It happened one day.
Jannae Gammage was working with the Small Business Administration as a technology consultant, helping companies get access to capital through traditional lenders, like banks and credit unions. She couldn’t stop thinking, however, that there was a problem: The ways in which lenders and businesses connected were woefully outdated, especially on the technological front.
“I was inside the mess, watching good businesses die, while trying to navigate legacy workflows,” she told TechCrunch. “My literal job was to find technology to solve this, and it didn’t exist. I couldn’t find anything.”
So she called up an old friend, Alaia Martin, and the two got to work. In 2022, the duo started working on Cyphr, a Kansas City-based company focused on making the lending process easier for lenders and small businesses. Cyphr is a Top 20 finalist in Startup Battlefield, part of TechCrunch Disrupt 2025.
The product analyzes alternative data sources and financial patterns of small businesses to help lenders make decisions about small business creditworthiness. Cyphr went through a few iterations since its launch, but the recent advancements in artificial intelligence paved the way for what the product is today. It officially launched in the market in April 2024.
“When we started out, the problem we were trying to solve was, ‘How can we make underwriting smarter, faster, so that these entrepreneurs get access to capital?’” Gammage, CEO, said. “We wanted a world where money moved freely like it did in other verticals. We came in with a borrower-centric experience, whereas a lot of companies were focused on ‘how do we make this work for lenders.’”
They started building an LLM, using training data based on overlooked business owners and their company’s financials, to help lenders make decisions about which companies to partner with.
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