Women Disrupting 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 FLTRD 06:55 Developing the concept and building the first app 12:01 Why healthy supermarket choices are so difficult 14:21 What "ultra-processed" food really means 18:09 PureScore vs. Nutriscore 22:56 Personal responsibility, pricing, and the food system 25:10 How the PureScore works 29:03 Scanning products and choosing better alternatives 31:19 Keeping the app free and building a business model 34:40 Working with supermarkets and the B2B opportunity 37:35 Fundraising, traction, and growth plans 39:52 Health impact and scientific validation 43:18 Publicity, media attention, and founder visibility 46:40 How bringing a CTO in-house changed the company 49:00 Finding investors with strategic value 50:10 Advice for an AI-powered founder funding platform 54:06 Where to find FLTRD & closing Show notes: Blog: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/09/17/episode-170/ Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/p/episode-170 Connect 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.ai Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/ About Women Disrupting Tech Every 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 scale Why "ten percent wrong" becomes "one hundred percent wrong" once AI touches it The three questions to ask before reaching for AI: AI, automation, or a system fix How 152 IT activities map against 25 levels of AI capability Why she kept the framework open source instead of charging for it What her own redundancy taught her about staying in control of her career Her one safeguard for any AI tool that recommends or matches people Chapters: 00:00 Introducing Juliette van der Laarse and the AI Flower framework 05:19 From childhood programming to AI research and corporate engineering leadership 08:17 Why Juliette started the framework: clarity, career impact, and AI transformation 10:05 Why pilot-first AI strategies often stall at the business case stage 13:35 Why pilots are useful but not enough for enterprise-wide change 16:35 How the framework addresses fear, trust, and job stability 19:11 Juliette's redundancy experience and what it taught her about career resilience 27:33 Will AI take all jobs, and what has to happen before that becomes realistic 29:51 System readiness, regulation, and why some work may stay human 32:06 AI overhype versus useful automation 33:50 Why shallow IT training can lead teams to overuse AI 36:57 How mentoring and senior coaching could scale knowledge better 41:10 The structure of the AI Flower: activities, standards, and excellence 48:02 AI capability as 25 levels of maturity and scope 51:49 Mapping AI capability to IT activities and fossilization of tasks 54:57 How the model shows role evolution across DevOps, test, and infrastructure work 59:27 Capturing undocumented knowledge and local context in companies 1:03:06 Building internal knowledge gathering and documentation workflows with AI 1:09:21 Peer review, critique, and building a board of naysayers 1:15:46 How the framework changes over time while keeping a stable structure 1:18:41 Why the framework is open source instead of monetized 1:25:40 Using the model to map AI risk and suggest controls 1:30:06 Where companies should start, and the biggest mistake to avoid 1:35:23 Why Juliette is setting up a foundation around the framework 1:37:35 Safeguards for an AI funding coach and avoiding self-reinforcing bias 1:41:15 Where to follow Juliette as the foundation and framework grow Show 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=true Connect with Juliette van der Laarse and the AI Flower Foundation Juliette: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliettevanderlaarse/ AI Flower Foundation: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ai-flower-foundation/ Connect with host Dirkjan Hupkes LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkjan-hupkes/ FundingCoach website: https://fundingcoach.ai Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/ About Women Disrupting Tech Every 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 transition Why tracking sleep, heat regulation, and training load matters more than tracking hormones directly How Karianne finished part of the S’GRAIL in Girona on a torn ACL, and what that taught her about risk Why "too much heart and not enough mind" bankrupted her previous yoga studio, and what she's doing differently with Adaptive Why she considers a scientific advisory board the biggest de-risking factor for investors in a trust-dependent product How letting the community "almost be part of the building" shapes Adaptive's product development Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 04:45 About Karianne and Adaptive 07:33 The Journey into Endurance Sports 10:28 Mental Challenges in Endurance Sports 13:29 The Importance of Goal Setting 16:22 Navigating Individuality in Triathlons 19:14 Overcoming Physical Setbacks 22:20 The Recovery Process and Age Factors 25:01 Building Adaptive for Women 28:13 Understanding Hormonal Transitions 31:05 Energy Management and Training Adjustments 34:11 The Role of Data in Training 36:43 Adaptive's Unique Approach 39:49 Integrating Research into Adaptive 41:33 The Power of Athlete Data 42:47 Research Collaborations and Insights 44:17 Understanding Amateur vs. Professional Athletes 45:30 Adaptive vs. Competitors in Women's Fitness 46:38 Building a Community for Endurance Athletes 47:55 Coaching Integration with Adaptive 49:23 Business Model and Pricing Strategy 52:56 Proving the Business Case for Adaptive 55:41 Data Privacy and Trust Issues 1:00:10 The Role of Community in Data Sharing 1:01:34 Building Trust with Scientific Validation 1:03:20 Future Expansion and Market Opportunities 1:04:46 Navigating Burnout and Performance 1:09:22 Lessons from Past Experiences 1:12:50 Design Principles for Personalized Solutions 1:15:01 Connecting with Karianne, Adaptive and Future Plans Show notes Blog: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/09/03/episode-168/ Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/p/episode-168 Connect with Karianne Kraaijestein and Adaptive LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kariannekraaijestein/ Connect with host Dirkjan Hupkes LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkjan-hupkes/ FundingCoach.ai: https://fundingcoach.ai Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/ About Women Disrupting Tech Every 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.

