Portrait No. 001
Ajantha Suriyanarayanan
Founder & CEO
MentalLoad
Raised — Currently in a raise
I didn't start this company from a whiteboard. I started it from burnout. After 22+ years leading organizations in big tech — while managing kids, aging parents, and a household simultaneously — I was burntout. That pause finally gave me a name for what had been quietly dismantling me: mental load. No solution existed to manage it. So I built one. Melo is an EQ-driven AI Chief of Staff that helps women share their household mental load with their village — without making them the project manager of that village. It exists to keep women in the workforce and climbing the ladder after kids. As a Behavioral Researcher and Product Strategist, I build with women, not just for them. 100+ interviews later, I'm more convinced than ever: the Mom Tax isn't a lifestyle problem. It's an economic emergency — and I'm determined to close it. *Melo aka MentalLoad AI is the product name. The official incorporated company is Butterfly HQ Inc.
In her words
“The world's most overlooked workforce crisis lives in women's heads rent-free — mental load. 18 tabs open, all at once. I launched Melo - driven by EQ | built on AI - so their Village can finally step in, close a few tabs, and let women get back to thriving.”
Chapter I
The toughest challenges you've faced as a founder.
I grew up in Chennai, India watching my mother do it all — career, children, in-laws — with grace. Her secret? Her Village. Groceries delivered in minutes because the shopkeeper knew the family. Aunties appearing when needed. Help that was affordable, present, woven into daily life. Then I immigrated to the US, and the Village disappeared. Nuclear families. Unaffordable help. No safety net. Just mothers — stretched to breaking point — holding everything together alone, invisibly. This isn't just me. It's all of us. We're all asking to be seen. Demanding to be acknowledged. I'm building Melo in my 40s, bootstrapped, while living the exact problem I'm solving. School pickups, extracurriculars, the right snacks, homework, nutritious dinners with variety, grocery lists, playdates, playing Santa and the Tooth Fairy, while maintaining connection with my partner — all while steering a startup. I need to ignore advise about the hustle and leaving it all on the table. Why? Because I'm not a 20-something yo with unlimited runway. I'm a mother, a seasoned operator, a leader who spent 22+ years leading large organizations — and I'm doing this anyway, because no one else is. That's not a liability. That's the qualification. What I have validated is 120+ beta users with strong engagement, driving investment interest + a growing list of women eager to reclaim their lives with Melo. This isn't a solution searching for a problem — it's a category-defining product women have been waiting for. The Village will appear. We need to know how to leverage them. That's where Melo helps.
Chapter II
Your vision.
From my own experience and every woman/ mom I've mentored, there's a pattern: why do brilliant women keep disappearing from the workforce? At 4x the rate of men! This isn't running away from ambition or lacking ability. But it's from the relentless, invisible weight of running a family with no support — the mental load that has no off switch, no delegation, no end. Every task remembered, every appointment tracked, every family need anticipated — it compounds silently until something breaks. Usually her career, often her health, and sometimes her marriage. I want to stop that breaking point. Women not climbing the corporate ladder they way they ought to is not a pipeline problem - it's a pathway problem. With Melo I wish to stop that massive talent bleed, and enable women to remain in the workforce as long as they wish to. By giving women an EQ-driven AI Chief of Staff that genuinely distributes the load, Melo enables something radical: a woman who shows up fully, everywhere that she wishes to be. The downstream impact isn't small. It unlocks more women staying in the workforce, more mothers climbing to leadership, more role models, and stronger families. It will lead to a measurable dent in the wage gap. This is not a productivity app. This is infrastructure for equity for women.
Chapter III
The impact you want to leave behind — for your industry, your community, and the women who come next.
Thirty years from now, I want the \"Mom Tax\" to be a historical footnote — something we tell our daughters used to exist. I want a world where a woman's ambition is never quietly taxed by the invisible labor of keeping a family alive. Where her Village shows up without her having to orchestrate it. Where AI didn't just make businesses more efficient — it made women's lives more just. I want my daughters to inherit a workplace that never makes them choose. That's what I'm building. That's why it can't wait.