When expecting parents rush to the hospital to deliver their baby, they often envision a scene bursting with medical professionals rather than a high-tech, autonomous vehicle acting as the backdrop. Yet, San Francisco recently witnessed a remarkable moment when a Waymo robotaxi became the surprising delivery room for a new life.
Let’s unpack why such events matter deeply, not just for the mother but also for those among us navigating the entrepreneurial grind.
The facts: technology meets life’s milestones
On a Monday evening in 2025, a pregnant woman hailed a Waymo car in San Francisco, heading to UCSF Medical Center. Labor advanced faster than anticipated, leading to the baby’s delivery inside the car. Waymo’s remote monitoring team detected “unusual activity” and promptly contacted emergency services. However, the autonomous vehicle reached its destination ahead of aid. While extraordinary, such occurrences underline the seamless coexistence between advanced technology and everyday humanity. Other headlines capturing similar events emphasize this has happened before, demonstrating how transportation tech adapts even to unpredictable situations. Learn more details via TechCrunch’s coverage of the incident.
What does this teach female entrepreneurs in Europe?
These moments challenge traditional expectations. As a founder of CADChain and the Fe/Male Switch startup game, I often notice parallels in how tech empowers individuals while also requiring human ingenuity to make the improbable happen. Here’s how that applies to women in business:
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Adapt early: Businesses often experience their own surprises, financial shifts, customers changing overnight, or tech demanding redesigns. Remaining adaptable to unforeseen “births” in your business journey is a key trait that significantly boosts resilience.
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Smart response systems matter: Waymo’s success wasn’t the self-driving software alone; it was the real-time engagement of humans monitoring performance. As founders, integrating people-focused support systems alongside automation makes your operations both scalable and humane.
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Unorthodox moments bring PR gold: While not every event defines your startup’s culture or value strategy, certain milestones can grab attention. Carefully crafted narratives relating to unique accomplishments, or even overcoming challenges, resonate with audiences in ways logic seldom can.
Real-life applications: how to thrive amid chaos
When building startups and community-based ecosystems like Fe/Male Switch, fostering preparedness surfaces as indispensable. Here’s how you can build your own tech-meets-human narrative:
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Use unpredictability as inspiration: Familiarize yourself with stories of unusual entrepreneurial journeys. The Fe/Male Switch initiative itself sprung from an unconventional mix of game design and STEM encouragement, a merger that surprised even me as we built it to empower women pioneers.
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Risk management tools matter: Much like Waymo’s “remote team watching activity live,” early-stage entrepreneurs can employ software platforms or strategies to monitor business “unusual.” This includes tools for predictive finance forecasting or team collaboration packaged into AI-powered assistants.
Mistakes to resolve early
Several pitfalls haunt even the experienced startup leaders. Avoid inconsistencies by recognizing these lessons:
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Undervalued storytelling: If Waymo focused excessively on tech alone, this baby story wouldn’t have showcased its human-under-tech ecosystem beautifully. As founders, highlight the human parts of your ventures, it distinguishes your company emotionally from competitors.
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Ignoring unpredictability: Startups born in stable macroeconomic environments often attempt scaling with mistaken notions of immunity. Chance factors, from pandemics to tech glitches, have global impacts. Plug risky “blind spots” ahead of assumptions.
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Scaling without culture readiness: Even robots depend on people for safety-break checks during emergencies. Whether initiating a funding campaign or onboarding employees rapidly, growth misaligned with culture doesn’t sustain long, a lesson deeper than profitability spreadsheets ever teach.
