Rivas Will

Prospect · United States

Passare

2026-04-30

How to read this. This is Rivas Will's read on publicly observable signals — founder tenure, PE fund vintage, hiring patterns, acquisition posture. It is analysis, not insider information. If you are the founder and we have it wrong, write to Sam — the correction ships in the next update.

Why this company

Passare is the largest named funeral-home SaaS independent in the United States that is not inside Tribute Technology. Headquartered in Abilene, Texas, Passare books roughly $8M in annual revenue at about 60 employees (Tracxn profile, retrieved 2026-04-18 — revenue-per-employee ~$121.8K, up 16% year-on-year on headcount). That puts it at the low end of the Rivas Will $2M–$50M ARR mandate band, but it is the only right-size, non-Tribute, non-VC funeral-home PMS that keeps surfacing on every competitor map. The prior read listed Passare's top-three competitors as FrontRunner Professional, SRS Computing, and CRäKN per Crunchbase and Growjo — correction as of 2026-04-21: CRäKN is also inside Tribute Technology now. Tribute's own tmsvideo product page announces "the next phase of CRäKN in partnership with Tribute Technology … Meet Tribute Management Software," Capterra lists CRäKN's product page as "Tribute Management Software" with the body "Formerly referred to as CRaKN, Tribute Management Software is your whiteboard reimagined," and CRäKN's Crunchbase organization page now redirects to Tribute Technology. So the practical non-Tribute shortlist in the US at >$2M ARR is now effectively Passare alone, plus a long tail of sub-$2M ARR cloud entrants (Restfyl, WellDeparted, byondpro, Osiris). The scarcity argument is sharper than the 2026-04-18 framing implied.

Ownership — important qualifier

Passare is not bootstrapped and not VC-backed in the usual Rivas Will sense. Per the company's own about page (retrieved 2026-04-18), Passare "was created in 2012 as a result of" a study commissioned by eighteen independent funeral home owners; the parent company, Directors Investment Group (DIG), "obtained full ownership of the company in 2015" and Passare now operates "under the umbrella of Directors Investment Group." DIG's President and CEO is Kris Seale, a CPA whose tenure at DIG runs from 1985 to present per an FTC public filing record — a 40-year tenure inside the holding company, with his daughter now serving as DIG EVP, Chief Marketing Officer per the Abilene Chamber 20-Under-40 program, a succession-ready family-operator posture. DIG is a privately held Abilene-based holding company; DIG's own company overview and June 2025 Connecting Directors release identify the subsidiaries as Funeral Directors Life, Passare, Claimcheck, and Parkway Advisors. Funeral Directors Life (FDL) is the pre-need insurance carrier that funds a large share of US funeral pre-arrangement contracts and is DIG's largest asset by revenue. Third-party databases still report a "$6M funding raised" line — that reflects pre-2015 early-stage financing, not current cap-table activity.

Acquirer-posture correction (2026-04-21). DIG's own published 2031 Vision document (a 2025–2026 update, published 16 December 2025) states: "The acquisition of third-party marketers and preneed funeral life insurance companies presents a very good opportunity for Funeral Directors Life and DIG to achieve above-average returns on investment." DIG is publicly an acquirer of preneed insurance marketers through 2031, not a seller of its software subsidiary. That reframes the Passare exit picture: the parent has stated its capital-deployment thesis in writing, and the thesis is acquisition on the insurance side, not divestiture on the software side. A Passare carve-out is still possible — holdcos change direction, and software multiples are higher than insurance multiples — but the base-rate read now anchors on a decade-plus DIG hold absent a clear strategic-review catalyst.

The structural read: any exit of Passare is a DIG board decision, not a founder-CEO call, and the DIG board has publicly stated an acquirer thesis through 2031. That is a weaker exit-signal profile than a bootstrapped operator where the CEO's public posture drives timing. It is not zero — insurance holdcos can reverse course, and the 2020 Tribute Technology comp sets a valuation floor that a finance-led DIG board would notice — but the standard Rivas Will Signal 4 (founder tenure / "next chapter" language) does not apply and Signal 3 (corp-dev hire) would need to appear inside DIG's insurance-side M&A function, not Passare's product org. I have not found a VP Corporate Development or Head of M&A posting on any DIG or Passare-branded careers page as of 2026-04-21; treating this as a dated null.

Why the sub-vertical is interesting despite the ownership caveat

The 2020 recapitalisation of Tribute Technology — Providence Strategic Growth sold the funeral-software roll-up to Carlyle and Vista Equity Partners on October 30, 2020 (PE Hub, 2020, ConnectingDirectors, 2020; MarketScreener deal record) — was done after a "6-week auction" at a reported $1 billion+ purchase price at 18–20x EBITDA (PE Newsletter, Sept 24, 2025). The same analysis claims "nearly 70% of funeral homes" use some version of Tribute's technology. Tribute has added bolt-ons since — MKJ Marketing in 2022 (Outcompete Marketing), plus integration of the four predecessor assets (Frazer Consultants, SRS Computing, FrontRunner Professional, byondpro).

That comp is the structural shape a Passare-founder conversation would start with: the benchmark buyer pays 18–20x EBITDA for a funeral-software platform once consolidation thesis is proven. The US has 19,000+ funeral homes; Tribute does not own 100% market share; a second roll-up platform is not a crazy idea. Tribute did experience leadership turbulence in late 2024 (CEO Charlie Cole, CFO, and Head of Transformation resigned October 2024 per the same PE Newsletter piece; the company now operates under an "Office of the CEO" structure) — material for a Rivas Will buyer-brief refresh if the Carlyle/Vista hold ages into a second transaction.

