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After 30+ years building and scaling venture-backed software companies with 5 exits…
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Dean Cruse shared thisGoing to be a great lineup for this year's event!Dean Cruse shared thisAnnouncing the 45 finalists for the 18th annual #SXSW Pitch competition.👏 These innovative #startups from around the globe are set to showcase their transformative ideas at #SXSW2026, taking place March 13–14 at the JW Marriott Austin. Explore the full list of finalists and learn more about the companies shaping the future. 👉 https://ow.ly/c47l50XXkZj
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Dean Cruse reposted thisDean Cruse reposted thisThe discernible (and long overdue) rebalancing between brand and demand investments among B2B tech companies is happening. I'm seeing it in budgets, org design, board conversations and 2026 planning in earnest. And there's more and more evidence to back that investment up. Omar Akhtar from Benchmarker joined our CMO Coffee Talk community to walk through new data he's collected from B2B SaaS businesses this year. A few highlights: 🔥 High growth companies (>20%) spend 13-15% on marketing, whereas the slower-growing companies were in the 7-9% range. High growth means high spend. 🔥 Companies that exceeded their revenue targets were spending 40-50% more on marketing, on average, than those that missed their targets. 🔥 High growth companies that exceeded their revenue targets are spending 30-40% more on brand awareness than low growth companies who may have missed their revenue targets. 🔥 Companies that exceeded their revenue targets spend almost equally on brand and demand, while those who missed were more likely to over-index on demand. And finally my favorite quote from Omar's commentary last week: 💯 "You can't cut your way to growth" 💯 Bottom line: the most successful companies make the right investments in growth. Not just in more dollars, but in smarter deployment of those dollars and programs to impact short and long-term pipeline and revenue performance. Not opinions. Facts.
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Dean Cruse shared thisDean Cruse shared this𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗼𝘄𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘀 Our CEO Matt Lhoumeau shares how AI is accelerating this shift from legal to finance teams: https://lnkd.in/gpV5kFmg 65-70% of our customers don't even have a legal team. Contracts are increasingly seen as business processes, not legal documents. Is finance taking over contracts at your company?
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Dean Cruse shared thisDean Cruse shared this𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗔𝗿𝗲𝗻’𝘁 𝗟𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 𝗗𝗼𝗰𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 – 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆’𝗿𝗲 𝗕𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀 🧩 Read Matt Lhoumeau's full piece here: https://lnkd.in/gq4fxu86 In his latest piece for YFS Magazine, Concord CEO Matt Lhoumeau explains how contracts have become core to business operations — and how AI is accelerating this shift: ✅ Operations, not legal, now own most contracts ✅ AI tools like Concord are removing compliance risk ✅ Contracts are becoming structured business data, not documents ✅ Forecasting from real obligations is now possible 📉 Manual contract processes lose businesses 9.2% in value each year. But with the right tech and mindset, you can turn contracts into a competitive advantage.
