Fake Brains Software
An artificial-intelligence software company for newspaper and media publishing — that's how Fake Brains started in 1991, and the name has stuck ever since. Same owners. Same mission. Better every single year.
It started at the family paper.
Pat Pfeifer grew up in it. As he put it back in 1993: "I have been raised in the [free paper] environment and understand the business demands." He knew the deadlines, the ad books, and the month-end billing scramble long before he ever wrote a line of code. So when he and Lisa — a Denver couple, both with computer backgrounds — set out to build software, they didn't build it for some generic business. They built it for the one they already knew inside out.
That's also where the name comes from. Pat graduated in 1990 with a Masters in Artificial Intelligence — the origin of the company name, Fake Brains, an artificial-intelligence software company for newspaper and media publishing. The industry press loved it: in May 1993, a trade magazine profiled the young company under the headline "There's nothing artificial about Fake Brains."
The flagship product was AccountScout — software to handle a publisher's display and classified advertising, billing, and statements in one place instead of five. First written in the mid-1980s, rewritten for Windows, and refined every year since. What began as a way to manage ads and get paid grew into a full operating system for publishers: sales and CRM, order entry, production and proofing, page layout, collections, classifieds, and digital publishing.
Thirty-plus years later, the same two people still own the company. It's still built in-house in Colorado, by a small team that knows your business because we've lived it. No outsourced development. No generic system repackaged for newspapers. And when you call us, you get a real person — usually one of the people who built the thing.
Most of the software in this industry has been bought, bundled, and rolled up. Products get acquired, platforms get sunset, and publishers get a migration notice for a system they never chose. Fake Brains is different on purpose: the same two people who founded the company in 1991 own it today. No private equity. No roll-up.
Here's what that means for you, concretely:
Nobody is going to acquire us and move you to "the new platform." AccountScout is the platform, and it has been continuously developed since 1991.
We don't buy products to retire them. Your system gets better every year - it doesn't get end-of-lifed.
Support is the team in Littleton, Colorado - often the people who wrote the code. When you call, a human who knows publishing picks up.
Major releases ship every year, shaped by what customers actually ask for. There is no quarter where the roadmap gives way to someone else's returns.
If you sell ads, build pages, and send invoices, you're who this software is for.
Weeklies and small dailies where the same few people sell, design, bill, and collect.
Free-distribution papers that live and die on ad revenue and deadlines - the workflow Fake Brains was built around from the start.
Publications on a newspaper-style workflow - rate cards, run schedules, proofs, and renewals.
Every title in one database, with group-level reporting and each property's own rates.
Student staffs that turn over every year - the system has to be the institutional memory.
If your operation runs on sold ads and print deadlines, the workflow fits.
SINCE 1991
Thirty-five years, the same two owners the whole way, and one product line that has never been sold on or switched off.
1991
AccountScout begins as billing-and-advertising software for publishers, built on tools Pat had been writing since the mid-1980s.
1990s–2000s
Display and classified advertising, statements, collections, and reporting, all on Windows.
2010s
The Foundry partnership begins - a publishing CMS we resell and support alongside AccountScout, bringing reader login, digital subscriptions, and the paywall to publishers who want them.
2020s
The InDesign-integrated production suite (AdScout, ProofScout, PageScout) ships in 2023–2024.
2026
"Fake Brains has surpassed all the others we have worked with, as their team understands the meaning of partnership, and their products deliver at speed for a price that makes the others seemingly laughable."
Jim Goodlett
President, Morris Technology (customer and technology partner)
"Mid-Atlantic Media uses Fake Brains' AccountScout for its portfolio of publications. We were effectively able to consolidate our sales, layout, receivables and CRM functions into AccountScout affordably. It's a big deal considering we're running more than a dozen publication titles and over 50 employees through it."
Craig Burke
CEO, Mid-Atlantic Media
See It In Action
We'd love to show you what AccountScout can do for your publication. No pressure — just a conversation with someone who knows the business.
Or call us at 303-791-3301