Solo founder based in Germany. Not a programmer — I built Ethno-API
entirely with AI assistance (Claude, Copilot).
The product: a structured phytochemical dataset derived from the USDA
Dr. Duke's ethnobotanical database, denormalized and enriched with
quantitative signals from PubMed, ClinicalTrials.gov, ChEMBL, and
USPTO PatentsView. Stack: PostgreSQL 15, Python 3.12 (async httpx
pipelines), Rust/Actix-Web, Cloudflare Workers/R2.
Three weeks ago I had no idea what a Parquet file was. I stumbled onto
a data gap in natural product research and decided to close it.
Interested in the gap between public-domain research databases and
production-ready data products — and in what's possible when AI handles
the implementation.