Women Disrupting Tech

In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Veroniek Vermeulen, founder of Silatha, about why women's health is still expected to be left at the office door. Veroniek trained as an engineer in a field where 80 percent of her peers were men, and spent years trying to fit into a workplace that wasn’t suited for women. She founded Silatha to replace that silence with psychological safety, backed by real numbers on engagement and retention.This episode is for female founders and health tech leaders building company culture, women in leadership deciding what to share about their own health at work, and anyone curious what changes once women's health is on the agenda.What you'll learn in this episodeWhy fitting in at work can mean adapting so well you lose track of what you would build differentlyHow psychological safety becomes measurable: Silatha's programs report 93 percent higher engagement and 92 percent better psychological safety among participantsWhy cycle-related symptoms only seem unpredictable, and what changes once people track themWhat staying silent about women's health costs at work: stress, isolation, absenteeism, and disengagementWhy policy should follow the 80 to 99 percent of people acting in good faithHer three-part advice for founders in perimenopause: learn your own patterns, find a qualified specialist, and be intentional about what you share with your teamChapters:00:00 — Introduction: Women’s Health, Psychological Safety & Silatha02:11 — Meet Veroniek Vermeulen and Silatha02:42 — From Corporate Engineer to Founder05:03 — Fitting In vs. Adapting at Work06:41 — Burnout, Belonging & Being Valued07:53 — Purpose, Viktor Frankl & Letting Go of Control13:38 — How Silatha Evolved from Wellbeing to Women’s Health17:41 — Why Psychological Safety Matters for Health at Work19:59 — Breaking the Taboo Around Women’s Health25:59 — How Organizations Build Lasting Support27:02 — Nura: Private, Always-On Health Support32:15 — Privacy, Trust & Responsible Health AI38:10 — Men’s Mental Health and Inclusive Health Conversations41:00 — The Cultural and Business Impact of Support43:50 — Women’s Health at Work: Regional Perspectives46:14 — How Founders Can Build Psychologically Safe Startups55:15 — Advice for Founders Navigating Perimenopause56:47 — Priorities, Pressure & Getting Important Work Done1:01:26 — Finding Purpose Through the Work1:01:58 — Designing Safer Founder Communities1:04:06 — Where to Connect with Veroniek Vermeulen and Silatha1:04:40 — Closing and Episode OutroShow notes:Blog: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/10/08/episode-172/Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/p/episode-172?r=2v0lts&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=trueBooks discussed in the episodeMan’s Search for Meaning: https://amzn.eu/d/07Dj5X9MFour Thousand Weeks: https://amzn.eu/d/0fyR6E7EConnect with Veroniek Vermeulen and SilathaVeroniek on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/veroniek/Silatha on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/silatha/Silatha on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SilathaJourney/Silatha Middle East website: https://silathajourney.com/Silatha Europe website: https://silatha.com/Silatha on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMEvuobvsmkMqGlv8ndZucQConnect with host Dirkjan HupkesLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkjan-hupkes/Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/FundingCoach: https://fundingcoach.ai/About Women Disrupting TechEvery week, Women Disrupting Tech covers the decisions, patterns, and structural realities that female founders and investors rarely discuss in public but run into every time they meet. Follow to get it in your feed.🎧 Listen to Women Disrupting Tech on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.👉 Subscribe for more conversations with founders building healthier, more honest workplaces.

Every day, women make safety calculations - which route to take, where to sit - that never show up in the data. What happens once that invisible data gets collected?In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Anniek van Veldhuizen, CCO and co-founder of MyHives, about turning daily, unmeasured safety experiences into objective, actionable data. Anniek and her co-founder Nelson built MyHives, and its AI guardian Beekon, to capture safety concerns before they escalate, using privacy-first technology that keeps all processing on the user’s own device.If you’re a founder navigating fundraising bias as a woman, a leader responsible for workplace safety, or simply curious how privacy-first AI can turn subjective feelings of unsafety into evidence that actually gets acted on, this conversation has something for you.What you’ll learn in this episode:Why daily safety calculations, from choosing a route to picking a seat, never show up in official data, and what that costs system designHow MyHives captures both physical and social safety signals without cameras or continuous listening, keeping all processing on-deviceWhy traditional panic buttons fail the moment someone freezes, and how Beekon is built to act autonomously insteadHow unsafe environments cost the Dutch economy an estimated €8.3 billion a year, with roughly €5 billion linked to psychological and safety-related incidentsWhat it took to bring MyHives into pilots onboarding around 33,000 home care workers and station cleanersWhy translating lived experience into numbers moves corporate decision-makers more than personal stories aloneWhat it’s like fundraising as a woman founder alongside a Black co-founder, and how being underestimated became an advantageChapters:00:00 Introduction04:00 Anniek van Veldhuizen on building MyHives from lived experience05:49 The daily calculations people make to stay safe08:08 Why unsafe experiences go unreported10:04 The gender data gap and how missing data shapes safety14:50 Safety, participation, and learned helplessness17:15 Building trust into a tool people can actually use19:52 How MyHives works: app, BEEKON, and BEEKON+24:00 Triggering help discreetly when someone cannot act28:08 How escalation works across languages and locations30:57 Why privacy is central to the product34:58 Preventing false positives and training the system40:32 Trials, pilots, and the workplace safety use case48:09 The business and societal case for better safety data53:16 Pricing, monetization, and the impact model1:00:01 Working with security partners without being absorbed1:04:20 Fundraising as a woman founder and a Black co-founder1:07:36 Designing Fundicoach to feel safe and inclusiveShow notes :Blog: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/09/24/episode-171Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/p/episode-171Connect with Anniek van Veldhuizen and MyHives:LinkedIn (Anniek): https://www.linkedin.com/in/anniek-van-veldhuizen-27731514a/Website: https://www.myhives.nl/en-GBLinkedIn (MyHives): https://www.linkedin.com/company/myhives-nl/Download the Hyves appGoogle Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.myhivesApple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/myhives/id6751838174Connect with Dirkjan Hupkes:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkjan-hupkes/Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/FundingCoach: https://fundingcoach.ai/About Women Disrupting TechEvery week, Women Disrupting Tech covers the decisions, patterns, and structural realities that female founders and investors rarely discuss in public but run into every time they meet. Follow to get it in your feed.🎧 Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube and Amazon Music.👉 Subscribe for more conversations with women building the future of tech.