Entrepreneurship linked back to tech: what women learn ahead
Waymo’s baby-delivery narrative connects innovation with heart, an essential
FAQ
1. Where did the Waymo birth incident take place?
The incident occurred in San Francisco in 2025, when a pregnant woman gave birth inside a Waymo robotaxi while on her way to UCSF Medical Center. Read more about the Waymo birth story
2. How did Waymo respond during the situation?
Waymo’s remote monitoring team detected “unusual activity” in the vehicle, contacted the passenger to check on her, and alerted emergency services. However, the baby was born before reaching the hospital, and the Waymo car ultimately arrived before aid. Learn about Waymo’s remote support system
3. Is this the first time a birth occurred in a Waymo vehicle?
No, Waymo has stated that while such incidents are rare, this was not the first baby delivered in one of its self-driving cars. A similar case happened earlier in Phoenix, Arizona.
4. What lessons can startup founders learn from this incident?
Founders can take inspiration from Waymo’s adaptability and human-tech collaboration. The event highlights the value of integrating remote monitoring systems and using unpredictable moments as opportunities for embedding emotional narratives into a brand’s identity (like Waymo did).
5. How did Waymo maintain safety and hygiene post-incident?
The Waymo vehicle was immediately removed from service for thorough cleaning after the incident.
6. How does this situation highlight technology’s role in humanity’s daily life?
This moment underscores how advanced technology like autonomous vehicles can blend seamlessly into essential human experiences, such as childbirth, demonstrating the reliability of innovations in real-world, unscripted scenarios.
7. What are the implications for entrepreneurs in the tech field?
For entrepreneurs, this event reinforces the need to incorporate resilient contingency plans in technology, emphasize automation while retaining human oversight, and seize unplanned yet remarkable occurrences to amplify brand storytelling strategies.
8. What is Fe/Male Switch and how does it relate to Waymo’s milestone?
Fe/Male Switch is an initiative to empower female entrepreneurs through gamified learning experiences in STEM. The Waymo milestone resonates with the initiative's values, showcasing how overcoming unexpected challenges with innovative solutions is crucial for breakthrough success. Check out F/MS Startup Game
9. Why is adaptability essential in technology-laden businesses?
Much like Waymo responding swiftly during unusual circumstances, businesses must anticipate and adapt to changes or surprises. Early adaptability ensures alignment with operational stability and human needs in tech-dependent ecosystems.
10. Are such stories common in the transport and tech sectors?
Yes, transport has a tradition of “unusual events,” such as babies being born in taxis, rideshares, and now autonomous vehicles. These stories are increasingly becoming part of the evolving tech narrative. Explore more Waymo milestones
About the Author
Violetta Bonenkamp, also known as MeanCEO, is an experienced startup founder with an impressive educational background including an MBA and four other higher education degrees. She has over 20 years of work experience across multiple countries, including 5 years as a solopreneur and serial entrepreneur. Throughout her startup experience she has applied for multiple startup grants at the EU level, in the Netherlands and Malta, and her startups received quite a few of those. She’s been living, studying and working in many countries around the globe and her extensive multicultural experience has influenced her immensely.
Violetta Bonenkamp's expertise in CAD sector, IP protection and blockchain
Violetta Bonenkamp is recognized as a multidisciplinary expert with significant achievements in the CAD sector, intellectual property (IP) protection, and blockchain technology.
CAD Sector:
- Violetta is the CEO and co-founder of CADChain, a deep tech startup focused on developing IP management software specifically for CAD (Computer-Aided Design) data. CADChain addresses the lack of industry standards for CAD data protection and sharing, using innovative technology to secure and manage design data.
- She has led the company since its inception in 2018, overseeing R&D, PR, and business development, and driving the creation of products for platforms such as Autodesk Inventor, Blender, and SolidWorks.
- Her leadership has been instrumental in scaling CADChain from a small team to a significant player in the deeptech space, with a diverse, international team.
IP Protection:
- Violetta has built deep expertise in intellectual property, combining academic training with practical startup experience. She has taken specialized courses in IP from institutions like WIPO and the EU IPO.
- She is known for sharing actionable strategies for startup IP protection, leveraging both legal and technological approaches, and has published guides and content on this topic for the entrepreneurial community.
- Her work at CADChain directly addresses the need for robust IP protection in the engineering and design industries, integrating cybersecurity and compliance measures to safeguard digital assets.
