About Vestae
Go and do the work. The office side is already handled.
Vestae runs the administration of a business so the owner does not have to think about it. This is where the name comes from, what we do, and what we will not do.
Why it is called Vestae
Vesta was the Roman goddess of the hearth. The hearth was not decoration. It was the room the household's business was run from, where the records and the money were kept, and keeping the fire in was somebody's job.
That is the job Vestae does, while you are out working.
Why we built it
The work finishes at six and the office side starts at nine. The quote you said you would get to. The invoice that can wait until Sunday. The registration nobody told you was due, and the thing your trade is required to carry that you have never been asked about until now.
None of that is a reflection on how anyone runs their business. It is the part that gets put off because there are only so many hours, and the part you cannot do at all if nobody has told you it exists. Businesses rarely come apart because the owner is bad at the work. They come apart at the edges.
So Vestae runs the edges. Your customers, quotes, invoices, bookings, documents, stock, jobs and your website live in one place, and an AI operator works inside it and does the running. You tell it things the way you would tell someone who works with you: Mrs Ellis wants Thursday morning, that job is finished, send the bill. It writes it down, does what follows from it, and tells you what it did.
What we believe
A few things we are firm about.
You already run a business
You are not starting from nothing and you do not need teaching your own trade. The work is not the problem. The office side around it is the part that keeps getting pushed to the weekend.
Admin is not the job
Nobody started their business because they wanted to raise invoices. It still has to be right, so it should be done properly by something that never gets tired of doing it.
Some of it you cannot know
What to register and when, what your trade must be insured for, what has to appear on an invoice. Not knowing is not a failing. It is what happens when nobody hands you a manual.
Software you have to learn is a second job
If it needs a course, a consultant and a month of evenings, it has already failed. You should be able to talk to it the way you would talk to someone you had just taken on.
It should be working while you are out
Waiting for you is the failure. The work carries on while you are on the job, and it is handled when you get back.
Your business is yours
Your customers, your records and your words belong to you. You can export them and take them with you. We will not sell your data.
What we will not pretend
It does not run itself and you cannot stop paying attention. The decisions stay yours: what you charge, who you take on, when you say no.
Everything the operator does is written down in plain words, so you can check it, correct it or undo it. Nothing goes out under your name without you seeing it first, until you tell it otherwise.
We are not going to tell you how many customers we have or show you a wall of logos. Vestae is in beta with a small number of real businesses on it. Join the waitlist, and when your invite arrives, judge it on what it has actually done by the end of the month.
Who it is for
Sole traders and one person businesses, where the owner is also the workforce. Trades, salons, garages, cleaners, groundworkers, trainers, small studios, consultancies.
And established firms: a team, stock on the shelf, an accountant, and several systems that do not talk to each other. That is a different problem and it gets a different way in, with your data brought over and your people set up properly.
If you have an idea and no company yet, it starts further back than either: what to register, what to call yourself, and what a first invoice has to say.
Who builds it
Vestae is built by Optimotive. We build operational software for small businesses, and Vestae is the product we most wanted to exist.
We use it ourselves. This website, its words, its photographs and the research behind its pricing were all made inside Vestae, by the same operator a customer gets. When something is awkward we feel it the same week you would.
Come and see what it does
Vestae is in beta and places are currently full. Join the waitlist, and when your invite arrives, give it the business you are already running and judge it on the state of the office side four weeks later.