When building Raynmaker.ai's revolutionary AI sales platform, CEO Joe Gagnon knew that creating a true ownership culture would be essential to attracting and motivating top talent.
Drawing from 25+ years of experience leading multiple companies, Gagnon understood that equity compensation only motivates employees when they can easily understand and track their ownership stake.
A former Carta user in his previous endeavors, Joe made the switch to Cake Equity for Raynmaker.ai, allowing him to establish a foundation where every team member feels like a genuine owner, with clear visibility into their vesting progress and the value they're building.
Raynmaker.ai develops autonomous sales technology that helps small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) compete with enterprise-level sales capabilities.
Led by CEO Joe Gagnon—a serial entrepreneur combining startup innovation with Fortune 500 experience—Raynmaker’s AI-powered sales platform automates the entire customer acquisition process.Their proprietary RaynBrain™ sales engine uses natural language processing and machine learning to convert leads into customers through automated sales workflows.
Beyond his business acumen, Joe brings a unique perspective as a performance coach and ultra-endurance athlete. His conviction that sustainable high performance requires intentional balance perfectly matches Cake's values—both understand that taking care of health and wellbeing isn't separate from business success, it's fundamental to it.
This holistic approach to leadership shapes how Raynmaker.ai builds both its technology and its team culture.
Before implementing Cake Equity, Raynmaker.ai faced challenges in establishing their employee equity program. Manual grant administration consumed excessive administrative burden, while the lack of automated vesting notifications meant employees couldn't track their equity compensation progress effectively.
"It was challenging to manage the grant process; we were unable to easily share option vesting progress to make our team feel excited about their ownership and managing grants was time consuming.”
For a company committed to granting options to all employees, these operational inefficiencies threatened to undermine the very purpose of their equity compensation strategy—creating a motivated, invested team that feels genuine ownership in the company's success.
A former Carta user, Gagnon knew exactly why he left Carta in search for better equity management solutions. Cake Equity is the clear choice for Raynmaker’s needs, with its simplified and user-friendly approach to startup equity management.
"Ease of setup, intuitive user interface, loved the assets available with the platform, like standard option letters.”
Standard stock option agreement templates proved especially valuable, eliminating hours of legal document preparation. These pre-built equity grant letters enabled Raynmaker.ai to issue employee stock options efficiently while maintaining legal compliance.
Implementation exceeded expectations with responsive customer support:
"Fantastic! It has been seamless and even the few times we needed support Cake is there for us! Customer success is great and we feel supported throughout."
This alignment between Raynmaker.ai and Cake reflects a shared philosophy: recognizing that people are the true drivers of success, whether building revolutionary AI technology or creating equity management solutions.
Since implementing Cake Equity, Raynmaker.ai has achieved significant improvements in both operational efficiency and employee engagement.
Cake Equity has enabled Raynmaker.ai to achieve universal equity participation across their entire workforce. The streamlined grant management process eliminated the administrative barriers that often prevent startups from extending equity to all employees. With standard option letters and intuitive workflows, issuing grants became efficient enough to include every team member.
The platform has dramatically reduced the hours spent on equity administration. What once consumed valuable leadership bandwidth—managing grants, tracking vesting schedules, preparing compliance documents—now happens automatically.
"We definitely save time with grants and grant management.”
Automated 409A valuation tracking and equity compliance reporting have particularly lightened the regulatory burden, freeing Gagnon and his team to focus on scaling the business.
Cake’s automated monthly vesting emails have fundamentally shifted how the team perceives their equity compensation. These regular notifications keep ownership tangible and top-of-mind, transforming abstract stock options into a concrete sense of partnership in the company's success.
"With the monthly vesting emails, all of our employees truly feel like they own part of the company.”
This continuous reinforcement of ownership has created a more invested, motivated workforce—exactly the culture Raynmaker.ai needed to drive innovation in the competitive AI sales space.
Raynmaker.ai's approach to equity reflects their belief that true innovation comes when every team member feels invested in the company's success. By granting options to all employees, regardless of role or seniority, they've created a culture where everyone shares in both the responsibility and rewards of building a transformative technology platform.
"We grant options to all employees. They love it and feel like owners vested in our future!"
This universal equity participation aligns perfectly with their mission of democratizing enterprise-grade sales capabilities for businesses of all sizes. Just as their technology makes sophisticated sales automation accessible to SMBs, their equity program ensures that the benefits of company growth are accessible to every team member.
Raynmaker.ai's experience with Cake Equity demonstrates how choosing the right equity management platform from the outset can transform a necessary administrative function into a strategic advantage. By selecting a solution that prioritizes both operational efficiency and employee experience, they've successfully built their equity program on a foundation that supports their innovative company culture.
For a company that's redefining how businesses approach sales through AI, having an equity platform that automatically keeps employees engaged and informed is more than a nice-to-have—it's essential infrastructure for growth. Joe Gaganon's enthusiasm for Cake is particularly telling, given his experience with other platforms in previous ventures:
"Keep doing what you are doing! I was a former Carta user. :-). Happy to have left them."
The combination of time savings, improved employee understanding, and seamless support has made Cake Equity an integral part of Raynmaker.ai's growth strategy, proving that when it comes to building a successful startup, making equity management easier isn't just about compliance—it's about creating a culture where every team member truly feels like an owner.
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