Many small businesses are profitable on paper but fail because cash arrives late and bills come early. Better cash-flow tools could keep them alive.

Create a financial service that helps small businesses manage cash flow. Study who is affected, dig past the obvious symptoms to the real root causes, and design a solution that could actually work in the real world. There is no single correct answer — what matters is the quality of your thinking, the stakeholders you consider, and how clearly you justify your chosen direction.

• Who is most affected by this problem, and how did you account for them?
• What is the single biggest risk to your solution working?
• Which assumption, if wrong, would break your whole idea?