More than half of Dutch citizens live with a chronic disease, and over 70% of supermarket products are ultra-processed.In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Anke Kuik, co-founder and CEO of FLTRD, about turning a personal interest in nutrition into a tool that helps people navigate the supermarket. Anke walks me through the science behind PureScore, why popular nutrition labels can be misleading, and the founder decisions that took FLTRD from an outsourced prototype to more than 30,000 downloads.This episode is for female founders and women in tech building health tech products, women entrepreneurs curious about the science behind nutrition apps, and any startup leader deciding when to bring technical development in-house.What you'll learn in this episode:Why more than half of Dutch citizens live with a chronic disease, largely driven by lifestyle.How the "food matrix" explains why isolated vitamins or fiber don't work like whole food does.Why FLTRD built its own PureScore instead of relying on nutrition scores that can be gamed.Why outsourcing app development early on slowed FLTRD down and cost more than expected.Why bringing a technical co-founder in-house was Anke's best decision for FLTRD.How FLTRD keeps its scanning tool free while building a B2B model with supermarkets.What Anke looks for in investors beyond capital: retail, FMCG, and dietary network expertise.Chapters:00:00 Introduction to Anke Kuik and FLTRD06:55 Developing the concept and building the first app12:01 Why healthy supermarket choices are so difficult14:21 What "ultra-processed" food really means18:09 PureScore vs. Nutriscore22:56 Personal responsibility, pricing, and the food system25:10 How the PureScore works29:03 Scanning products and choosing better alternatives31:19 Keeping the app free and building a business model34:40 Working with supermarkets and the B2B opportunity37:35 Fundraising, traction, and growth plans39:52 Health impact and scientific validation43:18 Publicity, media attention, and founder visibility46:40 How bringing a CTO in-house changed the company49:00 Finding investors with strategic value50:10 Advice for an AI-powered founder funding platform54:06 Where to find FLTRD & closingShow notes:Blog: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/09/17/episode-170/Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/p/episode-170Connect with Anke Kuik and FLTRD:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankekuik/Website: https://www.fltrd.nl/App:Download the FLTRD app in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store.Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fltrd.nl/Connect with Dirkjan Hupkes:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkjan-hupkes/Funding Coach tool: https://fundingcoach.aiSubstack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/About Women Disrupting TechEvery week, Women Disrupting Tech covers the decisions, patterns, and structural realities that female founders and investors rarely discuss in public but run into every time they meet. Follow to get it in your feed.🎧 Listen to Women Disrupting Tech on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.👉 Subscribe for more conversations with women building the future of health tech.

