Employee Spotlight: Aneela Mujahid

Meet Aneela Mujahid, Chief Operating Officer at KickstartAI. With a unique path to the tech industry and a passion for creating strong foundations, Aneela plays a crucial role in empowering KickstartAI’s technical team so they can focus on impact.

Let's dive into her journey and how she helps create an environment where AI talent can thrive.

What's your role at KickstartAI?

I'm the Chief Operating Officer. I’m responsible for  all the non-technical day-to-day operations, from administration to finance and HR. I don't directly manage a team, but I work closely with all team leaders. 

Can you tell us about your journey to KickstartAI?

I didn’t follow the “traditional” path to AI. I got my Bachelor's degree in sales and marketing in Denmark. When I moved to the Netherlands, I joined a tech company in the renewables sector — I was always drawn to the tech industry. I quickly became inspired by all the engineers and their approach to building things. 

I worked in renewable energy for six years, and then I got the chance to join KickstartAI and be part of the AI adoption in the Netherlands. What drew me in was the opportunity to help build a team from the ground up and be part of the entire journey — something I found really exciting. 

I  joined the team as Office Manager. I quickly started handling more and more administrative, HR, and finance responsibilities. So after helping the team grow for a year, I was promoted to COO.

What are you most proud of in your work at KickstartAI?

Building up the team from the beginning and taking on this ever-evolving role. Within two weeks after starting, I had onboarded everyone who started with me. I gradually drafted all the policies, guidelines, and everything that's in place for our operations. I think that's still my proudest achievement at KickstartAI because it laid the foundation for everything that followed. Our technical team focuses on coding and solving problems — not on operations and administration. My role is to create a really strong base that enables everyone to do their best work and achieve their goals. I'm there to support them in getting where they need to go.

What drives you in your work?

Building KickstartAI’s foundation behind the scenes is definitely what drives me. Empowering others also motivates me. Seeing the team thrive and knowing that my support helps my colleagues is very important to me.

Part of this is creating the right office environment and culture, but also making sure we hire the right people who get along and complement each other. 

What interested you about working in AI?

To be honest, I ended up in AI by accident! As I like the tech industry in general, I thought this would be an incredible experience and an opportunity to stay in a technical space and work with technical people. I find that my personality matches well with a more introverted technical team. We get along really well!

What do you enjoy most about working at KickstartAI?

I love that my role is so varied — from HR to finance — so every day is different. It keeps things interesting!

I also value our open and transparent culture. Everyone's friendly with each other, and I enjoy going to the office because it's always fun. We laugh a lot and it's never boring.

We used to organize "lunch and learn" sessions with deep dives for the technical team and more general sessions for our non-technical people who wanted to better understand AI. Last year, we even did a "100 Days of Coding" challenge with the group of non-techies. Every week, we'd sit together for an hour and try coding ourselves to really understand what was happening around us. That was a lot of fun!

What AI tools do you use most in your daily work?

Google Gemini helps me the most, especially when working with contracts. I can quickly search paragraphs without reading through 20-30 pages. I use AI assistants also when writing emails to be more efficient and find the right tone of voice.

I've also started using Venice.ai. It's a collection of models where you can choose between Deep Seek and Llama. I prefer it over ChatGPT now. 

What advice would you give to people who want to work in AI or at KickstartAI?

Just be yourself! And be passionate about tech and AI — that's what makes someone a great fit in our team and culture. Also, if you’re looking for diverse projects, we are the place to be — you won’t get bored here. We're actually planning to double our people by the end of the year if we can hire and recruit the technical engineers and project managers we need. The open vacancies are already on our website. We’re definitely expanding the dream team!

Fun fact about yourself?

My way to show I care is feeding people with sweets. So be aware, our office is packed with candy!

💡 Want to learn more about Kickstart AI and our mission to accelerate AI adoption in the Netherlands? Check out our website, explore our open positions, or connect with Aneela on LinkedIn!