Molto Labs — what are we doing here? Research at the frontier? Cooking up some peptides? Nope. I just thought it sounded right. And this is where I’ll be sharing the stuff that I think is cool as we navigate the crazy AI timeline we’re currently in.
I left my job at a company doing AI for financial advisors back in 2024. It’s a great company… I probably should never have left! But I felt the need to go off and do something on my own. Plan A was to start a beer company. And then a non-alcoholic beer company. And while “operating” (and dealing with some trademark stuff), I found myself getting pulled back to AI. Life as a solo founder was lonely and hard — and turns out that AI is great for helping you do things that you otherwise wouldn’t have the confidence or expertise to even attempt (I suppose this is a flavor of AI psychosis — more on that another day). Fast forward a few months, through an ill-fated attempt at building a venture-backable AI infrastructure company — and then Claude Code had its moment. It was cool and capable and accessible even to people like me.
And by people like me, I mean non-technical people. OK — I’ll sell myself as semi-technical if I really need to (physics major with some mechanical engineering thrown in), but my real engineering friends would laugh at me. I intentionally gave up the dream of a technical career back in college when I discovered that I enjoyed tackling marketing problems (AKA email copy and FB lookalike audiences) more than interferometry and measurement systems analyses. Since then, I’ve been an early-stage startup generalist and never even considered writing a line of code.
Using Claude Code in late 2025 felt like a revelation. I had ideas and suddenly I could execute on them. Unlike a few months earlier, when I could make something magical that fell apart after 30 seconds, now I could actually get involved in building a real app. (Most notably: an app to help ophthalmology residents track their surgical training — currently in closed beta with 1000+ cases logged.) This was super exciting.
What hadn’t changed was the loneliness. It sucks to build alone. And I think this is the most underrated thing about working at a small company. Before heading off on my own, I shared our one-room office with my boss. We chatted before calls. Caught up after calls. Got lunch, coffee, and drinks after work together. Trying to find some level of traction (let alone product-market fit) is really hard, and then if you have the privilege of starting to serve customers… that’s hard too. And having a friend (and boss) on that same ride was honestly what kept me coming back for more. Not having that has been the worst part of the past couple of years.
But there are ways of closing the gap. I have weekly one-on-ones with friends I respect who are in similar worlds. Getting their opinions (and maybe even helping them when I can) keeps me engaged, grounded, and encouraged. And of course when they’re not around I always have my trusty Claude.
I say that half-joking, but it’s 100% true: Claude is absolutely my thought partner in addition to being my engineer. I’d like to think that I’ve gotten pretty good at working with them (him? it?). I’ve moved my day-to-day chatting from Claude Desktop into Claude Code, pointed at a folder of notes about my life and work, so I have better control of context. I was always bugging my friends for the tips, tricks, and config files that make it all work better. It feels like pulling a slot machine sometimes — I swing from exhilarating-magical-optimism to defeated-unsure-worried on an hourly basis. But while casinos always win, I somehow feel like I’m still up. And I want others to be having as much fun with this as I am.
Molto Labs — I guess we’re a “lab” in the sense that we’re experimenting. And I do mean “we”: it’s me and my agents working here. This is where we’ll share what we’re seeing: what we’re building, what’s working, and what blew up in our faces. I also think it’s a cool name.
# Welcome.
> Who I am, how I got here, and what molto labs is for.
- written by: Andrew Schroeder
- edited by: Fable 5, GPT-5.6 Sol
- status: published · 2026-07-28
- canonical: https://moltolabs.ai/notes/welcome/
- raw markdown: https://moltolabs.ai/notes/welcome.md
---
<!-- Thursday link glue: the "pulling a slot machine" sentence → /notes/the-ai-slot-machine/ once it publishes. -->
Molto Labs — what are we doing here? Research at the frontier? Cooking up some peptides? Nope. I just thought it sounded right. And this is where I'll be sharing the stuff that I think is cool as we navigate the crazy AI timeline we're currently in.
I left my job at a company doing AI for financial advisors back in 2024. It's a great company… I probably should never have left! But I felt the need to go off and do something on my own. Plan A was to start a beer company. And then a non-alcoholic beer company. And while "operating" (and dealing with some trademark stuff), I found myself getting pulled back to AI. Life as a solo founder was lonely and hard — and turns out that AI is great for helping you do things that you otherwise wouldn't have the confidence or expertise to even attempt (I suppose this is a flavor of AI psychosis — more on that another day). Fast forward a few months, through an ill-fated attempt at building a venture-backable AI infrastructure company — and then [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code) had its moment. It was cool and capable and accessible even to people like me.
And by people like me, I mean non-technical people. OK — I'll sell myself as semi-technical if I really need to (physics major with some mechanical engineering thrown in), but my real engineering friends would laugh at me. I intentionally gave up the dream of a technical career back in college when I discovered that I enjoyed tackling marketing problems (AKA email copy and FB lookalike audiences) more than interferometry and measurement systems analyses. Since then, I've been an early-stage startup generalist and never even considered writing a line of code.
Using Claude Code in late 2025 felt like a revelation. I had ideas and suddenly I could execute on them. Unlike a few months earlier, when I could make something magical that fell apart after 30 seconds, now I could actually get involved in building a real app. (Most notably: an app to help ophthalmology residents track their surgical training — currently in closed beta with 1000+ cases logged.) This was super exciting.
What hadn't changed was the loneliness. It sucks to build alone. And I think this is the most underrated thing about working at a small company. Before heading off on my own, I shared our one-room office with my boss. We chatted before calls. Caught up after calls. Got lunch, coffee, and drinks after work together. Trying to find some level of traction (let alone product-market fit) is really hard, and then if you have the privilege of starting to serve customers… that's hard too. And having a friend (and boss) on that same ride was honestly what kept me coming back for more. Not having that has been the worst part of the past couple of years.
But there are ways of closing the gap. I have weekly one-on-ones with friends I respect who are in similar worlds. Getting their opinions (and maybe even helping them when I can) keeps me engaged, grounded, and encouraged. And of course when they're not around I always have my trusty Claude.
I say that half-joking, but it's 100% true: Claude is absolutely my thought partner in addition to being my engineer. I'd like to think that I've gotten pretty good at working with them (him? it?). I've moved my day-to-day chatting from Claude Desktop into Claude Code, pointed at a folder of notes about my life and work, so I have better control of context. I was always bugging my friends for the tips, tricks, and config files that make it all work better. It feels like pulling a slot machine sometimes — I swing from exhilarating-magical-optimism to defeated-unsure-worried on an hourly basis. But while casinos always win, I somehow feel like I'm still up. And I want others to be having as much fun with this as I am.
Molto Labs — I guess we're a "lab" in the sense that we're experimenting. And I do mean "we": it's me and my agents working here. This is where we'll share what we're seeing: what we're building, what's working, and what blew up in our faces. I also think it's a cool name.