Juliette is the creator of the AI Flower Framework and founder of the AI Flower Foundation. She spent a year mapping how AI could impact her job as an engineering manager, and discovered why so many AI pilots don’t scale.She turned what she found into an open-source AI framework that maps 152 IT activities against 25 levels of AI capability to show what evolves, fossilizes, or stays human work.Whether you’re a founder, engineering leader, or a woman in tech looking for a concrete way to find out whether AI is actually the right solution to your problem, this episode will give you the three questions you need to ask before you start.What you'll learn in this episode:Why most AI pilots stall before they ever scaleWhy "ten percent wrong" becomes "one hundred percent wrong" once AI touches itThe three questions to ask before reaching for AI: AI, automation, or a system fixHow 152 IT activities map against 25 levels of AI capabilityWhy she kept the framework open source instead of charging for itWhat her own redundancy taught her about staying in control of her careerHer one safeguard for any AI tool that recommends or matches peopleChapters:00:00 Introducing Juliette van der Laarse and the AI Flower framework05:19 From childhood programming to AI research and corporate engineering leadership08:17 Why Juliette started the framework: clarity, career impact, and AI transformation10:05 Why pilot-first AI strategies often stall at the business case stage13:35 Why pilots are useful but not enough for enterprise-wide change16:35 How the framework addresses fear, trust, and job stability19:11 Juliette's redundancy experience and what it taught her about career resilience27:33 Will AI take all jobs, and what has to happen before that becomes realistic29:51 System readiness, regulation, and why some work may stay human32:06 AI overhype versus useful automation33:50 Why shallow IT training can lead teams to overuse AI36:57 How mentoring and senior coaching could scale knowledge better41:10 The structure of the AI Flower: activities, standards, and excellence48:02 AI capability as 25 levels of maturity and scope51:49 Mapping AI capability to IT activities and fossilization of tasks54:57 How the model shows role evolution across DevOps, test, and infrastructure work59:27 Capturing undocumented knowledge and local context in companies1:03:06 Building internal knowledge gathering and documentation workflows with AI1:09:21 Peer review, critique, and building a board of naysayers1:15:46 How the framework changes over time while keeping a stable structure1:18:41 Why the framework is open source instead of monetized1:25:40 Using the model to map AI risk and suggest controls1:30:06 Where companies should start, and the biggest mistake to avoid1:35:23 Why Juliette is setting up a foundation around the framework1:37:35 Safeguards for an AI funding coach and avoiding self-reinforcing bias1:41:15 Where to follow Juliette as the foundation and framework growShow notes: Blog: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/09/10/episode-169/Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/p/episode-169?r=2v0lts&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=trueConnect with Juliette van der Laarse and the AI Flower FoundationJuliette: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliettevanderlaarse/AI Flower Foundation: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ai-flower-foundation/Connect with host Dirkjan HupkesLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkjan-hupkes/FundingCoach website: https://fundingcoach.aiSubstack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/About Women Disrupting TechEvery week, Women Disrupting Tech covers the decisions, patterns, and structural realities that female founders and investors rarely discuss in public but run into every time they meet. Follow to get it in your feed.🎧 Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music.👉 Subscribe for more conversations with women building the future of tech.

Karianne Kraaijestein spent years building resilience through sport, from gymnastics to indoor climbing to yoga, before starting triathlons at 47. Now she's the founder of Adaptive, a coaching platform for female endurance athletes navigating a different kind of endurance test: the hormonal transition.In this episode, we talk about her own journey in endurance sports, why she is focusing on women who are in a hormonal transition, and what data is needed to enable peak performance for women at this stage of their lives.If you're an endurance athlete in perimenopause or postmenopause, or you coach one, and training has stopped working for reasons nobody can quite explain, this episode has pointers on where to look for strategies that improve performance.For female founders and women in tech building trust-dependent products in spaces where the data doesn't exist yet, Karianne provides insights that can help you navigate the early stages.What you'll learn in this episode:Why standard training plans, built for a generic body, fail women in the hormonal transitionWhy tracking sleep, heat regulation, and training load matters more than tracking hormones directlyHow Karianne finished part of the S’GRAIL in Girona on a torn ACL, and what that taught her about riskWhy "too much heart and not enough mind" bankrupted her previous yoga studio, and what she's doing differently with AdaptiveWhy she considers a scientific advisory board the biggest de-risking factor for investors in a trust-dependent productHow letting the community "almost be part of the building" shapes Adaptive's product developmentChapters:00:00 Introduction04:45 About Karianne and Adaptive07:33 The Journey into Endurance Sports10:28 Mental Challenges in Endurance Sports13:29 The Importance of Goal Setting16:22 Navigating Individuality in Triathlons19:14 Overcoming Physical Setbacks22:20 The Recovery Process and Age Factors25:01 Building Adaptive for Women28:13 Understanding Hormonal Transitions31:05 Energy Management and Training Adjustments34:11 The Role of Data in Training36:43 Adaptive's Unique Approach39:49 Integrating Research into Adaptive41:33 The Power of Athlete Data42:47 Research Collaborations and Insights44:17 Understanding Amateur vs. Professional Athletes45:30 Adaptive vs. Competitors in Women's Fitness46:38 Building a Community for Endurance Athletes47:55 Coaching Integration with Adaptive49:23 Business Model and Pricing Strategy52:56 Proving the Business Case for Adaptive55:41 Data Privacy and Trust Issues1:00:10 The Role of Community in Data Sharing1:01:34 Building Trust with Scientific Validation1:03:20 Future Expansion and Market Opportunities1:04:46 Navigating Burnout and Performance1:09:22 Lessons from Past Experiences1:12:50 Design Principles for Personalized Solutions1:15:01 Connecting with Karianne, Adaptive and Future PlansShow notesBlog: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/09/03/episode-168/Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/p/episode-168Connect with Karianne Kraaijestein and AdaptiveLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kariannekraaijestein/Connect with host Dirkjan HupkesLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkjan-hupkes/FundingCoach.ai: https://fundingcoach.aiSubstack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/About Women Disrupting TechEvery week, Women Disrupting Tech covers the decisions, patterns, and structural realities that female founders and investors rarely discuss in public but run into every time they meet. Follow to get it in your feed.🎧 Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Amazon Music.👉 Subscribe for more conversations with women building the future of health tech.