Act as You Want Others to Act: Interview with Alfred Johnson, Co-Founder and CEO of Crux

I recently went one-on-one with Alfred Johnson co-founder and CEO of Crux. Alfred has served in senior leadership roles at the Department of Treasury and previously founded and sold a mission-driven SaaS company (Mobilize), advised governments and banks at BlackRock, and was Head of Sales and People at a venture-backed fintech company.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? 

Alfred: I grew up in Washington DC as part of a family with deep roots in government and public service. My grandfather – for whom I am named, but never met – was born in 1898 in rural western Minnesota and became Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives. My parents met while working in the Senate and worked together on presidential campaigns and in the White House. I’ve always believed in the central role the government must play in a just society. 

My first job after graduating college was on President Obama’s 2008 campaign. After he won, I joined the team at the US Treasury working on the financial crisis response and the Recovery Act. The economy was under enormous stress and a reasonably small group of people at Treasury was tasked with implementing policy to stop the bleeding. I was later asked to serve in the White House as the Special Assistant to Bill Daley when he was the President’s Chief of Staff. Through both early experiences, I saw the inextricable link between the public and private sectors, the great strides that can be made when government and business are working together, and the huge costs to misalignment.

After three great years in DC, I went back to business school and joined the Financial Markets Advisory group at BlackRock. The group was formed during the financial crisis to do complicated advisory work mostly related to securitized products for banks and governments. I worked with some of the largest banks in the world to align securitized portfolios to regulatory capital requirements, and I worked with European central banks on financial crisis issues. 

I enjoyed my time and the people at BlackRock, but wanted to get back to leading teams, so I made the move to tech. First, I was an operator at a fintech company before co-founding Mobilize in 2017. Mission driven organizations used Mobilize to manage events, and other organizations could discover and push their members to those events. The company grew very quickly and we sold it to a portfolio company of Insight Partners in 2020. 

After we sold Mobilize, I had the chance to return to the Government – working for Secretary Janet Yellen as her Deputy Chief of Staff. I started on the first minute of the first day of the Biden Administration. My immediate task was to help stand up the operational and organizational infrastructure to implement the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. I was also responsible for work related to digital assets, cybersecurity and technology, and the operational management of the 80,000+ person Department.

I left Treasury in the summer of 2022 at the time our second son was born. I wanted to start another company with my co-founder from Mobilize, Allen Kramer. And, I wanted to work on climate. In that period, Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes hundreds of billions of dollars of tax credits that are now transferable for the first time. It immediately struck me that technology would be necessary to create an efficient market for these credits. So, after a lot of market research, Allen and I founded Crux with the mission to make sustainable finance more efficient and interconnected. 

We’ve raised about $9 million from top investors and quickly built an excellent and multidisciplinary team. Billions of dollars of credits are currently available for sale on Crux, and intermediaries – like banks and tax advisors – can use Crux to manage transactions and access liquidity. 

Adam: What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Alfred: Professionally, I’ve been interested in the intersection of software, financial markets, and the government, and my work experiences have generally all involved at least two of those things. And, since graduating high school, I’ve spent my life about evenly between Silicon Valley, New York, and Washington DC. When you operate across intersections, you need to switch content a lot. I’ve found that dynamic to be really supportive to growth and the development of a unique perspective. 

Personally, I lost my dad in 2020 at around the same time we sold Mobilize and I went back to Treasury. That was a lot of pain and change all at the same time. So, when I left Treasury most recently, I did so without a clear idea of what I’d do next. I spent the summer with my family – explored climate tech investing with Ian Samuels of New System Ventures – and followed my curiosity until I found Crux.

Adam: How did you come up with your business ideas and know they were worth pursuing? What advice do you have for others on how to come up with and test business ideas?

Alfred: Before starting Mobilize and Crux, I found myself deeply curious – maybe even a little obsessed – with problems. My curiosity usually manifests in listening to everything I can find about a topic. When we first started working on the idea that would become Crux, I would walk 10+ miles per day listening to podcast after podcast about energy finance and the tax code. I just couldn’t stop. Then, we started to form hypotheses and tested them over hundreds of calls with experts. That whole process took about three months. When you’re testing a new idea, you need to listen for cues from both experts and non-experts. Experts will be your future customers and partners. Non-experts may be future investors, new entrants to the market, or members of your team. One thing I found striking about the idea for Crux is that I was hearing positive feedback early from both deep subject matter experts and people who hadn’t previously participated in this market. I took that to be a very strong signal we were on to something.

