Curate
“Can a vertical SaaS for event professionals monetize the payments layer on top of proposals without building a full financial stack?”
Founded2013
HQSaint Charles, Missouri, United States
FoundersRyan O'Neil
Total raised$4.2M
Latest roundSeed, 2021
IndustryVertical SaaS / Event Management
The story
Curate began in 2013 as a spreadsheet-replacement tool for a single floral business, then pivoted to a SaaS platform for florists (formerly Stemcounter), and expanded into catering and broader event professional workflows. Its embedded finance surface area is narrow: Stripe as an integrated processor plus a newer 'Curate Payments' product that abstracts an underlying provider. It remains a small, vertical SaaS company (~16-33 employees) focused on proposals, production, and payments for event businesses.
Last 12 months
Product timeline
2013
Founded by Ryan O'Neil and his wife at kitchen table as tool for their floral/event business (originally Stemcounter/MeasuringSpoon)· founding
2019
First institutional capital raise from Cultivation Capital· funding
2021
$1.25M Series Seed 2 from OCA Ventures and Jim McKelvey· funding
2024
Launched Curate Payments (US integrated payments)· banking
2026
Reached 1,000,000 proposals milestone; expanded AI Assistant features· product
The stack
3 layers disclosed in Curate’s embedded-finance stack
Payments / PSP
StripeCurate Payments (self-branded)
Money movement
in the full report
Accounting
in the full report
Accounting gap: minor
2 more providers across 2 layers, with confidence-scored evidence and source URLs, are in the Embedded Finance Index report.