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Dean Cruse shared thisDean Cruse shared this📝 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗔𝗿𝗲𝗻'𝘁 𝗟𝗲𝗴𝗮𝗹 𝗗𝗼𝗰𝘂𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 - 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆'𝗿𝗲 𝗕𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀 Concord CEO Matt Lhoumeau explains why on IT Supply Chain. Discover why most companies are over-spending on #ContractManagement, and the crucial shift that can save you 90% on contracting costs! #SupplyChainManagement #DigitalTransformation https://lnkd.in/geKAW-x7Stop Treating Supply Chain Contracts as Legal Documents. They're Business Processes - IT Supply ChainStop Treating Supply Chain Contracts as Legal Documents. They're Business Processes - IT Supply Chain
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Dean Cruse shared thisDean Cruse shared this📄 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝗚𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗹𝘆 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 Concord CEO Matt Lhoumeau breaks it down in The SCXchange: from AI-enhanced workflows to shifting ownership across teams, discover how modern contract management builds speed, resilience, and control. Read the full article: https://lnkd.in/dxXEskhU #SupplyChainManagement #DigitalTransformation #ContractManagement
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Dean Cruse shared thisDean Cruse shared thisOur CEO, Matt Lhoumeau, recently joined The Finance Leader Podcast to discuss the transformation of contract management. Matt discusses key insights such as: ▸ 90% of companies still lack dedicated contract management systems ▸ Operations and finance teams increasingly manage contracts without legal involvement ▸The importance of hiring strong finance leaders who "fight for every dollar" Check out the episode: https://lnkd.in/ez-qjYxk
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Dean Cruse shared thisDean Cruse shared this📆 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗱'𝘀 𝗖𝗮𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗿 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗠𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘀 𝗦𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗬𝗼𝘂 𝗡𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗠𝗶𝘀𝘀 𝗮 𝗗𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲! No more missed renewals or frantic last-minute negotiations. See all your contract milestones alongside your daily schedule, sync with Apple, Google, and Outlook calendars, and keep your entire team aligned on what matters most. See how this game-changing feature works: https://lnkd.in/etYRTeNW
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Dean Cruse reposted thisDean Cruse reposted thisI once had what seemed like a dream assignment. The CEO of France's second-largest telecom company asked me to lead a strategic initiative to save millions by renegotiating vendor contracts. I was proud for exactly five minutes. Then reality hit: I had to manually find 500 contracts scattered throughout file cabinets across the company. No central repository. No digital system. Just paper contracts filed away and forgotten. For six excruciating months, I hunted down documents, built massive spreadsheets with 52 columns and 500 rows, and sent hundreds of Word documents back and forth for revisions. Every night I came home asking myself: Why are we managing contracts manually in a $5 billion company when we have software for everything else? That frustration changed my life. It revealed a massive gap in business operations that nobody was solving properly. Most entrepreneurial advice says "follow your passion." I followed my frustration instead. The deeper I dug into this problem, the more I realized how universal it was. Contracts sit at the center of every business relationship, yet they were being managed with the technological equivalent of quill pens. That painful experience became the blueprint for Concord. We built what I desperately needed back then - a way to create, negotiate, sign, and manage contracts in one system without the manual nightmare. Today, when I see companies automating processes that once took months, I think back to those late nights building spreadsheets. The worst job I ever had became the foundation for helping thousands of companies work better. Sometimes your most valuable business insight isn't found in what you love doing. It's hidden in what frustrates you beyond belief. What broken process at your company might actually be your next big opportunity? #FounderStory #Innovation #ContractManagement
Dean Cruse commented on a post
1mo
Wonderful story, Bryan. Thanks for sharing. Brought back so many memories of those days. I'm still processing the void we now have, but our community always finds a way to thrive.
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Dean Cruse liked thisDean Cruse liked this35 years ago this week, I moved to Austin, Texas. I was 25, managing a photography studio in San Jose, California. At a conference for event photographers, I met Bryan Cumby who was buying a business in Austin. He hired me to move to Texas and run his photography operation. So I came. I remember the anticipation, the excitement, and a little bit of fear. Other than knowing Austin was the capital of Texas, I did not know much about the city or the state. Neither did most of the people I knew. That first job did not last long. But my girlfriend, now my wife, Sara, had transferred to Austin with her company, and we decided we would stay for three years. That was 35 years ago. Looking back, moving to Austin was one of the most fortunate turns my life could have taken. Sara and I got engaged soon after we arrived. Nine months later, we were married at St. Mary’s Cathedral in downtown Austin. Over the years, we welcomed two highly-spirited daughters into the world and raised them here, then eventually watched both leave for college and lives of their own. My career took a path I never could have predicted. The Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce. Selling computer training and financial printing. Marketing and business development for law firms, a bank, a consulting company. Then professional speaking, and eventually serving the Austin technology community. Along the way, two Austin leaders, Carol Thompson and Pike Powers, separately gave me advice that stayed with me: “Austin is not a place where you simply take the opportunities that came your way. If the community had been good to you, you have an obligation to give something back.” They asked me to think about: What boards would I serve on? Who would I mentor? How would I contribute? They told me that if I found ways to serve the community, good things would happen. I believed them. And they were right! When I first became a professional speaker, I am not sure many people thought I could make a living doing it. But I did, full time for 12 years, until the pandemic threw a curveball. Then, four years ago, I took on the role with the Austin Technology Council, which gave me a completely different view of the city I had already called home for three decades. Now, both ATC and professionally speaking around the country keep me very busy! But the best part of Austin has never been the jobs, the companies, or even the incredible growth. It has been the people. When I arrived, there were roughly 700,000 people in the five-county Austin area. Today, there are more than 2.6 million. Over 35 years, people have come into my life and out of it, and all of them left some sort of mark. Some became lifelong friends. Some opened doors. Some challenged me. Some simply showed up at exactly the right moment. As I cross this milestone of 35 years, I find myself reflecting on just how lucky I was to land here. Three years turned into an amazing lifelong journey.
