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 design
- How MyHives captures both physical and social safety signals without cameras or continuous listening, keeping all processing on-device
- Why traditional panic buttons fail the moment someone freezes, and how Beekon is built to act autonomously instead
- How unsafe environments cost the Dutch economy an estimated €8.3 billion a year, with roughly €5 billion linked to psychological and safety-related incidents
- What it took to bring MyHives into pilots onboarding around 33,000 home care workers and station cleaners
- Why translating lived experience into numbers moves corporate decision-makers more than personal stories alone
- What it’s like fundraising as a woman founder alongside a Black co-founder, and how being underestimated became an advantage
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
04:00 Anniek van Veldhuizen on building MyHives from lived experience
05:49 The daily calculations people make to stay safe
08:08 Why unsafe experiences go unreported
10:04 The gender data gap and how missing data shapes safety
14:50 Safety, participation, and learned helplessness
17:15 Building trust into a tool people can actually use
19:52 How MyHives works: app, BEEKON, and BEEKON+
24:00 Triggering help discreetly when someone cannot act
28:08 How escalation works across languages and locations
30:57 Why privacy is central to the product
34:58 Preventing false positives and training the system
40:32 Trials, pilots, and the workplace safety use case
48:09 The business and societal case for better safety data
53:16 Pricing, monetization, and the impact model
1:00:01 Working with security partners without being absorbed
1:04:20 Fundraising as a woman founder and a Black co-founder
1:07:36 Designing Fundicoach to feel safe and inclusive
Show notes :
Blog: https://womendisruptingtech.blog/2026/09/24/episode-171
Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/p/episode-171
Connect with Anniek van Veldhuizen and MyHives:
LinkedIn (Anniek): https://www.linkedin.com/in/anniek-van-veldhuizen-27731514a/
Website: https://www.myhives.nl/en-GB
LinkedIn (MyHives): https://www.linkedin.com/company/myhives-nl/
Download the Hyves app
Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.myhives
Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/myhives/id6751838174
Connect with Dirkjan Hupkes:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkjan-hupkes/
Substack: https://womendisruptingtech.substack.com/
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.
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