Running a small business is the loneliest job in town.

You can’t vent to your staff — you’re their boss. Your partner has heard it all and it isn’t fair to keep going. Your mates with jobs don’t really get it. So the hard stuff — the quiet month, the invoice that hasn’t been paid, the employee who isn’t working out — goes around and around your head at midnight, and nowhere else.

Northwind is where it goes instead. A voice app on your phone: you talk, out loud, the way you would to someone who’s run a business and owes you nothing but a straight answer. It remembers what you told it in March when you circle back in June. And it pushes back — like a good adviser, not a fan.

The conversations it’s built for

Not generic pep talks — the specific ones that come with the keys to a business:

• Cash flow — wages due Friday, invoices unpaid, what to triage first without panicking.
• Chasing money — the awkward call to the client who owes you, rehearsed before you make it.
• Raising your prices — on customers you’ve had for years, without losing them or apologising.
• Staff — the first hire you can’t quite afford, and the employee everyone knows isn’t working out.
• The client who is half your revenue — and all of your dread.
• The bad review — what to write back, and what actually fixes the number.
• The quiet month — calendar or crisis? Read it calmly before spending against it.
• Getting out from under — a business that runs when you stop, and the first holiday in years.

Still deciding whether to quit the day job?

That conversation lives here too. Not a pep talk and not a lecture — the two numbers that make the decision (is the business real, are you financed), a written trigger, and someone to think it through with at 11pm when the spreadsheet stops helping.

Why it’s private enough for the real stuff

You’ll say things about money, staff and family that belong to no one else. So: no account, no sign-up, and your conversations live encrypted on your phone — not our servers. Never anyone’s training data. If you delete everything, it’s gone, including from us. The full detail is in the privacy policy and the covenant.

What it costs

Your first conversation is free, however long it takes, and every month includes twenty free minutes — enough to know if it earns a place in your week. Memberships from US$19.99/month when talking becomes a habit. Pricing, plainly.

Download Northwind on the App Store — iPhone, two minutes to your first conversation, no card and no account.