Welcome to the fourth in a series of interviews with European tech leaders brought to you in association with Boardwave. The Boardwave network is a powerful community of Founders, CEOs, Chairs, Independent NEDs & their Investors from across Europe, representing companies at every stage of development.

This week, we are joined by tech entrepreneur Amber Vodegel. Born in the Netherlands and now based in the UK, Amber has built a career at the cutting edge of healthtech, creating tools that directly improve lives. As the founder of Pregnancy+, the world’s leading pregnancy app with over 150 million users, she bootstrapped her way to a successful acquisition by Philips. Today, Amber is leading 28X, a groundbreaking femtech initiative using AI to close the gaps in women’s health through inclusive, privacy-first education and care. Alongside her entrepreneurial ventures, she also serves as a Non-Executive Director at MyHealthChecked PLC, continuing her mission to drive ethical, sustainable innovation in digital health.

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Paul Maher

Jonathan Simnett

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This is an AI Transcription. It’s pretty good, but please forgive any errors.

Welcome to The Difference Engine and a series of interviews of European tech leaders brought to you in association with Board Wave. The Board Wave Network is a powerful community of founders, CEOs, chairs independent n Eeds, and their investors from across Europe representing companies at every stage of their development.

This week we're joined by Board Wave member and mentor Amber Verti, as you'll gleaned from her accent. Amber is Dutch by birth, but British by adoption and a tech entrepreneur who has founded several health tech companies as the founder of Pregnancy, plus the world's leading pregnancy app with over 150 million users globally.

Her commitment to ethical technology and sustainability underscores her belief in a more equitable future. Amber Vertigo. Welcome to the Difference Engine.

[00:01:40] Amber: Sure. Oh, thank you for having me. Uh, I indeed grew up in Holland, hence my funny accent. Um. Live grew up.

Um, I literally had clocks. Shoes. Oh, nice. As a child. Do

[00:02:22] Amber: I know, but these were wooden as well. Okay. And, uh, there was a, when I looked out of my window, there was a windmill and a dyke to hold back the water, uh, in the, and was,

Uh, no there wasn't,

[00:02:56] Paul: You should take those skills up to Birmingham. They have a wrap problem right now. They could probably use. [00:03:00]

Often think, uh, and the school was very small, so my class size was eight children. Whoa. Um, and the class one higher up had one child in it. So we had three classes combined in one classroom with a teacher. Um, that was like how small that world was that I grew up in, but very safe and very. Creative and, um, yeah, that, that was, uh,

[00:03:55] Amber: Yeah, but I, I missed it and everyone in my class had blonde hair and blue eyes. It was [00:04:00] either called Maria or Esther, so I felt almost like an outsider.

I

Beautiful country. So we had quite of an international feel to the family because it was, they, they traveled in the family a bit because they were expert, uh, experts basically when they were younger. So while my childhood was absolutely fascinating, the first 10 years after that, my dad, uh, had meningitis and he had a road accident.

Um. My privileges were also ended, so I, I used to have horse riding lessons and those were not on the table anymore. Neither was my, my magazine subscriptions and whatever, which was okay. It wasn't, it wasn't too bad, but it was a different, but I just felt like, okay, so that's fine. I can't have lessons, but let's find out if there's someone in the village then who has a horse that I can ride.

And, uh, they were really cool entrepreneurs. They had this amazing. Fashion warehouse in, in Holland and a big store as well. And they would travel to, to Paris and and Germany for all the big fashion shows and. Yes, I would ride their horses, but they also kind of adopted me as like a second child.

Oh, wow.

And

[00:06:45] Paul: That's a genius. Okay. That's our first lesson

I love it. So let's, let's move forward, uh, quite a few years. You had some early jobs and so on, but there was a point when you. Turned your gaze to a, a really [00:07:00] big category opportunity that existed in, in serving the, the female part of the population, you know, a radical idea at the time. Um, and that led to the founding of health and parenting in back in 2012.

Talk us through that and, and how you, you got that into the marketplace and how you had the idea in the first place.

Everyone working for him to set up their own companies as well on the side. Um, and lots of people who work there now have their own agencies or companies. And so I was quite eager to do something and I had a friend at the time who wanted to do something with me and I said, let's explore what we can do together.

