Mark Richman

Overview

Mark Richman helps mid-market private equity portfolio companies and high-growth technology firms turn cloud infrastructure into competitive advantage—optimizing for scale, cost, and business outcomes.

Drawing on years as a Principal Solutions Architect at AWS in a Field CTO capacity, he now advises executives independently on cloud economics, technical due diligence, and infrastructure transformation. His focus: helping companies navigate the critical shift from MVP to scale without burning capital on cloud waste.

With 30+ years across software engineering, product leadership, and executive consulting, Mark has led cloud migrations, optimized multi-million dollar cloud environments, and helped PE-backed companies unlock 30-50% savings while improving performance. He translates technical infrastructure decisions into financial outcomes that matter to investors and operators.

What He Does

Mark specializes in cloud economics for private equity—one of the few advisors focused on this specific intersection. He works with PE operating partners and the CTOs at their portfolio companies, translating cloud infrastructure findings into EBITDA adjustments, valuation changes, and deal pricing decisions across the entire PE deal lifecycle from pre-LOI screening through exit preparation.

On the sell side that work takes the shape of a pre-exit cloud cost audit — finding the cost problems a buyer's diligence team would find, early enough to fix them rather than discount for them.

He also works on AI diligence and unit economics — whether an AI-positioned target has proprietary capability or a vendor passthrough any competitor could replicate, and whether gross margin survives the growth plan once inference cost is scaling with usage. It is the same method applied to the fastest-growing and least well understood line item on the infrastructure bill.

He also serves as a fractional or interim CTO for portfolio companies — one to two days a week on an ongoing basis, or full-time for a defined stretch after a departure, during a carve-out, or ahead of a value creation push. In those engagements he owns the technology decisions rather than advising on them, and reports on them in the sponsor's terms.

• AI due diligence — capability versus wrapper, data rights, and model dependency
• AI unit economics — inference cost per unit of revenue and margin at scale
• Pre-exit cloud cost audits for sponsors preparing a portfolio company for sale
• Fractional and interim CTO leadership for PE-backed companies
• Cloud cost optimization and FinOps strategy for portfolio companies
• Technical due diligence for PE firms evaluating cloud-native businesses
• Cloud-native architecture (serverless, containers, analytics at scale)
• Platform engineering and SaaS scaling strategies
• Infrastructure modernization that improves EBITDA, not just uptime

At AWS, he worked with hundreds of PE-backed companies across SaaS, fintech, healthcare tech, and e-commerce. This depth provides practical benchmarks for what's normal versus what's a red flag, and realistic expectations for optimization potential and timelines.

The Book

Cloud Economics for Private Equity is a comprehensive 24-chapter guide covering the complete deal lifecycle. Unlike general FinOps books that teach operational practices, this book addresses PE-specific challenges: evaluating targets during diligence, translating technical findings into deal pricing, and optimizing portfolio companies for exit.

The book is grounded in empirical research and interviews with PE professionals. Every framework emerged from actual engagements—the Technology Risk Assessment framework, risk-adjusted ROI calculations, and integration complexity scoring are proven tools, not theoretical constructs.

Mark has authored books, articles, and technical courses, contributed to major open source projects, and speaks regularly at industry conferences and private corporate events on cloud economics, technology strategy, and enterprise transformation.