Healthcare has been digitised for clinicians, but the patient experience has lagged behind. Patients still walk out of a consultation having retained only a fraction of what was said, then have to navigate fragmented portals written from the hospital’s perspective rather than their own. Roughly one in three Dutch adults has problematic or inadequate health literacy, with concrete consequences: lower treatment adherence, unnecessary follow-ups, and rising costs in a system already under pressure.

The technical and regulatory pieces are now falling into place. AI can convert unstructured care interactions into clear, patient-usable summaries, and the European Health Data Space is reducing friction for patient-facing tools. Ditto is building exactly that layer: a privacy-first, patient-owned interface for the medical journey.

Ditto starts as a “patient scribe”: users record their consultation or photograph a doctor’s letter, and within minutes receive a structured, plain-language summary with diagnoses, treatment plans and action points. Available in Dutch, English, Turkish and Arabic. Summaries can be securely shared with family members and caregivers via end-to-end encryption, embedding care coordination directly into the product. The system is privacy-by-design, with EU-based processing and clinically validated AI guardrails.

From here, the roadmap evolves toward longitudinal care ownership: visual care journeys, managed caregiver accounts, and integrations with insurers and providers. Ditto becomes the interface through which the entire patient journey is captured.

Health and wellbeing is a core focus for Rubio’s People team: we look for technology that gives people more ownership of their own care. Ditto turns one of healthcare’s most persistent problems into a win for everyone involved: patients understand more and adhere better to their treatment, family members and caregivers stay informed and can help, and clinicians spend less time on repetition. All the ingredients are there for Ditto to become the trusted companion for navigating healthcare across Europe. Together with lead investor Heal Capital and Optiverder, the investment vehicle of Dutch entrepreneur Chris Oomen, Rubio joined Ditto’s seed round.

Ditto was founded in 2024 in Rotterdam by Tobias Polak, Bart Voorn and Merlijn van Breugel after Merlijn’s grandmother received a cancer diagnosis. Tobias holds a PhD in biostatistics from Erasmus MC and brings FDA/EMA experience from his time at myTomorrows. Bart led AI and robotics innovation at Ahold Delhaize. Merlijn is a PhD candidate in AI and pediatric lung disease, formerly Lead Data Scientist at Rewire. Together they lead a team that includes former Spotify and Google engineers, healthtech operators from myTomorrows and CareXS, and growth experts from Bunq and Storytel.

To address this, tiney has revolutionized the childminding landscape. By training and supporting ‘micro-entrepreneurs’ to transition into childminders and establish home-based childcare facilities, tiney is meeting the pressing demand for affordable, high-quality early years education. In addition to comprehensive training and certifications, the tiney app streamlines administrative tasks associated with running a childcare business. Childminders also gain access to marketing support, business guidance, lesson plans, peer networks, and expert advice. Furthermore, tiney’s impact extends beyond providing childcare; it attracts, educates, and empowers a new demographic to pursue careers as “childcare education entrepreneurs.”

Founded in 2019 by Brett Wigdortz OBE (former CEO of Teach First), Graze co-founder Edd Read, and design entrepreneur John Newbold, tiney has swiftly risen to become England’s largest childminder agency. Backed by a team of industry experts, tiney has implemented scalable safety and quality processes to ensure that childminders deliver exceptional care. With this advantageous position, tiney is poised to expand within the UK and launch into the European market, beginning with France and the Netherlands.

With their platform and community Female Invest helps women improve their financial knowledge, learn how to invest and improve their financial wellbeing. When more women take ownership of their finances, two things happen: They get more money and they get more power. The latter is crucial as it enables women to make independent decisions and advocate for values they care about, such as impact investing.

Founded in Denmark in 2019 by a talented team of young female founders with experience in finance and consulting, Female Invest has built a strong brand and community.  Camilla Falkenberg (Co-CEO & Co-Founder) oversees operations, finance, and learning; Anna-Sophie Hartvigsen (Co-CEO & Co-Founder) handles marketing and happiness; and Emma Bitz (Co-CEO & Co-Founder) is responsible for product and brand. They have published bestseller books on personal finance, such as “Girls just wanna have funds” which have topped Amazon charts and the Financial Times list. The founders are all recognized in Forbes 30 under 30 and are the first women from the Nordics to join YCombinator.

