Raution Jaiswal is the CEO and co-founder of InsuredMine, a fast-growing software company based in Plano, Texas. Raution worked in management roles at large financial institutions before moving to Dallas in 2015 to become a Director of M&A for CBRE, a leading commercial real estate services company. He discovered a problem experienced by small insurance agencies and worked to evaluate the opportunity before leaving CBRE to start InsuredMine in 2017.

InsuredMine provides an all-in-one sales CRM (customer relationship management) and marketing automation software for independent insurance agencies in the US. InsuredMine helps improve and automate marketing, sales, and service to help insurance agencies sell more, serve customers better, and become more profitable. It also integrates with many popular agency management systems and other popular tools.

In this episode, Raution talks about how he found and verified an acute pain experienced by insurance agencies to start a software company with 30 employees already. You'll hear how Raution hired his first development team, why he hasn't raised any outside funding, what's happening in the insurance industry right now, and his plans for growth at InsuredMine.

There are 10X more software acquisitions for under $50M than the few billion-dollar deals we hear about in the news, but we just don't hear about the smaller ones that create so many successful life-changing outcomes for founders. 

In this special "Ask the Expert" episode of the Dallas Sofware Podcast, I ask Chris the top questions that Dallas startup founders ask me about selling their company when they are still small:

1. What's happening right now in mergers & acquisitions of software, SaaS, and fintech companies that sell for $10M to $50M?
2. What are common valuations ranges for software startups and small companies with revenues between $500K and $5M?
3. What are the factors that affect valuation one way or the other?
4. Can you really sell a startup for 5X revenues when it's still small?
5. Who is buying these smaller software companies?
6. How does the process work to sell your company?
7. What are the pitfalls that founders make? What should they be thinking about before they try to sell?
8. Is it better to have outside funding or to have bootstrapped when selling your company?

In this episode, Mike shares the story of how ID90 was founded to solve a specific internal problem for airline companies, how ID90 grew with an expanded strategy and strategic funding, and how ID90 survived the travel downturn of 2020. Mike shares his 20-year background in the online travel booking industry and why he and his family love living in the Dallas area.

ContraForce was founded in late 2020 and already has active customers, seven employees, and some angel (and co-founder) funding. The ContraForce platform complements existing security tools and provides comprehensive visibility and helps IT teams at mid-sized companies to quickly respond to threats with automated AI-driven incident responses.

ContraForce is a recent graduate of the Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator and is currently raising a seed round of funding. 

In this episode, Stan shares his perspective on the current state of cybersecurity threats,  modern security solutions, and how Contraforce is providing a specific solution to help small and midsize companies. He also describes his experience in the Y Combinator incubator in the summer 2021 cohort. 

Givelify is now the most popular online and mobile giving platform with an easy donation app and a powerful donation management system. Over one million people have donated $3 billion to 55,000 churches, non-profits, and other causes using Givelify. Givelify has over 90 employees in offices in Indianapolis, Indiana, and Dallas, Texas, with more remote employees all over the world. Givelify is bootstrapped and has not taken outside venture capital investment.

In this episode, Wale talks about he started the company with friends from college in 2013, trying unsuccessfully to raise venture funding to launch the company, how his own pastor was the first Givelify customer, and growing to over 55,000 non-profits with the most popular giving app on the iPhone and Google app stores. He also talks about how generosity and supporting non-profits can be enabled with a frictionless experience to make donating a more common practice all over the world.

In the episode, Bo shares how they got their mobile advertising startup and running in the year of COVID, the challenges of raising investment capital as a new startup, how he is handling tough challenges as a first-time entrepreneur and an introvert, and where he sees the mobile advertising industry going in the next few years.