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Dean Cruse liked thisDean Cruse liked thisWatching washed-up LinkedIn creators discover they were never that interesting has become my favorite nature documentary. Observe the aging Thought Leader in its natural habitat. Its engagement has collapsed. Its carousel has stopped reproducing. It blames climate change. By climate change, I mean: "LinkedIn doesn't reward intellect anymore!" They're grieving monopoly. For years, information was scarce. Competence was expensive. Having a functioning frontal lobe and decent grammar made you look like a wizard. When everyone can manufacture competence, though, people stop following competence. They start following people. But some people are boring AF. Today, you need a personality, and rhythm, and taste, and timing, and an unhealthy fixation, and a sentence that couldn't have been written by an emotionally well-adjusted committee. You don't get to exist by being the encyclopedia anymore. You have to be the tour guide. And some of you are discovering you've spent a decade confusing expertise with charisma. Being the smartest person in the room is not going to get you there. Try being the smartest person who can make the room feel something. Curiosity, disgust, joy, laughter, envy, wonder rage, recognition... make it count. #ThatAshleyAmber
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Dean Cruse liked thisDean Cruse liked thisAs I navigate a transition, I remember that the best marketer I know wasn't a marketer. And yet he taught me three key marketing lessons. My father was a physician - a neurologist. His first post-residency role was at the University of Missouri Medical Center in Columbia, Missouri. As sometimes happens, he had conflicts - repeated ones - with his boss. And it escalated to the point where, with less than $1000 in the bank and a fourth child on the way, he walked out. Did they literally laugh at him? I don't know. But they told him that Columbia was too small to support a stand-alone neurology practice. In a town of 40K people, they seemed right. Columbia is right in the middle of the state, with larger cities of St. Louis and Kansas City two hours away on either side. In between are a ton of smaller cities and towns - Marshall, Hallsville, Kirksville, Moberly, and more places that you probably haven't heard of. My father had identified those communities as a potential market - communities closer to Columbia than to one of the larger cities. So he'd had magnets and cards printed with a toll free phone number called the Neurology Hotline, and distributed those to the small regional doctor's offices and hospitals. Despite the fact that it brought in a substantial amount of business, the medical center just tolerated it as my father's passion project. They never cared that the magnets and cards said "Neurology Hotline" and didn't mention the University Medical Center. And they never noticed that my father - not the Medical Center - owned the 1-800 number. So on the Friday he walked out, that line stopped ringing at the Medical Center. The next Monday, it started ringing at the office he'd rented over the weekend. He billed $10K in his first month. And he went on to build a practice, as Columbia grew, that employed five other neurologists and a neurosurgeon. The three things he taught me: • Opportunity often hides under boring names like Kirksville or Moberly. • Own the channels of communication with your customer. Owning that 1-800 number was everything. • You don't have to put up with sh!t if you don't want to. I miss him, but his guidance is always with me, especially when navigating a transition.
