Why We Started Folklabs: The Problem with AI for Small Business
Walk into almost any small business in any city, your neighborhood coffee shop, your favorite boutique, your go-to contractor, and you'll find owners who feel like the AI boom has nothing to do with them.
The tools are built for corporations. The learning curve is steep. There's a tidal wave of options with no one to help you sort through them. The consultants charge enterprise rates. And the advice, when it exists at all, assumes budgets and teams that most small businesses simply don't have.
We started Folklabs because we got tired of watching that happen.
It started with an uncomfortable truth
I spent years building a career in tech. And somewhere along the way, I had to confront something I'd been avoiding: none of the work I was doing was designed to help businesses like my parents'.
I was raised by two small business owners. I watched them work harder than anyone I've ever known. And when the AI boom arrived, when every headline promised that AI would transform how we work, I realized that transformation wasn't coming for them. Every company I'd worked for, every product I'd helped build, was aimed somewhere else entirely.
My parents work incredibly hard. They deserve access to the same powerful tools that enterprises have. So do the millions of business owners like them.
That realization is what started Folklabs.
— Casey, Co-Founder & CEO
The same story, from a different angle
Mariah came at the same problem from a different direction and arrived at the same conclusion.
Years in customer success and tech strategy gave me a front-row seat to how rarely that expertise reached the businesses I actually cared about most. Small businesses have always had to do more with less. That's not a complaint — it's a reality most small business owners wear as a badge of honor.
But watching AI arrive and seeing it consolidate resources even further away from small businesses — that was hard to sit with. The businesses that needed help the most were being left furthest behind.
I no longer wanted to watch that happen from the sidelines.
— Mariah, Co-Founder & COO
What we're building
Folklabs is an AI strategy platform built exclusively for small businesses.
We don't point you toward a generic list of tools. We sit down with you, learn how your business actually works, and build you a customized roadmap: a clear, prioritized plan of what to use, for which tasks, and in which order. No jargon. No enterprise pricing. No one-size-fits-all approach. And no replacing your team. We believe AI should give your people valuable time back, not take their jobs.
We vet every tool ourselves. We only recommend what we know works. And we built this to be accessible to any business owner, regardless of their technical background. Because the 1% has had plenty of attention. We're building Folklabs for everyone else.
We're just getting started
We're currently working with a small group of early access businesses and expanding on a rolling basis. If you're a small business owner who feels like AI could be doing more for you, you're right. And we'd love to help you figure out exactly where to start.