[00:08:07] Paul: Yeah. And we were all happy with all Blackberries Forget websites and forget, forget app stores. We didn't need those.

Uh, but I, I just felt like I, I went into, I think the app store launched. I looked in and I typed some keywords, like random keywords like Ferrari, um, and there was like no re no results, nothing. It just says, no apps available. And I thought, oh, this is, this is, this is like one big freeplay space that we can enter.

Um, and so we, we thought about doing diet apps or I, I knew I didn't wanna do games because games quickly got crowded and I thought that is very difficult to enter. But I thought maybe a diet app or whatever. And then, but that was complicated as well. And then we, I found his desktop widgets in the old days, your desktop widgets, and there was a list published on the web.

That's why these are evergreen markets. And I thought, it's not that competitive. And my sister is a gynecologist. My brother's a psychiatrist, so we are all a bit in health in in the family. In this generation and, um, so I thought, let's do a pregnancy. I wasn't pregnant myself. I just thought it would be a cool evergreen space set up.

The first company with a friend was successful. Uh, we, we had like 10,000 installs, uh, but never worked with friends. There's lesson two. Uh, it doesn't work.

[00:10:00] Jonathan: That's it.

Um, so then I did a third company, uh, the second company did about a hundred thousand installs. So not bad. Um, and then the third one was in 2012, which is health and parenting with few, few apps underneath, and one was pregnancy plus and that has 150 million users to date. Uh, I set that company up because I knew I wanted to exit it one day, so I did everything right from the start.

Um, and I really enjoyed the journey.

[00:11:05] Amber: It's actually a good point. 'cause now a lot of, um. Of the time you see that people bolt on new solutions to old products or companies. It's better sometimes to start from scratch. Totally. You see all these, these tech companies now bolting on ai. It's, it is, I, I once give the analogy like you have the, the three little pigs with their houses and the first pig built this house of straw, but AI is like someone passing by your house, which is a straw house with a wheelbarrow full of bricks, and then you're like.

Really like those bricks. And then rather than just saying, you know what, destroy the straw house. Build a new one. People try to build the bricks on top of the straw house, and that's a really bad idea.

Um, so how did you survive in, in those early [00:12:00] days and, um. You know, talk us through why you did that rather than seeking external funds and going for a very, very, very rapid build.

I also thought. I can't afford marketing, so how can we find other ways to get the app to number one? Uh, which takes just a lot of thinking work and, and looking at algorithms. So you become super creative where you have no money. And then I just earned money, put it back in the company, earned some more, put it back in.

I did it pretty old school because I didn't know that's at the time. You could just walk into a VC and, uh. And, and pitch your ideas,

What, what's, you know, why is that

[00:13:28] Jonathan: So what do you think it was that that made Pregnancy Plus so successful and, and the category? Category definer. What was it was special about that particular app?

[00:13:49] Paul: right.

It's pretty awful If you paid for a subscription and then, oh God,

[00:14:13] Amber: the subscription going. So we thought, let 'em get through the first three months. If that's successful, let's celebrate. And then if they really like the app, they'll probably pay 4 99.

You know, you sort of personally read all the customer responses and so on. I

Which is an awful event to happen if you're an app developer. I, I just felt the pain of the user who meticulously logged all her pregnancy stories. So then you make [00:15:00] sure that never, ever happens again if you don't read that personal review and it becomes a ticket in, in, in Jira, I. It's very far removed,

I mean, you didn't really build around product market fit, did you? I think you, you, you built an unshakeable belief that, that that what you were doing was helping people and the customer feedback was reassuring that what you were doing was helping

If you want to do something different, like we try to do like really cool interfaces and a different way of. Getting women to learn about a pregnancy in those 280 days, then you need, you, you almost product market fit doesn't really make sense because if you look at the iPhone, when Steve Job launched iPhone in 2008, iPhone three people were angry.

If you wanna just do a another of the same, then look at the market fit and see if you can tweak it slightly. If you want to do something that's radically different than. A like really imagine yourself from the other side, build an amazing product, um, and, and, and re revisit the space, um, and be ethical as well,

I, I think one would, one would say about what it is that you've developed and you get a very strong brand attachment if you're able to achieve that.