Sylvain Ferrière, co-founder of Hero, said, “Many of these individuals dedicate their time to initiating change, but are often not recognized or financially compensated for their efforts and risk falling into burnout as a result. Hero seeks a solution by providing them with a stable income so they can focus exclusively on their advocacy work.”

Hero’s mission, innovative impact and the entrepreneurial drive in the team led us to select them as winner of Rubio’s People Power Pitch in September 2023. We are enthusiastic about Hero’s future because we love the customized interaction between mobilizers and supporters, the direct and transparent allocation of funding to mobilizers, and, most importantly; the meaningful impact it can create.

Winc was founded in 2018 by Carla Snepvangers and Marijn Pijnenborg. The founders, both serial entrepreneurs, believe that everyone can – and should – be able to learn digital skills to help future-proof their career. Within a year, the Amsterdam-based scale-up increased its active student base by eight times, driven by the digitalisation of work and accelerated by COVID-19 Winc Academy gives everyone with the required ambition and grit a shot at a future-proof career in tech, regardless of their previous education or work experience.

Winc aims to support (unemployed) job seekers as well as talent that needs to be upskilled within existing jobs via a flexible and low-cost program in the Netherlands, soon expanding into European countries. Together with co-investors Dutch Founders Fund and Vivid Ventures, we are dedicated to helping the Winc team grow and create opportunities for 20,000 learners within a few years.

Lingvist aims to accelerate the process of human learning, including through language learning. This will ultimately catalyze significant socio-economic, cognitive and scientific advancements, helping people work towards meaningful life objectives such as improved opportunities in employment and education, and overall personal development. The company’s technology allows to automatically add smaller languages, which are often underserved by traditional language educators.

At Rubio, we believe that Lingvist epitomizes how the determination of one person (founder & CEO of Lingvist Mait Müntel, CERN alumnus and nuclear physicist) can change the process of human learning around the globe.The technology currently works for languages, but Lingvist’s long-term goal is to apply the technology to power any field of education. With our investment, we want to radically speed up the process of human learning.

The Microsoft program is accessible to all students thanks to the company’s Income Share Agreement: graduates are only required to repay their tuition fee after graduating and finding an international job with a monthly income above an international threshold.

Series A round
We are impressed with the unique approach and impact drive of founder and CEO Ariel Camus and his amazing team. Microverse was selected by Y Combinator in 2019 and has grown steadily since. Rubio has invested in a Series A round together with a.o. Northzone. We believe the company is on track to connect one million people to remote jobs by 2030.

This challenge is further compounded by global trends of climate change, shifting demographics, migration pressures, increasing urbanization and political backlash against globalization. At Rubio, we believe in a future with inclusive workforces that are secure, motivated, skilled and prepared for any challenge that comes next. Where people’s lives are enriched by advancing technology. And where society can prosper from equal access to new opportunities.

SkillLab’s AI-enabled software solution links a job-seeker’s past experiences (jobs, education, informal experiences) to a taxonomy of skills to create a skill profile. The AI-powered software constructs a unique skill profile so job seekers clearly know and can more powerfully express what their skillsets are. In addition, this profile helps job seekers understand what education, occupations or sectors would be suitable for them. The skill profile is also provided to career counselors to acquire higher quality and more objective inputs and as such can better understand and serve the needs of job seekers, which leads to improved and accelerated job placement.

SkillLab was founded in 2018 by Ulrich Scharf, a serial impact entrepreneur who saw a huge disconnect in the labor market for marginalized job seekers. In 2019, the company was selected as one of 20 companies worldwide to join the Google AI Impact Challenge Accelerator. SkillLab is based in Amsterdam but already operates across Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and North America and their solution is available in 27 languages to date.

Improving people’s career paths

With Rubio funding, the company will continue to improve its product, expand the team, and scale-up internationally: and with its solutions and this investment, SkillLab intends to contribute to over 150,000 marginalized job-seekers finding new jobs over the next 3 years.

“With Rubio, we found a local partner and champion in the impact investment space. Warner, Ata and the rest of the team are incredibly committed and have us impressed us throughout the process with their diligence, hard work and attention to detail. We are truly excited about the partnership to scale impact with a great business model.” – Ulrich Scharf, CEO and founder of SkillLab