Every fintech founder eventually gets the itch to build a credit product. I'm no different. But I also know that lending is where well-funded startups go to die if they get the sequencing wrong. It's capital-intensive, the risks are compounding, and for a pre-seed founder it feels like betting the entire company before you've dealt the cards.
The question I keep coming back to: how do you earn your way into credit without raising a massive debt fund on day one?
The market is finally answering that. Credit-as-a-Service platforms and embedded lending infrastructure are creating a new playbook. The embedded finance market is projected to be worth hundreds of billions by 2025, and credit is the next frontier beyond payments. Specialized CaaS platforms now handle the licensing, servicing, and compliance that used to require a full in-house lending stack. That lowers the barrier to entry dramatically, and it maps perfectly to what we're building.
Our approach is staged. Dentplicity comes first. It's a data intelligence platform that gives dental practices a grounded view of their finances. Revenue, expenses, cash flow patterns, all visible in real time. That's not just useful for the practices. It's the single most valuable asset for underwriting. We see financial health at the practice level before anyone asks for a loan.
Once that data advantage is established, CLIN enters with embedded credit. Instead of building our own balance sheet, we partner with a CaaS provider and use Dentplicity's data as a proprietary underwriting engine. A dental practice needs a $50,000 piece of equipment. Because we already understand their finances, we can pre-approve them and offer the product at the exact moment of need. The CaaS partner provides capital and rails. We provide data and distribution. Capital-light entry into a capital-heavy market.
Only after we've proven the model, refined the underwriting, and demonstrated real demand do we consider bringing lending onto our own balance sheet. That's the long game: capturing the full value chain. But we earn our way there with data first, not with a nine-figure valuation.
The sequence matters. Deposits give you insight. Insight gives you underwriting advantage. Underwriting advantage gives you the right to take credit risk. Skip a step and you're guessing. I wrote about the broader vision in From Deposits to Credit: The Full-Stack Opportunity. This is the execution plan for getting there without betting the company.
Data sources: Cross River Bank 2025 Newsletters, various market reports on CaaS and Embedded Lending.