CentSight launches AI finance platform, lands $1.5 million pre-seed
Veteran software operator Gerald Hetrick is tackling the costly hurdle of fractional CFO services by integrating with existing accounting tools to offer instant financial clarity. Through proactive alerts, the new software helps business owners anticipate cash gaps and track margins in real time.
CentSight, a Lakewood-based financial intelligence platform built for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), launched publicly on Wednesday alongside $1.5 million in pre-seed funding from Mudita Venture Partners.
The company is the latest venture from Gerald Hetrick, a longtime operator who previously founded Able, the recruiting software firm acquired by Bullhorn in 2023. With CentSight, Hetrick is taking aim at a gap he says he has watched widen across nearly three decades as a founder, executive, board member, and advisor: business owners who hold plenty of financial data but lack a clear read on what to do with it.
The platform connects directly to the tools owners already rely on, including QuickBooks Online and bank accounts linked through Plaid. Once connected, owners can ask questions about cash flow, expenses, revenue, profitability, runway, and margins in plain English and get answers pulled from their own numbers, rather than waiting for a month-end report or paging through spreadsheets.
"Too many good businesses run blind, not because the owners aren't smart, but because the answers have always been locked behind a CFO they can't afford," said Gerald Hetrick, founder and chief executive of CentSight. "We built CentSight to move owners from blind to clear to decisive, making them fluent in their own finances so they can act with confidence instead of crossing their fingers."
The pitch rests on a familiar math problem for smaller firms. More than 36 million small businesses operate in the United States, according to the company, yet fractional CFO advisory work can run anywhere from $3,000 to upward of $18,000 a month, a price that puts seasoned financial guidance out of reach for many growing companies. CentSight positions itself as a way to close that distance without a hire.
Central to the platform is a feature CentSight calls Signals, a proactive alert system that monitors the connected accounts and flags issues before an owner thinks to ask. Instead of a generic dashboard notification, the company says Signals surfaces specific prompts, such as a cash gap forming in the coming weeks, a customer falling behind on payment, a vendor category climbing, or a margin starting to narrow. The aim is to hand owners a next question worth asking while there is still time to act on it.
The round was led by Mudita Venture Partners, which also helped build the company through Mudita Studios, its company-creation arm. That arrangement gave CentSight access to product, engineering, finance, and go-to-market support as it moved toward launch.
"Business owners do not need another spreadsheet or static dashboard," commented Sandy Schwartz, managing partner at Mudita Venture Partners. "They need trusted, real time financial intelligence that helps them make better decisions faster. Gerald has lived this problem as a founder, operator, and advisor, and CentSight brings together the product vision, AI capability, and market timing needed to make CFO grade clarity accessible to a much larger group of businesses."
Beyond Able, Hetrick has worked both sides of the board table as an operator and investor and serves as an Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) Implementer, coaching founders on running tighter companies. He frames CentSight as an answer to the same recurring frustration.
"Most owners are not lacking data," Hetrick stated. "They have bank accounts, accounting systems, spreadsheets, reports and advisors. What they are missing is a clear answer when they need to make a decision. CentSight turns that data into guidance they can actually use."
CentSight arrives as more small-business owners look for practical AI tools tied to daily operations. Finance remains one of the harder areas for many of them to staff, and owners often steer hiring, pricing, and spending off delayed reports, fragmented systems, or instinct. The company is betting that putting the most important financial signals in front of owners sooner will let them adjust course before the books close rather than after.
The company draws a line between itself and traditional dashboards and accounting reports, which tend to show what already happened, by focusing on what is happening now and what may come next. CentSight offers plain-English questions and answers with the supporting numbers attached, real-time dashboards aimed at operators rather than accountants, and the Signals monitoring layer.
CentSight is available now through early access at centsight.com.
