lot to do with marketing or advertising, but we had such a massive volume of inbound leads—but there was a lot of junk and a lot of noise in there. We actually went out to the market to try and find something to just help us do a better job at lead scoring, and there was really nothing out there without having a team of data scientists to be able to use all of the types of tools that were out there.
When you’re in industrial 3D printing, the last thing you want to do is take engineering resources to have to build out something for the marketing team, but that, in essence, is what we had to start doing. And then we realized, okay, there’s a business here. That was actually the genesis of Akkio. We started out really as a broad machine learning platform. We’re extremely early in what is commercialized AI today, including, by the way, holding the patent on “chat to chart” because we were doing that before ChatGPT came out. So kind of a fun fact there. We then really started gearing in on media agencies as we discovered they have the really, really big data problems that need to solve, and that was where we were most applicable in the market.
Keith Cline: See, it’s companies like Akkio that I just love to hear about because the idea came from a real problem—a real need that the founders recognized and said, “Hey, let’s go solve that.” So, perfect segue for the use cases: what are examples of customers that are using your platform?
Darcey Harrison: Sure. I mean, we can talk publicly about the clients that are using us, like Horizon Media, Havas, and LG Ads. Horizon and Havas, obviously, are using us more from an operating system perspective so their client teams can really get out there and service their clients much faster. Think about a post-campaign analysis report—that can take weeks to months to actually pull together for a client. We’ve been able to pull dashboards for some of the largest global brands in a matter of 90 minutes. They can template these things and automate these things so they’re able to service their customers in a much faster manner and also iterate on the campaigns that are out there.
Keith Cline: All right. Well, things are happening so quickly. The market’s moving so fast in this AI platform shift. So, what’s the latest at Akkio?
Darcey Harrison: Honestly, just keep on adding really big customers. I think the most exciting thing is it’s not just the agencies; it’s how they’re servicing the brands that they support. We have hundreds upon hundreds of brands that are also in our platform through their agencies. I’ll share one exciting stat: we helped one of our agencies win an $800 million media spend account, which is pretty big. And that company alone already has 200 users in the Akkio platform via the agency. So it’s really changing how people do business. It’s having real impact. It’s saving them money. And in turn, the agencies actually get more spend from these accounts because they’re using it more efficiently and getting better results.
Keith Cline: And this is delivering on the promise of AI with real results and real ROI.
Darcey Harrison: Correct. Yes, it’s real.
Keith Cline: All right. So what’s it like working at the company? What’s the day-to-day culture like at Akkio?
Darcey Harrison: Yeah, you know, it’s a lot of fun. I think we’re unique in the fact that we are completely remote, and we really stand by that. Our teams get together and have what we call “on-sites” instead of off-sites. But it’s really a “run it like you own it” culture. We are focused on people being able to go out, make decisions, try creative new things, bring it back to the team, and figure out how to productize. I think that’s really important because AI is moving at the speed of light. You can create AI with AI, but productionizing that is a different thing. And so we’re looking for folks who really run it like they own it—they can come in with ideas, figure out how to bring them to fruition, and then work with the team on making it happen. So, high pace, high stress just like any startup, I think, but we have real results and real traction in the market, so everyone’s having a great time.
Keith Cline: Top-tier talent, regardless of market conditions, always has different opportunities in front of them for their career. So why is now the ideal time to join Akkio?
Darcey Harrison: Yeah, you know, I think when people get in and actually see what we’re doing with the product and what we’re doing with customers, the level of genuine joy and excitement is palpable because it’s real. I think one of the biggest challenges you see in AI right now is that there’s a lot of noise out in the marketplace. There’s a lot of, for lack of a better phrase, “ChatGPT wrappers” where it’s like, “Is it a sustainable product?” But if you look under the hood at what we’re doing, it’s much deeper than just the workflows.
If you take a look at workflows, you see agents all over the market, but they’re just point solutions. What we have created is really a lasting infrastructure to support agents, including governance and context engines—really, really deep tech. So from an engineering perspective, if you want to come work on a really hard problem to solve, we have probably one of the most interesting use cases in AI right now beyond the workflows that our clients are using. From a sales perspective, it’s exciting because there aren’t a lot of career opportunities where you can come in and land seven- or eight-figure deals in the span of 6 to 12 months. It’s a very unique time in the market with a company that has a lot of traction.
Keith Cline: Well, if you are interested in exploring opportunities at Akkio, you need to go to their company page on VentureFizz which has all their job listings. Go to venturefizz.com/akkio and you’ll see their job listings there. Darcy, thanks so much for taking us through all the details on Akkio.
Darcey Harrison: Great, Keith. Great talking to you.
