Janus Labs · A product studio
We named ourselves after Janus, the Roman god of doorways and beginnings, the one who looks forward and back at once. It’s how we think about the products we make: rooted in how work actually happens today, built for where it’s going next.
II Why Janus
Janus faced two ways at once: toward what is, and toward what’s coming. Every product we make is built to do the same.
One face stays on the work as it’s really done: the handoffs, the paperwork, the friction people have stopped noticing. We learn the job before we rebuild it, because a tool that ignores how the work actually goes only becomes one more thing to manage.
The other looks to where that work is heading, and builds for it, AI-native from the first line. The software carries the load itself, so the job gets done and the machinery fades into the background.
III Products
Expenses run on air.
AI-native corporate travel and expense management. Sylph books travel inside policy, reads every receipt, matches it to the transaction, and enforces the rules with cited verdicts, so finance reviews exceptions instead of everything.
Fly for less. Seriously less.
Consumer flight booking for students. Vindr sells the same seats the big sites sell and shows what they would have charged — one booking core, skinned per school, arriving first at the University of Pittsburgh.
The people side of the same house: onboarding, records, and the paperwork in between, carried the way Sylph carries expenses.
The system of record underneath it all: the books, the close, and the reporting, rebuilt AI-native from the first line.
IV One house
What the products share isn’t a codebase. It’s a doctrine — the same three moves, made in the same order, every time we take on a new kind of work.
As it’s actually done: the handoffs, the paperwork, the friction people have stopped noticing. Before a line is written.
From the first line, not as a feature bolted on later. The software carries the load itself and shows its work.
The job gets done; the tool recedes. Success is the moment nobody thinks about the system anymore.
V Founders
Co-founder · CTO
Akshat builds the infrastructure powering Janus Labs’ products. A global citizen raised in the UAE and India, he holds an M.S. from Pitt and researches quantum networking at Pitt’s Quantum Lab. He interned on corporate travel and expense systems, the same world Sylph now rebuilds. He has competed nationally in tennis and basketball.
Co-founder · COO
Atharva Sumant studies Mechanical Engineering and Physics at the University of Pittsburgh. He grew up around the incumbent: his father built a career implementing SAP Concur for enterprises. He builds simple, useful products around what customers actually need, bridging the gap between engineering and business. He also created TharvTalks, where he shares stories about business, technology, and innovation.
Co-founder · CEO
Ben is a graduate student in Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh, with a background in machine learning and applied research, including national-lab work turning messy real-world data into something useful, the same problem at the core of Sylph’s rule engine. A former varsity esports athlete with three straight conference championships, he brings the same drive to building AI-native tools that take real work off people’s plates.
VI The door is open
