Inspiring Conversations with Matt Kaufman of MK Partners

Today we’d like to introduce you to Matt Kaufman.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
After working for a few years at Salesforce in San Francisco, I moved from the Bay Area back to Los Angeles where I grew up. Remote work was not common then, and I slowly grew apart from my coworkers. When I received a generous job offer from an acquaintance here in LA, I felt awkward saying no, so I turned in my resignation at Salesforce and took the new job. Unfortunately, that startup didn’t work out and after a few months I ended up finding myself without much work to do on a daily basis. Instead of going back to work at Salesforce, I decided to take a chance and start my own consulting firm, MK Partners.
That was 20 years ago. There have been a lot of ups and downs over the years, but I’m still happy I took that chance. I’ve had the opportunity to hire so many amazing people, many of whom have gone on to much bigger and better jobs.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No, it’s been anything but smooth. Over the course of 20 years I feel like I have restarted the company multiple times. When I founded the company in 2006, we focused on helping nonprofit organizations. During the great recession (2007-2009), nonprofits were hit very hard and, as a result, so were we. That was the first time I had to layoff employees and we shrank down to only 2 employees including me.
I pivoted the company to also work on government and corporate projects and not just nonprofits. That was successful and the company grew a lot for several years. Unfortunately in 2015, our then COO secretly started his own company and began funneling sales to it, telling lies about me to our employees, and selling our deals at a loss. After about 6 months of sabotage, he abruptly quit, leaving me to put together the pieces. Again, I had to layoff employees and we shrank down to just 5 or 6 employees.
It took time, but those few employees and I built up the company again to be even healthier and more successful. Unfortunately, then Covid hit and with the lockdowns, our revenues were impacted. I used the downtime to start a products division of the company and we now publish add-on apps for Salesforce.
During Covid, we were able to immediately transition to remote work, but employee morale was at a low and we didn’t know the timeline for recovery. I ended up selling a majority stake of MK Partners to an IT firm in San Jose which had a global parent in Japan. I had hoped that it would be a way to grow the company and provide new opportunities for our employees. Unfortunately, the leadership in San Jose had misrepresented things and it greatly impacted MK Partners in a negative way.
Eventually things got escalated to the global parent company in Japan and in Nov 2024, I was able to buy back full ownership of MK Partners. 2025 was a year of just getting things back to normal and now we’re looking to grow again in 2026!

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about MK Partners?
MK Partners is a boutique consulting firm specializing in Salesforce. We help customers of Salesforce get more out of their subscription by custom tailoring the platform to their exact business needs. We are known in the space for having a deep technical expertise in Salesforce and being able to tackle complex requirements and deliver elegant solutions. We work with businesses, nonprofits, and government agencies of all sizes and industries focusing on the technical aspect of the solutions we build.
Although, we’re only a small business, we try to help our community here in LA as much as possible. For years, we have hired talented individuals who didn’t have existing experience in our industry to give them their start in a new career. We provide good wages and benefits and values our employees above everything else. We have volunteer days where as a team we help a local nonprofit such as food pantries.

Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
Find multiple mentors who have already done what you’re trying to do. Ask them for advice, discuss your concerns with them, and try to understand why they’re giving that advice.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mkpartners.com
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mkpartners/