Blockchain:
- Violetta’s entry into the blockchain sector began with the founding of CADChain, which uses blockchain as a core technology for securing and managing CAD data.
- She holds several certifications in blockchain and has participated in major hackathons and policy forums, such as the OECD Global Blockchain Policy Forum.
- Her expertise extends to applying blockchain for IP management, ensuring data integrity, traceability, and secure sharing in the CAD industry.
Violetta is a true multiple specialist who has built expertise in Linguistics, Education, Business Management, Blockchain, Entrepreneurship, Intellectual Property, Game Design, AI, SEO, Digital Marketing, cyber security and zero code automations. Her extensive educational journey includes a Master of Arts in Linguistics and Education, an Advanced Master in Linguistics from Belgium (2006-2007), an MBA from Blekinge Institute of Technology in Sweden (2006-2008), and an Erasmus Mundus joint program European Master of Higher Education from universities in Norway, Finland, and Portugal (2009).
She is the founder of Fe/male Switch, a startup game that encourages women to enter STEM fields, and also leads CADChain, and multiple other projects like the Directory of 1,000 Startup Cities with a proprietary MeanCEO Index that ranks cities for female entrepreneurs. Violetta created the "gamepreneurship" methodology, which forms the scientific basis of her startup game. She also builds a lot of SEO tools for startups. Her achievements include being named one of the top 100 women in Europe by EU Startups in 2022 and being nominated for Impact Person of the year at the Dutch Blockchain Week. She is an author with Sifted and a speaker at different Universities. Recently she published a book on Startup Idea Validation the right way: from zero to first customers and beyond, launched a Directory of 1,500+ websites for startups to list themselves in order to gain traction and build backlinks and is building MELA AI to help local restaurants in Malta get more visibility online.
For the past several years Violetta has been living between the Netherlands and Malta, while also regularly traveling to different destinations around the globe, usually due to her entrepreneurial activities. This has led her to start writing about different locations and amenities from the POV of an entrepreneur. Here’s her recent article about the best hotels in Italy to work from.
About the Publication
Fe/male Switch is an innovative startup platform designed to empower women entrepreneurs through an immersive, game-like experience. Founded in 2020 during the pandemic "without any funding and without any code," this non-profit initiative has evolved into a comprehensive educational tool for aspiring female entrepreneurs.The platform was co-founded by Violetta Shishkina-Bonenkamp, who serves as CEO and one of the lead authors of the Startup News branch.
Mission and Purpose
Fe/male Switch Foundation was created to address the gender gap in the tech and entrepreneurship space. The platform aims to skill-up future female tech leaders and empower them to create resilient and innovative tech startups through what they call "gamepreneurship". By putting players in a virtual startup village where they must survive and thrive, the startup game allows women to test their entrepreneurial abilities without financial risk.
Key Features
The platform offers a unique blend of news, resources,learning, networking, and practical application within a supportive, female-focused environment:
- Skill Lab: Micro-modules covering essential startup skills
- Virtual Startup Building: Create or join startups and tackle real-world challenges
- AI Co-founder (PlayPal): Guides users through the startup process
- SANDBOX: A testing environment for idea validation before launch
- Wellness Integration: Virtual activities to balance work and self-care
- Marketplace: Buy or sell expert sessions and tutorials
Impact and Growth
Since its inception, Fe/male Switch has shown impressive growth:
- 5,000+ female entrepreneurs in the community
- 100+ startup tools built
- 5,000+ pieces of articles and news written
- 1,000 unique business ideas for women created
Partnerships
Fe/male Switch has formed strategic partnerships to enhance its offerings. In January 2022, it teamed up with global website builder Tilda to provide free access to website building tools and mentorship services for Fe/male Switch participants.
Recognition
Fe/male Switch has received media attention for its innovative approach to closing the gender gap in tech entrepreneurship. The platform has been featured in various publications highlighting its unique "play to learn and earn" model.
