Entry Point: Eight years after “angel-strapped” founding, I was brought in as CEO. Company headquarters are in Copenhagen, Denmark, and I officed out of our North America hub in Minneapolis. Cludo is martech SaaS with AI/ML roots, providing on-site search for “big content” websites like government, higher education, manufacturing and more. Essentially any site with 1,000 pages of content could be a fit.

Team: When I arrived we had 50 people (include contractors) with hundreds of customers around the world.

Focus Areas: We needed to spur growth with a sharp eye on our cash and profitability. This started with making some tough personnel decisions to get us into better balance, and concentrated efforts to build short-term pipeline (primarily through outbound and events marketing) while thinking longer term for organic inbound and partnerships.

In addition to testing, learning, and refining our go-to-market levers, we needed to our focus on re-establishing product-market fit in an often overlooked category: on-site and enterprise search. We revamped our engineering and product leadership, and in early 2026 the team went full-on in building with a modern ai-empowered software development.

Business Results: In mid-2026 a member of the founding family re-took the reins as CEO, with a stronger outlook financially and a competitive set of ai-first products. The key markets of higher education, government, manufacturing, and financial services continue to thrive.

Personally, I learned more than I ever thought I would about being in the CEO seat at a global growing SaaS business. I now have an even deeper understanding of the challenges and psyche of founders. The concept of “we’d be great at marketing if we only had the budget” is now completely out of my vocabulary. Make a clear case, understand the business, and great marketing fits.

If you want to get deeper into results with this privately-held business, I’m happy to put you in touch with the leadership team or board.