AI could not find our family business. So we built the solution.

Aster Inn & Antiques was born out of a fire. In 1918, flames took our family's house and two saloons in Cle Elum, Washington — a mountain town tucked between Seattle and the ski slopes. Instead of walking away, the family rolled two buildings down the hill — one from uptown Cle Elum that my grandmother believed was the original schoolhouse, another from nearby Ronald — and joined them into a hotel.

Those two buildings became the lobby and, in back, a small country store — antiques, groceries, a bit of everything. When the town needed housing for its school teachers, the Inn's founder traded his labor at the Oval sawmill for lumber and built two units. Then he built nine more.

We were the second hotel to open in town. Five generations later, the first one is long closed. We're still here.

For decades, travelers found us through familiar search and word of mouth. When we started checking AI answers about places to stay, Aster Inn & Antiques was missing from the answers we saw. That experience prompted us to investigate how our business was represented.

The bookings slipped and the phone went quiet. These were our experiences, not a controlled study proving AI answers caused lost bookings or revenue.

That experience led us to ask how other owners could review their business facts and act on opportunities without needing a technical team.

Help customers understand what you offer, find accurate details and take the next step.

Owners need useful facts and practical tools, not another complicated dashboard or an unsupported promise about rankings.

A plumber, restaurant, salon or inn can start with a free business presence, review relevant facts and use eligible email booking requests. Needs and evidence vary: we do not presume every business is invisible.

Keep useful business facts in your listing, receive eligible customer requests by email free, and use dated reports to see information differences, observed competitors and practical corrections. Add other tools when your plan and connections support them.

Mel has spent 25+ years in executive leadership at companies including AT&T, Starbucks, Avanade, Auth0, and OfferUp. She founded and sold a staffing company, sat on VC boards, and served as Chief Diversity and Equity Officer — developing systems that ensure all people have equal opportunities. MiddleVerse is that same mission applied to small business visibility.

She built MiddleVerse as a company of one — using AI as her team — because she believes the solution to small business invisibility should be as accessible as the problem is urgent.

We want independent businesses to be easier to understand and contact. MiddleVerse makes sourced business facts available to people and connected apps, while giving owners a way to review their listing and understand what checked sources say.

Accurate facts, useful comparisons and direct customer requests—not a promise of rankings or guaranteed AI traffic.