When Commissionly co-founders Martin Baker and Patrick McCarthy first set out to build their business, they envisioned a simple, self-serve tool for small companies. After all, how complicated could commissions really be?
Turns out, incredibly complicated.
Unlike accounting or finance, there are no external regulations governing how companies design their sales compensation plans. That means every company does it differently—and the creativity is endless. Some reward long-term contracts, others incentivize only the first few deals. Some want to turn account managers into aggressive hunters. Others just want to make sure sales reps aren’t earning “too much” on easy wins.
After talking with multiple companies across many industries, Martin, Patrick and the Commissionly team realized that no two compensation plans are alike. In fact, they were still encountering new formats and quirky payout models every week. And all of this variability made one thing clear: companies weren’t just managing compensation; they were improvising it.
Commissions Are Complicated by Design
Why are companies doing this to themselves? Because incentives drive behavior. During a recent interview, Martin explained that sales leaders want to nudge reps into strategic selling—new logos, upsells, multi-product adoption. “And while those goals are great for revenue, they often lead to “comp plans Frankenstein’d together with if/then logic, exceptions, caps, and kickers,” Martin said.
“There is a constant battle between sales managers and sales reps to find a balance between cost and return,” Martin explained. “The sales managers will say, we’re going to promote this particular product, and sales reps will be making a fortune. Then, the CRO will come back and say they are making too much money on this thing. But, of course, the program is in place, so then an adjustment happens, and you have all of these modifications and exceptions that start to come in. That’s where it becomes super complicated.”
That’s where the chaos begins. And where this emerging company saw its moment.
The Accidental Product That Customers Wouldn’t Let Die
Initially, commissions were just an afterthought in a broader CRM platform. But after launching to crickets and making the decision to table this project to focus on their careers, Patrick noticed something strange. Years after walking away from the CRM business, they were still getting signups—and every user cared about one thing: commission tracking.
A blog even named them the best CRM with commissions built in. That unexpected validation prompted a second look, and eventually, a pivot. The founders stripped away the CRM fluff, doubled down on commissions, and relaunched the product with laser focus.
Turns Out, the Spreadsheet of Doom Is a Universal Pain
In the early days, their product model was simple: Sell product A, get 10 percent. But as more customers came on board, complex compensation strategies came with them. The expanding team burned through early funding as they rebuilt the platform to handle tiered payouts, accelerators, exceptions, lookup tables—you name it.
And here’s what they discovered: Comp plan complexity doesn’t scale with company size. A team of five can have more convoluted commission logic than a team of 500. That insight shifted their approach. Rather than chasing an ideal customer size, they began focusing on industry verticals—like payments, staffing, and finance—where the pain was most acute and where compensation was a mission-critical function.
From Cold Email to Strategic Acquisition
Years later, a cold email from a familiar name changed the trajectory of the company again. When Ryan Westwood reached out expressing interest, Martin and Patrick had no idea what would follow. But what stood out was Ryan’s track record.
“He wasn’t just another investor. He’d built and exited successful companies before, and his new venture aligned perfectly with our vision,” Martin said.
The commission planning market exceeded the $1.3 billion mark in 2023. Experts estimate the pace within the global market for these platforms will continue on a 4.6 percent growth rate through 2030. Martin added that the valuations of some of them have been a billion plus.
“We’d always been interested that we might be the next one,” he said. “And then Ryan reached out to us by email saying, you know, I’m interested in what you’re doing. Would you like to have a conversation?’ Whenever I’ve been asked, ‘who do you think is going to buy you, I always said we not only had the best value going in based on the what had been achieved on such small funding, but also the best future value with somebody who already had a customer base and was already serving the same market.”
The accountancy, financial part of any industry, and the sales office, all ticked boxes for the Commissionly team. “That’s why I was interested to speak to Ryan and find out his history, what he’d done, and what he was trying to do with the new business,” Martin said.
Among the numerous pitches from other investors and companies at different stages, Ryan was different. He was coming with a team that already had previous success with new businesses.
“Ryan is a typical serial entrepreneur that just builds bigger and bigger businesses,” Martin said. “And the last business had been a very successful exit. He’s done his lock-in, as it were, and then when he left and found Fullcast to invest in, you could see that the team had followed him.”
For this next step, Martin and Patrick were looking for someone who knew how to do that and had all the money-raising contacts. “So when he looked into Ryan, who’d raised money for Fullcast, we saw that the names were significant., They were people that were well known in the VC industry, or well known in the software that they were working for or were invested in,” Martin said, adding that the Fullcast team’s background was appealing.
“We’re talented in our fields. Because we’ve never done the ten years at a corporate, at the higher level, and been educated from the ground up in every single aspect of our skill set. Patrick is over coding and works with people and with the team. My experience is in sales and marketing side and the general organziation operations . But the Fullcast team, with Bala [Balabaskaran] and his partner who started it, and the people they now have onboard, all have that built-in experience. They know how to build a 500-person sales team, or to work to scale a business quickly, so that was all very important as well.”
Patrick added that they also spoke to some of the team. “We met Bala and Isaac, and we spoke to some of the sales team. It wasn’t necessarily about them telling us what the company is like, but the feedback was outstanding. People spoke so highly of the business and the relationship with the executive team. That was very encouraging for us,” Patrick said.
For Martin and Patrick, joining forces with the Fullcast team is the right move. By combining Commissionly’s agility and advanced commission planning insight with Fullcast’s operational muscle, proven leadership, and expansive network, the two companies are poised to bring clarity, scalability, and innovation to an underserved market.