And, uh, I just, I think if you're fe backed, it's really hard to say no to those deals, but because we didn't have it, we could be very ethical because there's no cream. Will fix cellulite in pregnancy It 80 qui. I think pregnant women can use it on something else. And I also think it's the wrong message because you're basically saying your look is not great.

He has a green, he is a cream. Where you can also say you are preparing for life, which is amazing. Enjoy it and your body will go back or not, it doesn't really matter. Just walk a bit more, drink a bit more water. And, and enjoy this this time. I think that, so we were able to, to hold off of those partnerships.

[00:18:07] Paul: Yeah. And, and I think the content's, um, easier to be honest. When it's real writers and you're all one team and you share the same ethics versus these days, ai.

We'll be writing a lot of that content, so it's probably got a lot worse. Hmm. Um, even so five years after, um, founding, um, you know, health and Parenting, you exited to Phillips, uh, which is a company we, we all admire, um. Just such a great, uh, champion. It is such a great champion for your country, uh, or birth.

Can you talk us through the acquisition, due diligence, selling process? Um, and, uh, like you said, obviously in retrospect it's a, it was a natural fit, but you probably didn't know that going in right. Yeah. And what, why Phillips What, I mean, what were your options?

So I wanted to sell the company and so we, we engaged [00:19:00] with, uh, uh, Ernst and Young to prepare us and go on this road show and then go around, either pick up VC money. 'cause by that time I knew what VC money was or wanted to exit the company. And, um. But in order to get to the state, I thought we should maybe onboard some serious sponsors to the app.

So I hired someone for 400 pounds a day, not that much, but if you have to pay it yourself, um, you feel different about that. And she was going to make appointments with sponsors. And after week one, there was no appointments. Week two, there was no appointments. So I got pretty. Like annoyed. Uh, but I didn't say that I, she was off on a Monday and I thought if she hasn't got any appointments by the end of this week, I'm gonna call myself on Monday just to show that is not that difficult to get appointments.

And I sent him a message saying, we've got amazing product, pregnancy plus, and I would love to talk to you. When can we schedule coffee? And he replied within a half an hour and he said. Can you come on Friday? Um, would be great to meet you. I don't think he realized that I was actually in England. So I took a flight, flew to Phillips and there was sitting in reception and, and a marketing lady, the, she welcomed me and I thought, oh, there we go.

So I presented there and he said, well, this sponsorship we can always do, but how about an acquisition? And I said, well, if, if you want to acquire us, you have to be quick because we just setting up this whole roadshow with ey. So you've got six months. And he said, well, I think we can do that. And six months later.

It was indeed sold. Um, I remember calling the team saying, I think I've sold the company. Uh, we've done it. And they were like, oh, it's you again, but you're over enthusiasm. Like, why would you, why would Phillips Biles now at this stage? But they did.

Um, I think both Paul and I have experience of, of working with it and some of the scars to prove it. Um, but ultimately you sold a very fast moving. EmTech producing company to a very large, relatively slow moving electronics company. Um, uh, and stayed at the firm during an earnout. [00:22:00] So, so what was, what was that like, and what would be your advice to founders deciding to sell to a, a much bigger and more mature organization?

And we were very lucky that Phillips was, um, experienced and uh, the team at EY was really good at making, uh, a contract that had also non-financial terms in it. So that combination was, was unique for Philips, the oco, they have integrations and acquisitions that don't end. Uh, as successful as we did. Uh, so for them it was also a really good case of building it.

So we worked, we had financing zero, um, which was super easy to use. And we, my, my. HR reviews were like coffee talks on a bit of paper. So I hated moving into Philips and doing all that and being super distracted. My budgets, I mean, such complicated process within Philips to declare your budgets every year and get it signed off.

Uh, customer service person, and then he would enter it in workday. So we didn't have to do any of those processes, and I had years of slowly integrating, but that also meant we could focus on growing and on the real work. The other thing we negotiated, Philip didn't really like it, but it did work, was our own space.

They had. Open spaces and hot desks and I knew that wouldn't work for us. So we negotiated a separate space with our own coffee machine, but our own plants with our own art. Um, and we slowly kind of opened up to Phillips. Because you, you don't want from day one Philips posters all around you. You're not Philips yet.

Yeah,

[00:24:48] Amber: has to come over time.

