Chad Kruse

I took a sabbatical from a full-time software engineering role to modernize Grantmakers.io, a popular philanthropic endeavor I founded 7 years ago.

• Transitioned from a static Jekyll site developed with vanilla JavaScript, to a dynamic, modern web application using Typescript and Svelte.
• Designed an event-driven architecture for the ETL pipeline and refactored legacy components, using Node.js, Bash, and Typescript.
• Applied my product experience to convert user feedback and analytics into innovative 0-1 features, experimenting with new AI APIs, services, and LLM platforms to develop promising proofs of concept (POCs).

Part of a small, agile team responsible for digital innovation opportunities across Kimberly-Clark, the Fortune 150 company best known for its global consumer brands including Huggies and Kleenex.

• Built prototypes showcasing the art of the possible.
• Collaborated with diverse, global teams to translate ideas into reality.
• Developed the company's first internal large language model (LLM)-based chatbot as a proof of concept (POC), inspiring innovation within business teams globally.
• Championed the Voice of the Customer (VoC) perspective in innovation engineering efforts, contributing to a 6x boost in conversions for a React/Typescript/Tailwind-based project.

Grantmakers.io has grown into one of the largest free sources of searchable philanthropic data on the Internet. Built for purpose, not profit, the site makes a large, public IRS dataset useful to nonprofits.

• Successfully brought project to market as the sole founder and developer, utilizing lean-startup principles from ideation to ongoing maintenance.
• Utilized modern web development technologies, including JAMstack and serverless, to achieve unexpected time to market and earn recognition from world-renowned foundations and experts.
• Optimized user experience through extensive use of Algolia search API, incorporating customer feedback and A/B testing.

Conceptualized, created, and launched SmarterGiving, a prototype studio focused on market opportunities across the "charity stack".

• Architected and developed robust data pipelines using bash, Node.js, AWS S3 SDK, and Google Cloud Platform.
• Leveraged and explored various machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) APIs to bring advanced classification algorithms in-house.
• Drove multiple products from concept to launch using agile and lean startup principles.

Partnered with domain experts and technical founders to focus, launch, or expand. As a COO-for-hire, my roles ranged from business development and API evangelism to fundraising, product, and corporate strategy.

• Served as product lead and COO for Forkfly, managing the launch of three web applications and two mobile platforms. Transitioned the company from single app to digital advertising platform, tripling the team from 4 to 12 and bringing the company to first revenues.
• Crafted and evangelized the platform strategy for innovative sensor startup GreenGoose resulting in a successful seven-figure fundraise.
• Full interactive list of companies and projects available at www.chadkruse.com.

Served as one of four dealmakers and corporate strategists for Intuit, the Fortune 500 consumer and SMB-focused technology company.

• Successfully led the company's first partnership with Paypal, generating $100M of value creation.
• Recognized for driving cross-functional teams and closing dynamic deals efficiently and effectively, earning praise from the CEO.
• Proactively identified growth opportunities, prioritized them, and led internal collaboration, planning, and execution.

Part of a three-member team responsible for all corporate VC and technology commercialization deals for Science Applications International Corporation, a Fortune 500 company.

• Sourced, analyzed, and executed venture capital investments and growth-oriented mergers and acquisitions to expand the company's reach into commercial markets.
• Placed $90M of early to mezzanine stage venture capital in 15 months (11 transactions).
• Built and evangelized a new valuation model subsequently adopted across all 600+ business units.