Only 3% of people who show up to an event went looking for it. The other 97% came because someone they trust was already going. In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Elise Mol, co-founder of Bash, a platform that helps event organizers turn ticket buyers into a community-driven marketing engine. We explore why exclusive early access beats public discounts, why the events industry is under more financial pressure than most people assume, and what it takes to build trust-based growth instead of relying on paid ads. What you’ll learn in this episode Why public “early bird” discounts fail to reward loyal community members, and what exclusive access does instead Why your first ticket buyers act as an organic marketing channel in the months before an event How the “plus-one” system turns a single ticket into a referral loop through WhatsApp and other personal channels Why the post-COVID events industry is under more financial pressure than headlines suggest Why BASH chose to work with organizers who already understood their model, rather than trying to convince skeptics Why proving one local market matters more than international expansion early on A simple practice for turning routine tasks like washing the dishes into space for solving hard problems Chapters 00:00 Introduction 04:50 BASH and Its Origins 07:04 The Impact of COVID-19 on Event Planning 10:05 Transitioning from User to Organizer Focus 12:53 Challenges Faced by Event Organizers Post-COVID 16:08 The Importance of Early Ticket Sales 18:51 Building Community and FOMO in Event Marketing 21:46 BASH’s Role in Supporting Event Organizers 26:43 The Art of Event Organization 32:46 Building Community Through Events 38:39 Scaling and Cultural Considerations 42:38 Goal Setting and Company Growth 46:09 Design Principles for Trust and Belonging More about the episode Blog: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/08/27/episode-167/ Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/p/episode-167 Connect with Elise Mol and BASH Elise Mol on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/elisemol BASH: https://bash.social Connect with host Dirkjan Hupkes LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkjan-hupkes/ FundingCoach: https://fundingcoach.ai About Women Disrupting Tech Every 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.

A third of a GP’s working week goes to admin, and 42% of UK GPs say they want to leave the profession within five years. Dr. Hannah Allen left clinical practice to fix that, and now leads clinical strategy at Heidi, an AI scribe used by clinicians in over 110 countries. In this episode of Women Disrupting Tech, I talk with Dr. Hannah Allen, Chief Medical Officer at Heidi, about what happens when you take the keyboard out of the exam room. Hannah trained as a doctor focused on women’s health before moving into health tech. She’s still a practicing GP, running a women’s health clinic while leading the clinical function at Heidi. She explains why she believes technology’s real job in medicine isn’t replacing clinical judgment; it’s giving doctors their attention back. This episode is for founders building in health tech or other regulated industries, for clinicians curious about how AI actually fits into their day, and for anyone who wants to understand where women’s health data is still missing from medicine. What you’ll learn in this episode: * Why a third of a GP’s week goes to admin, and how that connects to the 42% of UK GPs who say they want to leave the profession within five years * Why over 90% of patients feel more listened to when their doctor uses an AI scribe like Heidi * Why building healthcare AI requires regional, linguistic, and cultural adaptation from day one, not as an afterthought * Why up to 75 to 80% of clinicians already use some form of AI, even as most say they’re skeptical of it * Why how a woman’s body behaves during pregnancy can predict her health decades later, and why that data mostly goes uncaptured * Why female founders get “preventer” questions from VCs while male founders get “promoter” questions, and what Hannah does to counter that * Why Hannah tells founders to obsess over the problem, not the product Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 04:35 Introduction to Dr. Hannah Allen 07:32 Transitioning from Medicine to Tech 10:31 The Role of Technology in Healthcare 13:43 Global Healthcare Challenges 17:15 Predicting Women’s Health Issues 21:20 AI in Healthcare: Opportunities and Concerns 25:18 Heidi: Revolutionizing Clinical Workflows 27:14 The Rise of Heidi: Word of Mouth Success 28:50 Measuring Impact: Time Savings and Burnout Reduction 30:01 Expanding Horizons: Beyond Documentation 32:03 The Role of AI in Clinical Practice 35:18 Transforming Patient Interactions with AI 39:01 Patient Feedback and Trust in AI 43:50 The Human Element in Healthcare 45:04 Future Vision: A Seamless Healthcare Experience 47:18 Advice for Founders: Building for Real Problems 50:44 Closing Thoughts and Resources More about the episode Show Notes: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/08/20/episode-166/ Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/08/20/episode-166/ Connect with Dr. Hannah Allen and Heidi LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-hannah-a-a27ba650/ Heidi website: https://www.heidihealth.com/en-ie Heidi LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/heidi/ More about the TEDx Coolhaven Women event on 9 October in Rotterdam More about the event: https://www.ted.com/tedx/events/68333 Buy your tickets at: https://www.eventbrite.nl/e/tedx-coolhaven-women-the-new-builders-tickets-1992166654090?aff=oddtdtcreator&keep_tld=true Use code WDT25 for an exclusive 25% discount. Connect with host Dirkjan Hupkes LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkjan-hupkes/ FundingCoach.ai: https://fundingcoach.ai Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/ About Women Disrupting Tech Every 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 tech from the ground up.