Levitate

Levitate develops an AI-powered relationship marketing platform, integrating authentic communication tools with dedicated human specialists. The platform enables small businesses to cultivate and maintain strong client relationships, emphasizing a personalized "Keep-in-Touch Marketing" approach. It streamlines genuine engagement, helping businesses move beyond generic mass outreach to foster meaningful, lasting connections.

The company was founded in 2017 by Jesse Lipson, an entrepreneur who previously founded and sold ShareFile to Citrix. Lipson established Levitate from the insight that small businesses needed more personalized client engagement, moving beyond impersonal marketing tactics. This vision underpinned the creation of a platform designed specifically for authentic interaction.

Levitate primarily serves small businesses, equipping them with tools and support to engage their networks and foster lasting client loyalty. The company's overarching vision is to empower these businesses to build and sustain meaningful, authentic relationships. It ensures personalized connection remains a central and effective strategy for driving their ongoing success.

# High-Level Overview

Levitate is a relationship marketing platform that helps relationship-based businesses—particularly financial advisors, insurance professionals, and similar service providers—maintain authentic, personalized communication with their clients at scale[1]. Founded in 2017, the company has built a "Happiness Platform" that combines software tools with dedicated coaching to enable businesses to cultivate meaningful client interactions across multiple channels[1].

The platform serves over 6,000 customers and addresses a fundamental challenge in professional services: how to stay top-of-mind with clients without resorting to impersonal, mass-market messaging[1]. Levitate's solution integrates email, text, social media, handwritten cards, surveys, review management, meeting scheduling, and website tools into a unified interface[1]. The company has demonstrated strong growth momentum, raising $55 million in total capital, with its most recent Series D round led by Harbert Growth Partners, Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures, and Bull City Venture Partners[1].

# Origin Story

Levitate was founded in 2017 as a response to a specific market need in financial services and other relationship-dependent industries[1]. The company emerged from the recognition that authentic communication at scale—a capability that could deepen client relationships while expanding advisor reach—represented a significant untapped opportunity[1]. Rather than building yet another generic marketing automation tool, Levitate positioned itself as a platform specifically designed for professionals who rely on trust and personal connection as core business drivers.

The company's trajectory reflects disciplined capital deployment: it has raised funding through multiple rounds, culminating in a Series D that brought new institutional investors (Northwestern Mutual Future Ventures and Harbert Growth Partners) into the cap table alongside existing backers like Bull City Venture Partners[1]. This progression suggests both investor confidence in the business model and the company's ability to execute on its vision.

# Core Differentiators

Levitate's competitive positioning rests on several key advantages:

• Compliance-first design: The platform includes built-in approval workflows and templates specifically designed for regulated industries like financial services, where marketing communications face strict compliance requirements[5]. This removes friction that generic marketing tools create for advisors.

• Authenticity over automation: Rather than enabling mass-blast campaigns, Levitate emphasizes personalized, tailored communication that feels genuinely personal—using customers' existing email servers (Gmail, Outlook) so messages bypass spam filters and appear as authentic correspondence[5].

• Integrated workflow: The platform consolidates email, text, social media, handwritten cards, meeting scheduling, and contact management into a single interface, reducing tool sprawl and context-switching for busy professionals[1][5].

• Human-centered support: Levitate pairs software with dedicated Success Specialists who help customers develop strategy and provide ongoing marketing support, differentiating it from self-service competitors[5].

• AI-powered personalization: The platform uses AI to generate personalized content recommendations that users can review and approve in advance, balancing automation efficiency with human control[5].

# Role in the Broader Tech Landscape

Levitate operates at the intersection of two powerful trends: the professionalization of small business marketing and the shift toward relationship-driven business models in an increasingly digital world.

As traditional mass-marketing channels (email blasts, cold calling) become less effective, professionals in financial services, insurance, and similar fields face mounting pressure to maintain client relationships through authentic, personalized engagement. Levitate captures this shift by providing the infrastructure that makes relationship marketing scalable without sacrificing authenticity—a capability that was previously available only to large enterprises with dedicated marketing teams.

The company also benefits from broader adoption of AI-powered tools in business workflows. Rather than replacing human judgment, Levitate uses AI to augment it—generating content suggestions, automating scheduling, and managing compliance—allowing advisors to focus on relationship-building rather than administrative tasks. This positions Levitate within the larger movement toward AI-augmented productivity tools for knowledge workers.

Additionally, Levitate's focus on regulated industries (financial services, insurance) provides a defensible moat. Building compliance-aware tools requires deep domain expertise and regulatory knowledge that generic competitors lack, creating switching costs and customer stickiness.

# Quick Take & Future Outlook

Levitate is well-positioned to capture a growing market of relationship-dependent professionals seeking to scale authentic communication. The company's $55 million in raised capital and expanding customer base (6,000+ businesses) suggest strong product-market fit, particularly within financial services where the compliance-first approach resonates strongly[1].

Looking ahead, Levitate's growth will likely be shaped by several factors: continued adoption of AI-powered tools in professional workflows, regulatory pressure on financial advisors to document and approve marketing communications, and the ongoing shift toward relationship-based differentiation in commoditizing service industries. The company's ability to expand beyond financial services into adjacent relationship-dependent sectors (real estate, legal services, consulting) will be a key indicator of its long-term trajectory.

The fundamental insight driving Levitate—that authenticity and personalization, when paired with the right tools, can scale—reflects a deeper truth about professional services in the digital age: technology's role is not to replace relationships, but to enable them at greater scale and efficiency.