[00:24:58] Amber: and, and we negotiated [00:25:00] well, it didn't really work, but I, I made short words in the head.

Fast, high, fast internet speed. Like I knew our programmers wanted like a hundred megabytes, like at least, uh, I think Phillips UK was on 25, so I had had to push that through because these are things that are, people run away if they're used to the startup culture and then they move in there.

Now, speaking of timing, um. Where do you feel you were in at the time that you made that deal in the, in the growth of the category that you were in? So, you know, were you sort of like, was it long way to go? Were you near the peak? Were you just starting off? What would you feel about where you were in the category journey for your products?

[00:25:49] Paul: How do you know?

So for me, it felt almost like it was time to. To team up with, with a larger team because it's, it's super complex. And Phillips, of course, had all that expertise in house, but they were also able to open doors, for example, with Medicaid in the us. Um, something's really hard to do as a startup. Um, but they, they have all these foundations.

Um, so. It was, uh, it was time to sell because it got too complex. Um, and we grew by 400% in, in user numbers, uh, the years after. Can I ask one, add one more thing because it's so important. People have all these financial metrics that they need to hit when they do their earn out. Which gets super, um, life changes and AI changes everything.

Um, transfer to the Philip team. So we helped Philips a lot with their own apps. So that had nothing to do with our product, but it was all about integration and that made it much more pleasant to do the three years and much more dynamic and flexible because we actually, I think when we. What we said we would do until what we did, there were totally different modules that we developed.

Um, and, and we, I'm glad we had that freedom.

Um, so what happened next?

[00:28:33] Paul: with the book, Amber, stop The Bad.

Um. It was a book called Moral Ambition, Dutch Writer, and it basically said the biggest waste of our generation is a waste of talent. Our cleverest mathematicians are working to optimize TikTok feeds and Facebook algorithms, and we should be working on climate change, obesity, solving, cancers, et cetera.

[00:29:30] Jonathan: I mean, can you talk about just some of how it feels? I mean, I. You know, we know from our, our work with, with many exited founders and even from exiting ourselves, you know, no matter how successful that exit is, you, you sometimes feel a little deflated 'cause you've just cut your baby free. Um, you know, talk, just talk us through just, just how it felt, um, before you actually made that decision to go again,

Because these two are separate, it does feel like losing. Very close group of friends, um, because for so many years you work so close together with those people. Um, so it does feel like you're missing an arm or a leg. It, it feels a bit lonely. Um, you also, because you work so hard, you haven't invested so much in your own social network.

So when all of a sudden this all falls away, you find yourself a little bit lonely. Um. Missing the, the pressure missing the adrenaline. I think work is very addictive and also missing. I mean, if you walk into an office with your, the team that you build, I mean, it's fun. You, you people say, how was your evening?

[00:31:10] Jonathan: I'll never forget you've built a social network as well. Hmm. In the sense that we used to think about social networks, actually face-to-face relationships with people, um, where both of you have had a lot of skin in the game for a long time anyway. I mean, let's be positive and move forward on this. You know, your, your new ventures aim is, and I love this, it sounds like a, like a rap song, uh, super open source on the fly, ai I.

Um, you're free again of, of VC backing. Um, but we know open source is notoriously hard to monetize and on device AI is a relatively new idea. You know, why take on so much risk?

[00:32:00] Um, so there, there's really good solutions for women. They're called the period trackers and women's health apps. Uh, the downside is they have subscriptions. They're trying to sell women lots of, uh, whatever, mi minerals, vitamins, consultations, et cetera. Um, and then they also quite often expose data in a way that is not, um.

How we want to see that. So in order to change that, you have to change, you have to rethink everything. So we thought ideally I, I think the time of subscriptions is over. Subscriptions will always be there, but not for B2C health apps. Everyone should have the right to get proper health information, and it shouldn't be sit behind a paywall because.

And the best thing you can then do is what we came up with is remove the entire backend. There's no more cloud service is a very sustainable, because we don't pollute the uh, environment, but also you have no risk of being hacked or there's no data leaks and there's no incremental costs when you scale.

So you have. One binary and you can scale to a hundred million users and there's no incremental cost. And that's fascinating.