Adam: What are the key steps you have taken to grow your businesses? What advice do you have for others on how to take their businesses to the next level?

Alfred: It’s critical that you align your team and capitalization to the problem you’re solving. 

This is a big new market growing incredibly quickly. So, we’ve raised more money more quickly than you typically would for a business at this stage. We’re lucky to be surrounded by some of the very best investors in the game.

We’ve also hired a proportionally more senior team given the highly nuanced problem and sophistication of the market. Allen and I are lucky to be joined by colleagues that have worked with us previously with whom we have a lot of trust and ability to move even more quickly. We’re also joined by people – like our Chief Commercial Officer, Rob Parker – who have extensive experience in energy finance. 

Adam: What are your best sales and marketing tips?

Alfred: People think sales is about talking. Sales is about listening. If you can really understand the problem your customer is trying to solve – you build their trust and earn the right to offer a solution. 

Similarly, good marketing offers value to the customer. At Crux, we’re introducing prospective participants to complex transactions in a brand new market. As a result, we’ve centered our marketing strategies around education: lots of content, webinars, and conference engagements; far fewer ads. If our ultimate goal is to efficiently finance the clean energy transition, we want to ensure that developers, buyers, and intermediaries all understand their roles and the value of the Crux ecosystem.

Adam: In your experience, what are the defining qualities of an effective leader? How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

Alfred: Great leaders identify a differentiated strategy, set clear goals, hire and enable the very best people, and ensure the business is sufficiently capitalized for upside and downside scenarios. Personally, great leaders are bold, decisive, empathetic, and consistent. Bad leaders let their ego be the driver. Aspiring leaders can benefit from a good mentor to help set career goals, offer access to their network, and provide ongoing encouragement. They should also seek feedback regularly — it’s the most efficient way to identify areas for growth personally and professionally.   

Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams?

Alfred: I played football from the time I was 12 through college and I learned a lot about management from sports. In football – like all sports – everyone on the team has to do their job to win. If one person fails, everyone can fail. The coach plays an important role in that dynamic. They call the plays, of course. But, the most important thing they do is recruit the team and set the culture. Teams with great players and a great culture, win. Teams with bad players and bad culture, lose.

A company is just a group of people working together to do something big. People are everything. 

Adam: What are the best lessons you learned from your time in the Treasury Department? 

Alfred: The US Treasury is the Ministry of Finance of the largest and most important economy in the world. Everything we do as a country is touched – in some way – by Treasury. It’s been a privilege to serve as a political appointee in two different administrations. Both experiences have made me keenly aware that business and capital markets are fundamentally, permanently, and inextricably linked with our government. Bad government policy can cripple innovation and growth. Great government policy can supercharge it. 

The IRA is the largest piece of climate infrastructure law passed by any government, ever. It’s an amazing piece of legislation that provides – by far – our best shot to address the climate crisis. At Crux, we are keenly aware of the responsibility and opportunity to build as quickly as possible so we can drive hundreds of billions of dollars into the complete reformation of our energy system.

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders? 

Alfred: Take care of yourself. Your health and wellbeing matters. If you fail to keep yourself mentally and physically healthy, you’ll fail to be as good a leader as you can be.

Be emotionally consistent. A leader’s volatility and inconsistency absolutely creates insecure organizations – 100% of the time. 

Act as you want others to act. Too many leaders don’t practice what they preach. They write values on the wall, but don’t actually live them. People are watching what you do and will cue off of you.  

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Alfred: My dad was an unbelievably kind and generous mentor to so many people. He’d always ask: “how can I help?” What goes around, comes around – of course. But, I also watched the extraordinary meaning he drew from listening deeply and acting generously on someone’s behalf. I’ve found great joy through emulating him on that.


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally-recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one on one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

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