Commissions, Inc. (CINC) is a turnkey sales and marketing platform for residential real estate, founded in 2011 by 📝Duane Legate. It pairs lead generation with a CRM, coaching, and process tooling to help high-volume "enterprise" agents — teams that run a real estate practice like a business, hiring specialists for each role — turn more leads into closings. The platform has served well over a thousand agent teams and built its position without raising venture capital.
Commissions Inc reached profitability on roughly $1 million of invested equity. It then recapitalized — $15 million in equity from Serent Capital and $15 million in debt from Silicon Valley Bank — proceeds that returned the original investors about 30x. After a period of rapid growth under Serent, the company sold again roughly sixteen months later to Fidelity National Financial for about $240 million. CINC remains a reference point for the residential real estate growth-system category it helped define.
Duane asked me onto the board alongside a few investors and real estate visionaries, and after the Serent recap, Serent asked me back. The part I keep coming back to: it scaled and exited without ever taking venture money.