No business should run out of cash by surprise.

Zensus began in the rooms at Capital Factory, Austin's startup hub. Event after event, our founder, Ajin Sunny, met people building things that mattered. Most of them did not run out of ideas, or nerve, or customers. They ran out of money, and too often they did not see it coming.

It was hard to watch. Founders gave everything to the mission, and cash became the thing they would deal with later. When later came, the numbers in the investor update grew rounder and more hopeful, because there was no time to build an honest forecast and too much at stake to admit the gap. Good companies ended up surviving on a story instead of a plan.

Ajin knew that feeling from the inside. He is a first-generation immigrant who spent more than 12 years studying and working in the United States on his own. There was no one to show him where his money was going or how long it would last. Every month was a careful guess, made alone.

Zensus is what he needed then, and what he watched so many founders go without: an honest view of where the money is going, early enough to change course before it is gone.