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Dean Cruse liked thisDean Cruse liked thisI almost made it to my 3 year rotation on the Allen Institute's IACUC. I was really proud to be a part of research that will one day help people with Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Dementia, Epilepsy, and other chronic neurodegenerative diseases. I couldn't make my last two IACUC meetings, because I joined the Allen Institute's ESCRO instead. Lucky me, I went from just animal lovers being angry at me, to now the religious right as well. Again as the "community member", it's my job to question how & why we use embryonic stem cells. If we can use adult derived stem cells, then I'll always vote for us to do so. For my deeply religious friends, just to be sure everyone knows the ground rules. hESC can only be utilized if they are a byproduct of in vitro fertilization. Quite often many more eggs & sperm will be fertilized than the couple want to utilize. After the new parents are done with IVF they typically have remaining zygotes and need to decide one of four options. 1. Keep them frozen until later if they decide to do another round of IVF 2. Donate them to another family who can't produce zygote themselves 3. Have the zygotes destroyed 4. Donate them to research If they choose to donate the zygotes to research, they can not be paid any money. They must be told that the zygotes will be killed. They must be given the right to stop the process, up until the moment the zygotes are sacrificed. At any point, up until then, they can choose to get their zygote back. I don't take the ethics of this role lightly. What I am thrilled by is that I am joined by an incredible team. A veterinarian I've been working with for 3 years, who I respect deeply. A top notch lawyer who I've interacted with as IO. An ethicist who brought rich analysis to our conversation. And two scientists, who I'd never met, but both blew me away by their depth of technical knowledge, and their deep desire to ethically question the necessity of hESC. All facilitated by top notch research compliance pros. I am confident that together, we will enable some incredible research to make big impacts to future medicine. Imagine a day when, if you got sick, where we could analyze stem cells from your skin to understand your unique morphology. Have AI analyze your ailment, your genetics, and recommend a highly in-tuned treatment. Using either your stem cells, or a hESC line approved for human treatment, we could grow the specific thing you need to remedy your needs. Maybe it's a new liver. Maybe it's new serotonin-receptive neurons curing Alzheimers. Maybe it's an optical nerve curing blindness. Maybe you are a child with a rare disease who could live a more normal life. It's time for medicine to be personalized and unique to you. The research from the Allen Institute when published is open source, so anyone can benefit from the dataset in their future clinical uses. The better the cures we can find, the cheaper the price becomes for everyone. Here's to the future.
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Dean Cruse reacted on thisDean Cruse reacted on thisEvery CMO I know has a version of this story: you join a company, and almost immediately you're in the middle of the biggest thing that's happened there in years (IYKYK). Mine was joining Uplift two months ago and jumping in feet first as we closed our first fund. 👟 Today y'all. We closed Fund I today. $670M 💥 I spent my career on the operating side, mostly for PE-backed companies, building go-to-market inside services businesses. I thought I understood how a board thinks about growth. I didn't, not really, not until I was in the room, hearing how 3-5 year plans actually get built and stress-tested. It's been the fastest few months of learning in my career. And my role? Maybe the coolest role ever. I get to work on two fronts: build the GTM center of excellence to support our portfolio companies, what we call our Value Creation Centers; and run marketing for Uplift, wrestling with the same GTM (and AI) problems that my peers do. Helping other CMOs do their best work, while I get to do mine too? Hard to beat that. Two months in, and I feel lucky to be building this from the first fund forward.
