We build the calm layer between your customers and your business.
Vendrix is the operating layer for small businesses that run on messages. We started building it in Douala in 2022, for the shops our friends and families run. It exists to give small operators the same reflexes as a well-staffed team, without the team.
Every small business in Africa runs half its operation through a phone. A restaurateur wet-hands the WhatsApp. A boutique owner alt-tabs between Instagram and a POS. The work is real; the tools are borrowed from another decade.
The tool for this work already exists, a customer's messaging app. What's missing is the calm software layer that reads the messages, replies well, and closes the sale, without asking the owner to become a systems administrator.
We're a small team out of Douala and Yaounde, building for the businesses we grew up in. Slow-cook, opinionated, patient. Not a hype cycle, an operating layer.
Four rules we hire against.
Show the work.
Every screen demonstrates Vendrix completing a task. No diagrams, no jargon, no configuration screens sold as features.
Be a calm layer.
Software should reduce the number of tabs an owner has open, not add another. If the product buzzes when it doesn't need to, we cut it.
Ship for the shop.
Every pixel is designed against a real business, a bakery, a boutique, a restaurant, not against an abstract SMB persona.
Automate the boring.
The exciting part of a business is choosing what to sell, not answering the tenth are you open Sunday of the day. Vendrix takes the ninth.
Come see how we run the company.
Field notes, product decisions, and the odd hire announcement.