Fintech Leaders Steve Stagner on Building Crete's $500 Million AI Roll-up to Modernize Accounting
Jun 24, 2025
In this conversation, Steve Stagner, the CEO of Crete and former CEO of Mattress Firm, shares his insights on transforming the accounting industry with AI. He emphasizes the importance of 'People, Process, Technology' for successful AI adoption. Stagner highlights how firms ignoring AI risk losing ground, while Crete's innovative partner equity model helps preserve firm culture. He discusses impressive efficiency gains achieved through AI in trial balance normalization and audit testing, and the vital role of humans in validating AI outputs for accounting integrity.
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From $1,300 Franchisee To Fortune 500 CEO
- Steve started as a Mattress Firm franchisee with $1,300 and scaled to a $60M business.
- He later became CEO, grew to 3,000 stores and $3.8B in sales, learning culture and scale lessons.
People First Drives Tech Success
- Technology fails without adoption because people resist change and lack training.
- Steve Stagner insists on People → Process → Technology and crawl‑walk‑run rollout to avoid the "valley of despair."
Adopt AI Or Risk Falling Behind
- Embrace AI as a thought partner to automate mundane tasks rather than fear it as a replacer.
- Steve warns people who don't adopt AI risk losing jobs and should use it to do higher‑value work.
