Let Someone Else's Customers Fund Your Growth

01 /The Concept

"What if any company could become a world-class financial advisor for its own customers?" – that's the question Uprise asks.

The answer: the company earns more revenue from the same customer base, charging for those advisory services. It also gains a much clearer picture of customers' financial situations, which sharpens its own offers and targeting for its core products.

To make that happen, Uprise built a financial advisory service that any company can embed in its cloud product, giving customers direct access to financial experts. Uprise specialists provide all the advice; the embedding company just collects a commission.

The platform integrates as a white-label product – Uprise's own branding is invisible. Adding it as a standalone section of a site takes a few days. Going deeper and embedding Uprise's functionality into specific flows within the cloud service is also possible via API.

Uprise targets a specific customer profile: self-employed individuals and small business owners – freelancers, bloggers, marketing agencies, web and design studios, realtors, independent legal and medical practitioners, property owners, and family restaurant operators.

Partners it recruits to embed the platform are cloud services already serving these segments.

Clients can get advice across a wide range of financial topics: budgeting, accessing credit and investment, retirement planning, buying personal and commercial property, investment strategy, choosing bank accounts, tax management, setting employee salaries, business and personal insurance, and more.

The base plan covers general questions at $192 per year. Personalized advice specific to the client's business situation costs $288 per year.

Uprise earns beyond subscriptions too – through referral commissions from its financial partners when clients open accounts, take out insurance, get loans, buy property, and similar actions. All revenue, including subscription fees, is shared with the embedding company.

Subscribers get a personal financial plan, expert advice, and in-chat Q&A. Uprise also monitors clients' accounts proactively, reaching out with suggestions based on their current financial picture.

The company launched in 2022 as a direct-to-consumer financial advisory platform, then pivoted in 2023 to the B2B embedding model.

Since then it's been in closed beta with five cloud service partners. Now it's announcing a public launch, accompanied by $3.3 million in new funding on top of the $1.4 million raised previously.

02 /Why It Matters

Venture fund a16z argued back in 2020 that vertical cloud services could grow revenue 2–5x from the same customer base by adding financial services.

Many people still assume that means credit products and installment plans. It's not that narrow.

Unit ([related review](/review/obychnaja-kompanija-finteh-rost-vyruchki-v-2-5-raz)), which has raised $169.6 million, lets cloud services embed a full banking suite for their customers: account opening, payments, transfers, card issuance, and lending.

Qover ([related review](/review/vstraivaemoe-strahovanie)), which has raised $71.7 million, enables cloud services to offer embedded insurance products to their customers.

Layer ([related review](/review/kak-bystro-poluchit-100-tysjach-tjoplyh-klientov)) was founded just last year and raised $2.3 million in May on an embeddable bookkeeping platform for cloud service customers.

And now Uprise – helping customers of cloud services access financial advice and connect with financial partners.

Embedded services are actually an excellent distribution strategy: attach yourself to sellers of goods or services that naturally generate demand for what you offer. Yes, you share the revenue with whoever hosts you – but that's almost always cheaper than finding customers yourself.

Air Doctor ([related review](/review/hrenovyj-ili-ohrenennyj)) followed exactly this logic. It built a marketplace for finding doctors abroad for travelers who suddenly need medical care. First it tried direct consumer acquisition, then pivoted to embedding its platform in travel agencies, insurance companies, and carriers. It raised $50.9 million.

The same playbook shows up in adjacent categories: a clothing and accessories repair service (Prolong, €1.5M raised) embeds directly into online fashion retailers, and an installation and maintenance specialist marketplace (Dealt, €7M raised) now goes the same route – positioning itself as the after-sale service layer inside retailers whose products need setup or maintenance.

03 /Opportunities

Surprisingly, people spend more on services than on products. In the US consumer spending mix, services account for roughly 70% of all expenditure, with goods making up just 30%.

That means building scalable service delivery – or aggregating service providers in marketplace form – can generate significantly more revenue than selling products.

The usual question is where to find customers. Chasing each one individually across the internet is expensive. Attaching yourself to someone who has already aggregated the right audience is far more efficient. The examples above demonstrate that this symbiosis works – and more are appearing all the time.

The logical opportunity: build service platforms designed from the start to embed inside other companies' cloud products and online stores.

The host service gets an additional revenue stream from its existing customer base and a better retention tool. The platform developer gets a pre-assembled audience to sell to.

What's left is to decide:

- what services you want to offer or aggregate,

- which third-party services or stores have already gathered the audience who would need them.

So – what services would you offer to the customers of which third-party platforms?