[00:33:48] Amber: Well, initially I said I don't care about making money. I just wanna be the biggest first. Then we'll figure it out. Uh, and if I have low cost, so my, my, my solution is no cost. So very [00:34:00] few people in the company I funded myself, uh, and we'll, we'll at the moment we're taking on some, some other philanthropic investors, um, because they love it so much.

And I wanna come on the journey. And a large foundation, uh, who wants to invest on based on return on mission is joining as well. Um, but we want to, um, uh. Scale quickly. And because there's no subscription people, everyone can use it. It looks lovely, but the costs are super low. And, and there's a way where with all this ai, we can keep the cost really low.

We can keep small teams. We have some options. We can ask women to, uh, donate their data so they can select the research project and then we'll package up their data and they can send it. They don't have to do that, but they can. Voluntary Optin to donate a certain research. We will look to do a stem cell donation from.

Um, and then there's a very cool feature, a bit like Snapchat where you have the AR lenses. Um, too difficult to explain in a podcast, but we have brands who want to sponsor it. Um, because once you get to a certain size, you can get very cool sponsorships, but they are more. Just like Snapchat, we have these cool lenses.

You add a fun element. It has nothing to do with menstrual health or women's health. All that is free. Everyone can use every tracker, every symptom, logs, every analysis they need. But if you wanna. Customize certain elements. Just like in Fortnite and Roblox, you have different skins. We can do the same, and we've got some really cool tech.

So, you know, the fact that you are innovating around the model and breaking away from what they're already definitely sounds like you are developing a new type of free of charge, free of at the point of use charge app. Um, so can we conclude that you are not. Right now structuring for any sort of exit, it's experimentation time, it's grow the category time.

Is that, would that be the correct way to think about it right now?

But I ideally, we [00:37:00] keep generating profits that we then reinvest in women. So I actually ask the, the individuals that invest in our company, are you okay to make some sort of pledge that when I pay you back five x. So you put 50 K in, I'll pay you back two 50. But after that, let's put that money together, including me.

I've made a pledge into a pot, like a foundation, and then with that money, which could be over 30 million a year, we are going to then back other female founders. We are going to fund peer poverty initiatives, healthcare research, and I'd love to do that for the next 20 years. So yes, you can do an IPO. Yes, you can do an impact.

So, although the users can also see which women we backed and which initiatives we backed, because I think it's great to see that these companies exist and also. In the old days, you would build companies for your grandchildren. Nowadays everyone wants to exit. What's that about? I mean, I'd love this company to have my children working in it, and if they don't, that's fine too.

Um, but I'd like to set something up for the next generation. So I also like to keep this here in the uk, if possible.

[00:38:49] Amber: Absolutely. It's called Tech Ethical Technology. And to be honest, bit on device ai. This is something that we for the first time can do. So there is this, [00:39:00] Google's gonna make a massive announcement I think in the next 20 days. Um. It's all coming and on. Device AI is fascinating. There are tiny language models on device that can do 200 languages.

Maybe not now, but just think two, three years forward and you can read about any topic within an app without anyone knowing about it. And that's quite powerful because in the future, AI will do our pre recruitment for jobs. So who's gonna get the job, the woman who's looking to get pregnant, or the one who isn't, and who will get the better health insurance?

The guy who looked at articles on test cancer or the one who didn't. So healthcare needs to be protected.

[00:40:05] Amber: We spoke to, um, uh, they're, they're doing some big projects in the Middle East, uh, also in healthcare, and they're super keen to work with us because they no longer want. Their health data of their users stored on California and or European cloud service. So when they heard about on device ai, no backend, they, they love that, uh, they absolutely love these solutions.

Um, but it is this new and it's, it's risky and it's, but it's fun as well if it works. And we will publish it open source. So once we managed to. Deliver. I'd love other apps to copy. They can just copy our, our structure and then do a mental health app for men or a cancer care app, because I think more apps should be structured this way.

[00:41:09] Jonathan: We wanna go onto our next little segment in, in, in this week's podcast, and it's what we

[00:41:28] Amber: Uh, a few things. Uh, money kills creativity. So money is nice but don't have too much of it, then it, the world's changing, so you will need to adapt really quick. Adaptability is the only way to survive and, um, uh, and network. So I would definitely say to people, just make sure you have two or three calls a day with people you meet, and then ask them to introduce you to other people and, and pitch your idea.