Signals (as of 2026-04-30)

2026-04-30 cycle-back — does the 2031 Vision acquirer thesis show 2025-2026 deal flow?

Nine days after the 4/21 brief flagged DIG's 2031 Vision as the controlling structural read, this TRAVERSE asks the obvious follow-up: is FDLIC actually deploying capital on the insurance side, or is the vision aspirational? The answer matters for Passare because a parent that is visibly spending on its stated thesis is one that is unlikely to rotate out of the software subsidiary; a parent whose stated thesis is not yet matched by closed deals is one whose capital allocation is still in flux.

Finding: FDLIC's last cited acquisition is the American Life and Annuity Company purchase of 15 September 2022, confirmed in DIG's 2022-2023 and 2023 annual reports. Three and a half years on, no further FDLIC acquisition has surfaced in 2024, 2025, or 2026 SERP coverage. The 2024 FDL annual report (2024 FDL Annual Report) reports "strong financial position" and an AM Best rating but no new closed transaction. FDL's 2025 expansion has been organic, not acquisitive: approval to sell preneed life insurance in Virginia (NFDA, late 2025) and a second consecutive growth-rate increase on its preneed product (FDL blog, 2025). Both expansion vectors are licensure and product, not M&A.

Comp-set context: competitors are taking the visible 2025-2026 preneed M&A. Krause Agency acquired a preneed insurance division on 4 February 2026 — DE PERE Wis., framed as bringing "experienced industry leadership" and adding "new preneed offerings." Federal Life Insurance Company completed the acquisition of Texas Service Life Insurance Company, a leader in preneed insurance — same comp set, same window. Two comparable deals to comparable buyers in the same year FDLIC's stated 2031 Vision thesis would have predicted FDLIC itself acting.

Read. The 2031 Vision document is now ~16 months old (December 2025) without a closed FDLIC transaction inside its stated thesis, and competitors are taking the visible deals. Two readings are consistent with the data:

  1. Thesis-but-no-execution. The stated thesis is real but FDLIC's M&A function is slow, capital-disciplined, or pricing-out of the same auctions Krause and Federal Life are winning. Under this reading, DIG's capital rotation is muted across both sides of the holdco, which weakly increases the probability that a strategic review eventually opens up — boards that are not deploying capital tend to look harder at what they own.
  2. Aspiration plus organic-only execution. The 2031 Vision is more about messaging FDL's identity than committing to closed deals; FDLIC's 2025 growth path is the licensure-plus-rate-increases organic path, and the "acquisition of third-party marketers and preneed funeral life insurance companies" line is held in reserve for opportunistic strikes. Under this reading, capital-rotation pressure on the software side is essentially zero.

Either way, the brief's base-rate "decade-plus DIG hold absent a clear catalyst" framing is the right anchor. The new datapoint sharpens — does not flip — the read: the parent's stated acquirer thesis is not yet matched by closed 2025-2026 deal flow under its own brand, while competitor capital is moving. That is a piece of texture a buyer-side analyst evaluating an inbound on Passare should know, because it changes the framing of any approach: not "convince DIG to sell software because they are spending on insurance" (which the 4/21 read implied), but "DIG holds Passare while its stated thesis develops; the question is whether the insurance-side M&A function ever fires inside the window." A patient buyer who maintains coverage on DIG strategic posture indefinitely is the rational profile for this prospect.

Signal 3 re-verified negative on this update: the same DIG / FDL / Passare careers-page surveillance pattern returns no VP Corp Dev or Head of M&A posting today. If FDLIC's M&A function is slow because the team is small or unstaffed, a hire there would be the cleanest leading indicator that the 2031 Vision is moving from aspiration to execution. Watch for an FDLIC- or DIG-level corp-dev hire announcement, not a Passare-level one.

Exit-signal strength: 1/5

Held at 1/5 with a sharpened narrative on this update. The structural comp (Tribute 18–20x EBITDA) is strong; the scarcity of non-Tribute alternatives is materially tight (CRäKN has been inside Tribute as Tribute Management Software since at least mid-2024, leaving Passare as the sole independent above $2M ARR); the parent has publicly stated an acquirer thesis on the insurance side running to 2031, but that thesis is not yet matched by closed 2025-2026 FDLIC deal flow (last cited acquisition is American Life and Annuity Company, 15 September 2022) while competitors (Krause Agency Feb 2026, Federal Life with Texas Service Life) are taking the visible preneed M&A. A low score is the right score — the scarcity improves the valuation argument to a prospective acquirer but does nothing to change the decision clock, which sits with DIG's board and Kris Seale. Upgrade triggers to watch: (a) a DIG / FDL / Passare-branded VP Corporate Development or Head of M&A hire — the cleanest leading indicator that the 2031 Vision is moving from aspiration to execution, (b) a Tribute Technology secondary sale or IPO filing (would crystallise the comp and put pressure on the second-best asset), (c) DIG strategic-review or "2031 Vision refresh" language that explicitly reopens software divestiture, (d) the first closed FDLIC acquisition of a preneed marketer or life insurer since ALAC in 2022 — would prove the 2031 Vision is real and create capital-rotation pressure, (e) NGL-adjacent insurance-industry trade press flagging DIG strategic review. Revisit in 60–90 days unless one of those fires.

Next-update suggestions

Sources