Exclusive Interview with Martijn published by UAE Times
In today’s age of AI disruption, few voices carry as much weight as Martijn Witteveen, a renowned systems architect and founder of Anlytic.com. Known for building intelligence infrastructure at national scale, including the Dutch Police’s central data hub, Witteveen is now on a mission to replace outdated dashboards with autonomous AI agents that think, reason, and act.
As the creator of Anlytic—an AI business analyst platform—Martijn is leading the charge in transforming how companies interact with data. From replacing half his workforce with automation to advising government bodies, his story blends technical mastery with bold leadership. In this exclusive interview with UAE Times, Martijn opens up about his journey, his vision for AI-native enterprises, and what it takes to thrive in an automated future.
UAE Times: What motivated you to embark on a career in your industry?
When I was young, I was really good at math. My teachers in primary school would even put me aside because I was so quick with math problems—they’d give me extra stuff to work on. I had a pretty rough time in high school, but after I started working at a supermarket delivering groceries, I realized it was now or never. So I tried to get into a math university in Delft. I got in and was surprised how good I was at it. Then I got into coding and got a 10 out of 10—that’s a great grade in the Netherlands. I switched my studies to econometrics and combined that with my coding background. When I looked at the statistical tools on the market after finishing my studies, I didn’t like what was available. That’s where the idea came from to build my own app.
UAE Times: What does a typical day look like for you?
A typical day for me—I’m quite an evening person. I don’t like to wake up too much in the morning. So normally I work until later, and I do like it when I work when none of my employees are working. Most of the time I try to start at the same time as everybody but then have a couple of hours at the end of the day. From a working perspective, I really like to put on a couple of meetings directly when I start, just to wake up and get my stuff going—get things out of the way so I don’t have to think about them. Most of our meetings are in the afternoon where we go through the long-term planning. Then, when that’s done, I take a long coding session. Depending on the day, after my normal work is done—most times around 3 o’clock—I code from 3 to 9. By 9 o’clock, I’m usually finished.
UAE Times: How is your industry evolving, and what trends do you foresee?
Well, this is something that’s been happening in the last year or so. Initially, Anlytic really started out more like a BI platform, but way more scalable. Then as soon as we went into our release a couple of years ago, we had absolutely terrible timing because ChatGPT launched just a few weeks after we went into alpha. Basically, our whole pipeline dried out. I was trying to figure out how to incorporate AI into it, and that’s basically how sales conversations went. Then when the LLMs became better—last year in August—we were finally able to get a full agent experience. I don’t expect the BI space to stay as it is now. We’re not going to have dashboards. We’re just going to answer questions. That’s where I started thinking Anlytic should become more like an AI automation platform. It’s going to be more about how we connect data to company setups instead of using it only as an insights engine—more about triggering actions based on data.
UAE Times: What challenges have you overcome, and how?
My biggest challenge probably has nothing to do with business, but more on a personal level. As I mentioned before, I really had a very problematic high school time. I actually got kicked out of high school. I had to finish my high school education basically in evening school while I was working. I got into a quite bad state of mind, switched to a lot of jobs. I ended up delivering for supermarkets and putting up promotional material in stores. That’s really where I think the biggest challenge in my life came from—saying, No, this is not what I want. I have ambitions. I know that I will not be satisfied with this life. And I acted on that ambition.
UAE Times: Can you share any pivotal career moments?
I’m a strong advocate for starting your own company. After working as a tech lead for an automation firm for multiple years, I wanted to go into data engineering. So I started doing it for myself with every course on the Internet that I could find, and just started working. Of course, I already had high-level development experience by that moment, but I think that’s really the biggest pivotal moment. That’s how Anlytic started. After a couple of clients, I got recommended to the Dutch government where I pitched an idea to the director of innovation—to build a kind of nationwide data platform. And yeah, that’s how I got funded.
UAE Times: How do you define your leadership style?
I don’t really believe in the commonly raised work-life balance setup. I think that everything you do in life should contribute to enjoying life. Of course, work is work. But if you’re not enjoying your work, then why are you doing it? I really need my employees to enjoy what they are doing, and that’s definitely something I’m searching for. And then besides that, I’m quite a perfectionist. I think the combination of that and perfectionism is a recipe for success.
UAE Times: Is your organization leveraging AI or other emerging technologies?
So, yeah, I think it’s completely AI-first. Since the last year or so, we’ve been transforming our company with extremely high productivity increases. We managed to halve the number of employees in our organization. We’re using AI, especially coding agents. I don’t really like full-blown coding agents like Cursor, but I’m a big fan of Zed, which is more like assisted coding with AI agents. I don’t think we’re yet at the stage—especially for complex codes—to fully rely on them. We’re also using AI for content creation and marketing, and for creating emails. Basically, all outbound is being enhanced in some form. We’re now changing Anlytic to be used as our own AI outbound platform. My first use case is in marketing and sales—automating the complete outbound sequence through Anlytic.
UAE Times: What are your long-term goals for your career or business?
So for Anlytic itself, I really want it to evolve into being a full-blown AI and data company. I see multiple products evolving out of Anlytic. We’re working on an agent builder. Instead of going into integrations like APIs or Make, we’re building the automations inside of Anlytic. I am also very interested into developing within the UAE, I am thinking of starting an incubator program. The only thing that I am really missing in the UAE compared to Silicon Valley is the knowledge sharing between successful tech entrepreneurs. I am confident we can make the UAE the main global AI & technology hub.
UAE Times: Final Thoughts
Martijn Witteveen’s story is more than just a startup journey—it’s a masterclass in how deep technical expertise combined with unshakable ambition can build transformative platforms. From redesigning the intelligence network of a national police force to helping businesses do twice the work with half the team, Martijn is a leading voice in the new AI-native paradigm. As Anlytic pushes the boundaries of automation and data intelligence, Witteveen continues to inspire a new generation of founders and technologists around the world.
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