Lowell Ricklefs.

Jellyvision has acquired FlexMinder, a Seattle startup that helps healthcare administrators automate the insurance claims submission process.

FlexMinder CEO Lowell Ricklefs told GeekWire that his company’s existing business and team, which currently consists of fewer than 20 employees, will continue to grow while its technology powers future Jellyvision products.

Jellyvision, a Chicago-based employee communication platform, plans to expand its new Seattle office with up to 100 people.

Ricklefs joined FlexMinder in 2011 shortly after Deepak Kumar and Will Miceli started the company and took it through the Techstars program in Seattle, before raising a $1.2 million Series A round in 2014.

FlexMinder aggregates the reimbursement process for healthcare flexible spending accounts, which allow employees to save money by putting pretax dollars aside to be spent on qualified items such as insurance deductibles, co-pays at the doctor, prescription drugs and more. The company’s software also lets individual customers see their healthcare claim information via a single portal. It currently serves more than 2,500 clients. 

“We came to the conclusion that we could grow more quickly by merging with a company with a much larger existing market presence,” Ricklefs said.

Jellyvision, which employs 300, will incorporate FlexMinder’s products into its own platform known as ALEX.

“We believe that FlexMinder’s capabilities will help make our service even more useful to people by enabling them to easily view and understand their benefits and claims activity,” Jellyvision CEO Amanda Lannert said in a statement. “In many cases, people leave free money on the table every year due to the need to follow laborious process. By introducing FlexMinder’s capabilities to our existing platform, we look to make a difference by putting money back into people’s wallets.”

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Ricklefs, meanwhile, is also leading Traction Advising, a Seattle-based firm that helps founders and CEOs who are looking to sell their startup in the $5 million to $30 million range. Ricklefs, also a mentor for Seattle-area groups like Techstars and UW CoMotion, said his experience building and selling companies as a founder and CEO showed him a new opportunity to help his peers.

“There are mid-market investment banks who will advise companies with target valuations between $30 million and $200 million, but they are not interested in transactions below $30 million, primarily because they are the same amount of work (or more) than the larger transactions and they generate lower fees,” he explained.

Ricklefs was previously the chief operating officer at Toluna, and a former chief revenue officer at GMI.

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