Dean Croshere Email & Phone Number

Sacramento, Ca, Us

Davis, California, United States

Sacramento County, California, United States

Berkeley, California, United States

I ran Geocene as an IoT consulting business for five years, experiencing 55% CAGR. We built connected devices for startups and NGOs. If it was connected and low-power, we built it. We connected water wells in Africa and weather stations in Brazil. We connected mercury monitors in mines and blood pressure monitors in ORs. Really cool stuff. It was an exciting opportunity to build a highly profitable company with people I adored working with.I managed a significant portion of the business, but I was always most proud of myself at the end of the year when I finalized the numbers and found that, once again, I had managed expenses within 2% of my budget.We were good at consulting, but we had a dream. We wanted to be a product company. As a team, we decided to take a swing at building our own thing and owning the IP. After a bunch of strategic meetings, an opportunity came up, and we all agreed to take a swing at it.And it didn't work. We initially thought the market would react to a system shock by looking for certainty. Instead, it retrenched in denial. I am certain our product could help save lives and reduce CO2 output by up to a gigaton/year for a price worth paying. Maybe eventually, but my financial situation can't wait forever.I'm proud of our team for taking our swing. I don't regret pursuing the opportunity, but now it is time to find a role at a stable organization.

Anaheim, California

Yen, the CEO, is a great person. He'll do whatever he can for the people he cares about. He truly lives his faith. After working for MedMen, I needed this.Link4 sells into the greenhouse and indoor cultivation markets, and we thought those markets were about to explode with new business. They wanted me for my expertise, and I was happy to be adjacent to the cannabis market but not actually in it.The greenhouse market did not explode. 2017 and 2018 were actually down years in the greenhouse industry. I loved working at Link4, but it wasn't growing the way Yen it wanted to. Simultaneously, my first child was due soon, and I wanted to move to Northern California to be nearer to my family, so I left Link4.

Culver City

This job was so cool. We were on the ground floor of the cannabis industry at the exact right time, and the CEO was doing a great job of raising money. I didn't like him or trust him, but he hired me and, as I said, the job was cool. There was never much of a solid plan from upper management about where the company was going other than making deals and raising money. I busied myself making plans for them, and taking care of the many things that needed taking care of. I thought that's what they wanted. It wasn't. By the end of my time there, my boss was going around to my direct reports and telling them to stop doing anything I asked them to do.Like many highly hyped angel-funded companies, the wheels started coming off the wagon once they needed to do anything besides hype, deal, and raise money. It's strange to have worked for people directly insulted by South Park. At least I've got some stories.

I was a summer intern here, then they hired me full-time once I graduated USC. It was a typical business improvement type setup. Go into a hospital, interview a bunch of people, make a bunch of observations, use a stopwatch, put together a shiny slide deck, and make some recommendations. Perfect for a newly minted MBA.The company was smaller than I thought, though. I guess the other people I saw during my internship were contractors. Realistically, they probably shouldn't have hired me after the internship. They didn't have the sales to support my salary. I didn't expect or want to be cold calling, desperately trying to get a sale to keep the company afloat in my second week. A sale didn't happen. When they fired me, they told me they were getting acquired and needed to scale back their payroll. They didn't get acquired.When they had a client, the work was fun and exciting. I wish there was more of that.

Greater Los Angeles Area

I came to USC because I had a few years of experience running a tiny factory in Asia and not much else. I was under and over-qualified for just about any job I could imagine. I figured an MBA from a school I had a personal history with (5th generation, 9th in my family at USC!) would help me out considerably.While at USC, I managed the APEC Business Advisory Team. We called it "ABAC." It was one of those experiences that was incredibly influential and also super cool, but is also out of most people's frame of reference so is mostly useless as a piece on a resume or LinkedIn.

Rayong, Thailand

I was 24 and sent to Thailand to run a newish factory (a competitor had started it, but needed to sell it before it really got going). Budgets were pretty slim. Seems obvious in retrospect: they hired a 24-year-old to run a factory in Thailand. All things considered, I feel like I did a pretty good job. Got it running and put a Thai guy in charge before I left for business school.I got to live in Thailand for 3 years while I was pretty young. A huge opportunity to learn about the world and make my own path. I'd go to events and sit next to the GM of General Motors. I wish I had done more with that networking opportunity. I also think there are some things I would have been learning at a more typical job that would have helped me be a better employee. In particular, I probably should have been more discerning and less trusting that I could make just about any situation work. The next few jobs I took were a bit rough as a result.

Forest Grove, Or

One of the best bosses I ever had hired me to help the company put together certification for SQF, a food safety regulation that Walmart was requiring. I learned a lot about operations and wrote some PHP and SQL to streamline some fairly ugly processes. I must have turned some heads, because after a year they promoted me to run their new Thailand factory.

Master Of Business Administration (Mba)

Bachelor'S Degree, Philosophy, Documentary Film

Activities and Societies: Gamma Sigma Studied the art of asking deep questions and chasing meaningful answers through philosophy.