I mean, there's really bad versions, but if you're hyperactive, uh, that's an advantage because as an entrepreneur, you'll constantly need that energy to get up the next day. Even though things fail and keep going and, and the last thing, the most important thing is learn to say no. Know what you not want.

[00:43:03] Paul: This is a part of the show. We, we ask our guests what has been annoying them specifically in their work life. We can't help with family and friends obviously, but we could talk about work life and what is grinding your gears. So, Amber, what has been grinding your gears recently?

Short term. I think that's my, uh, what I'm annoyed about the way our governments are set up. I mean, they, they are functioning for a few years and then they're on to the next election. Nobody is thinking long term. We, we all saw. Well, how Norway made excellent long-term decisions. We could have done the same.

Ahead. I mean, general knowledge is great, uh, but why don't we learn, teach them how to set up a YouTube channel or how Snapchat monetizes the user base. Um, for right or for wrong. I think you need to know how these companies are operating, um, how to set up a, a restaurant and how to run it. But there's so many things that we can teach our children, Steve, uh, from the diary of a CEO.

I mean, that is so thinking, so I'm really get obsessed like about. Stupidity of, of, uh, short term thinking.

[00:45:20] Amber: Oh, yeah. Um, no, no, no. VAT on, uh. Fruit and vegetables and all healthy things, and everything that has 50% or more sugar gets 400% taxed.

Very simple. That makes it really easy for everyone to understand. Ideally, I have super marked aisles where you have a green and orange and a red aisle in the green aisle. You know everything is safe. It's good for you. Yeah, it might be boring. The orange owl is like. Slightly more interesting for lots of people, but it's not great.

And the red aisle, you should be over 18 and you can only buy three items.

[00:46:02] Amber: Uh, and then education. I mean, that can, I think AI would, can do a great job in educating more personally, but we also need to rethink what we're teaching our children.

Um, we know, we, we teach them. Everything about Henry VI eight, but first eight, like, what do you do when, when someone hurts themselves? They have no idea. Um, so I think we can just revisit if someone I love like that, my son knows all the wives of Henry VI eight, but it's really not that important anymore.

And, and then the, the other thing that I think we scaring kids in, in the future of ai, we're basically saying. To them. Listen, you, you can't use it. You are not allowed to use it. So it's really bad ai. Um, and it will take away all your jobs in the future. So these kids grow up with the word AI is a dirty word.

[00:47:19] Jonathan: So our last segment today is, uh, what we call the other side. So this is the other side of amber. Now there's a, an aphorism that, you know, if you want something done, uh, give it to a busy person. Uh, and we tend to find that our magnificent achievers that, that we have on this podcast have very, very interesting other lives.

So this is where we look into the side less scene of our guests and dig into their personalities and. Private pursuits that have affected their work life. So Amber, what do you do when you're not creating brand new categories?

Like it's fantasy in the end. So there's no rules. I can be creative and I don't care if anyone likes it or not, because I'm not publishing them. Uh, I might do one, one. I've published two books when I was 26 on maths because I thought maths is generally perceived as boring. So I wrote a series of stories for children, um, about math symbols.

Supersonic tunnels and sometimes they come up and when you see one of those birds, they're big and yellow. Um, the, you know, a disaster is happening as a result of climate change. And these creatures are. Warning us to, uh, to be careful, but are also very concerned about what we do to the world. And then they pick up five children from five different continents and they are trying to get the grownups to, uh, realize something needs to change.

So that's a fun thing to do and I love it. It won't go anywhere, but I love writing about this and I love sitting in my chair. And writing that book and have, has nothing to do with business.

And I'm sure the, I mean, would you say that, that there is, [00:50:00] there is feedback by doing that sort of relaxation, by thinking about things in a different way, it suddenly fires off different ideas about the business and what you want to do.

And engage another part because I'm a very active person, so I need to do something. Uh, so I can either go running, but there's so much running you can do in a day. Um, or you need to do something else because then your brain, I'm, I'm pretty sure will process things differently when you revisit, uh, your, your thinking on the business.

[00:50:44] Amber: Have fun, be fun.

[00:50:54] Amber: True, true.

[00:51:06] Amber: Thank you for having me.