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Dean Cruse reacted on thisDean Cruse reacted on thisTime for an update...I'm joining Filevine as Head of Product Evangelism! If you've been following my #FLITpodcast, you know one of the most exciting trends and opportunities in legal tech right now is the emergence of the legal operating system — a tech platform that supports and enables the entire practice, rather than just isolated tasks. There are relatively few companies that are in a genuine position to provide that legal OS. I've had the opportunity to discuss the legal tech and AI landscape with several members of Filevine's leadership, and I think the company is in a great position to be one of those providers. It has a strong base of existing customers and users, but the people in charge aren't set in one way of thinking about developing products and bringing them to market. And they're not just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, either, or taking the shortcuts that some others are. This is a thoughtful group of people who genuinely care about creating value for the legal community. Big thanks to everyone in the #FilevineFam I've had the pleasure of meeting so far, and I look forward to meeting the rest of you shortly! Let's gooo! 🔥 🚀 Sona Sulakian Megan Patel Taylor Nelson
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Dean Cruse reacted on thisDean Cruse reacted on thisCommit to the bit. A year ago, I chose Product Marketing over another CMO title for my next role. Because I love the work and I love the craft of product marketing. Because there are always a ton of guitars in my background, it doesn't take long for a new company to find out that I play. So a couple of weeks into the role, the People team asked me to open the annual All Hands. It was a western theme, so "just some rootsy acoustic riffing or something" was the original ask. Then I ran into the head of People at a party. She may have had a glass of wine, and she was emphatic that whatever I played had to be "hard-core twangy." Not exactly my wheelhouse, but... ...the hardest-core twangy thing in my world is Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues (the first record I ever owned). If singing "I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die" to a room full of convicts going wild isn't committing to the bit, I don't know what is. So I recruited a friend (a bit of a ringer - Matt Giles, go see him with The Drakes next time you're in Austin) to back me up, and we tore into it with as much Motörhead-style aggression as we could pour into it. Heckuva way to introduce yourself to a company. That was one bit I committed to with the role, and the other was moving back to Product Marketing - walking away from a CMO title to get back to the actual craft that I love the same way I love six strings. That meant unifying messaging across a company that had grown by acquisition: part semantic challenge, part political negotiation, part market insight. It meant pushing back, again and again, on "this is how we've always said it." Because who we say it to, and why we say it, is what matters in Product Marketing. That's why I love the craft, and that's why I do it. Even if I'm not thrilled that the Red Oak road came to an end, there's one thing I don't regret. Committing to the bit. Whether the bit is Folsom Prison Blues or Product Marketing. I'm deciding what bit to commit to next. Got ideas? Lmk. I'd love to talk.
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Dean Cruse reacted on thisDean Cruse reacted on thisMy seven-year-old asked me why people lose their jobs. I told him life is like a puzzle 🧩 sometimes your piece fits, and sometimes it doesn't. He looked at me, confused. "But when you have a puzzle, all the pieces fit." I said: sometimes you have to go INTO the puzzle to find out whether your piece fits. And if it doesn't, you go find a different puzzle. Then I told him the good part: there are puzzles everywhere. Thousands of them. Companies all over the world, each one looking for the pieces that make it complete. The truth is I've ridden the startup rollercoaster🎢 more than once — pivots, stalled launches, shifting markets, changes in ownership and direction. More than once, the picture changed and my piece no longer fit. But my son reminded me of something I'd forgotten: a piece that doesn't fit one puzzle isn't a broken piece. It's just in the wrong picture. So I'm looking for my next puzzle. If you're building something and you're missing a growth marketing piece, let's talk. Maybe I'm your puzzle piece. Special thanks to my community for the overwhelming outpouring of love and support. I have worked with some of the most incredible humans in the world and wouldn't trade those experiences for anything✨
Experience & Education
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DC Marketing
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Volunteer Experience
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Co-chair - SXSW Pitch Qualifying Committee
SXSW
- Present 10 years 9 months
SXSW Pitch (formerly Accelerator) is a live pitch event that showcases early-stage companies from around the world pitching their product or service to industry experts, venture capitalists and high profile media.
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Mentor
Techstars
- 6 years 1 month
Techstars is a geographically distributed accelerator which provides both financial and advisory help to budding entrepreneurs. Focused exclusively on the early stage startup scene, Techstars gives help to the freshest and most disruptive ideas. As mentors, we provide help, advice, counseling, and new perspectives to companies in the Techstars portfolio.
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Mentor
MassChallenge
- 8 years 4 months
MassChallenge is the most startup-friendly accelerator on the planet. No equity and not-for-profit, we are obsessed with helping entrepreneurs across any industry. Through our global network of accelerators in Boston, London, Mexico City, Geneva and Jerusalem and unrivaled access to our corporate partners, we can have a massive impact -- driving growth and creating value the world over.
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Mentor
Founder Institute
- 7 months
For aspiring and idea-stage entrepreneurs up to the challenge, the Founder Institute provides a comprehensive step-by-step program to launch a startup, support from top startup mentors, and a global network of entrepreneurs to help you be successful.
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Board Of Advisors
TeXchange
- 6 years
TeXchange is a networking organization that brings together high-level business entrepreneurs to exchange ideas and share experiences as a way to groom the next generation of business leaders in Austin.
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