Introducing Zero2Ten: know how lendable you are before you talk to a bank

Introducing Zero2Ten: know how lendable you are before you talk to a bank

Zero2Ten is software built by small business owners, for small business owners. The first thing our platform does is show you how lendable you are and roughly how much you can get, before you ever sit down with a banker. Then it helps you build one loan package you can take to every bank until you find the one that meets your terms. It's free during early access.

That's the whole idea. Here's why it had to exist.

Why I built this

Every small business needs money at some point, to start or to grow. It's the one thing they all have in common, and it's brutally hard to get.

How do I know that? Because I've been a small business owner. I've run companies, and I've gone through the loan process while trying to keep those companies running at the same time.

Here's how that goes. The bank wants your tax returns, business and personal, for every owner with twenty percent or more. Then the credit reports. Then a personal financial statement you end up filling out from memory at 11 PM, because you're not sure where the real numbers live. Then a debt schedule. Then some of it a second time, because the year was wrong or the return was incomplete.

You're not a banker. You don't speak the language. And you've got a business to actually run, so the loan gets worked at night and on weekends, an hour at a time. Then it sits, because you work nights and the bank works bank hours. A question you send Thursday at 10:45 PM can wait until Monday.

That's the runaround. Thirty days becomes ninety, and you still don't know whether the answer was ever going to be yes.

The part that actually stings

You go through all of that just to find out whether you were lendable in the first place.

That's the wrong order, and it exposes something most owners never say out loud: they don't fully know their own numbers. Nobody ever sat them down and taught them which numbers a lender cares about, so they find out the hard way.

The worst place to find out you don't know your numbers is across the desk from a banker.

What actually stalls a loan

Loans drag on. Loans fail. When they do, it usually isn't the business. It's the file.

These are the things that stop a package before anyone gets near a real decision:

• The information doesn't match from one document to the next
• The tax returns don't line up with the personal financial statement
• There are blemishes on the credit report that nobody explained
• The cash flow doesn't cover the payment on paper
• The taxes aren't finished, or the returns are incomplete
• The debt schedule is missing or disorganized
• Rent rolls, or the schedule of real estate owned, never showed up

All of it has to sync up. The package is the product, and the more complete it is, the better your odds of reaching a real answer instead of another round of homework.

This is our own claim rather than outside research, and we stand behind it: roughly 80% of loan rejections aren't about the business. They're about how the application was prepared.

What the platform does

Our platform is Zero2Ten HQ. Funding is the first thing it does, and it's what's live today.

You create an account and start a funding project. You upload your financial information. HQ checks each document as it arrives, that it's the right person, the right year, and complete, and flags a problem immediately instead of three days later. From there it runs a cash flow analysis across the business and the people behind it, gives you a lendability read, and fills in your personal financial statement, pulling the liabilities straight from your credit report.

What you walk away with is a package you can shop. One package. Take it to every bank. Find the one that meets your terms.

That last part carries more weight than it sounds like it does. Most owners walk into one bank and wait, which puts you in the position of asking for a favor. When your package is portable, you get to shop.

What it doesn't do

We can't get your tax returns for you. You still gather your own documents, and anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something.

Zero2Ten is not a lender. We don't approve anything, we don't promise funding, and the credit decision stays with the bank where it belongs.

What we kill is the waste. The guessing about what the bank wants, the assembling it wrong, the resubmitting, the weeks of circling. You'll only do it once, and you'll know it's right.

The other two seats at the table

Owners aren't the only people stuck in this process, so we built for the other two sides as well.

Brokers and freelance BDOs get the full workspace: a CRM, engagements with their borrowers, AI-supported cash flow analysis and packaging, and lender network management. A borrower who shows up organized is a borrower worth their time.

Banks and lenders get the other end of it. A faster go/no-go, and far less rework, because the analysis is already done and the package arrives complete. We're on their side of this too. Small commercial loans are hard to make work because the cost to analyze a file doesn't shrink just because the loan does. Take that cost out and smaller loans start to make sense again.

Where we are today

There's more than $700 billion in small business loans outstanding in the US (Federal Reserve, 2025), spread across 36.2 million small businesses (SBA Office of Advocacy). Willing borrowers, willing capital, and a broken process sitting in the middle of them. That's the thing we're building against.

We're in early access now. Free for business owners, free for brokers and freelance BDOs, and lender partnerships are discussed per institution.

If you think you'll need funding this year, the best time to find out where you stand is while nothing is on fire. Get early access at zero2ten.biz.

Don't let the wrong loan cost you the business. Know your numbers first.

Jason Swafford Founder, Zero2Ten