Vancouver-based fintech startup Slate has raised $1.3 million in pre-seed funding to build embedded lending infrastructure for platforms serving small businesses.
The round was backed by N49P and North Exit Ventures, with early support from industry leaders including Hanna Zaidi, Chief Compliance Officer at Wealthsimple, who is advising the company.
Slate was co-founded by Scott Elliot and Devin Picciolini (pictured) after years working closely with small businesses and the platforms that serve them. Across industries, the founders observed a recurring problem: access to lending and cash flow remained a persistent bottleneck, largely because existing financial products failed to reflect how businesses actually operate.
“Access to lending and cash flow was always the bottleneck, and it never fit how businesses actually operate,” said Elliot. “Lending needs to live inside the platforms businesses already rely on every day.”
Rather than building another digital bank, Slate is focused on embedding lending directly into the software platforms small businesses already use. The company aims to help platforms offer financing without having to build capital markets infrastructure, underwriting models, compliance frameworks, or risk operations from scratch—barriers that have historically made embedded finance slow, costly, and misaligned with platform economics.
Slate’s approach is designed to enable platforms to offer financing as a native feature, without forcing lending to become their core business. The startup is assembling a team with deep experience across lending, product, risk, and compliance, with a focus on building production-grade systems that can scale responsibly.
With its pre-seed funding, Slate plans to continue developing its embedded lending infrastructure and work with Canadian platforms looking to deliver financial products more seamlessly to their customers. The company positions itself as foundational infrastructure for the next generation of platform-led financial services in Canada.
That Scott guy is a looker