Tech entrepreneurship is often framed as a young person's game, but Adeyinka Aderoju is rewriting that assumption. At 63, she built Meno Haven, a menopause-support platform consisting of a mobile app, a website, and a WhatsApp community of roughly 500 women. The solution earned her ₦1 million at FemNest Lab and serves women aged 45 to 65 who are navigating perimenopause and menopause.

According to Aderoju, the platform helps women understand their symptoms and connects them with medical and lifestyle experts. The WhatsApp group, where members ask questions and experts also contribute, is currently its most active component.

In an exclusive interview with Technext, the founder explained why she ventured into technology in her sixties — and why she believes age should not determine who gets to build it.

From market research to tech founder

Aderoju, who holds a day job in addition to running a market research firm, began her journey into tech about three years ago, when she took courses to explore interests beyond her long-standing career. She later seized a pitch opportunity advertised through the programme and presented her idea for a platform for women going through menopause. Her original plan was to build it on a no-code platform.

The breakthrough came when she won an innovation prize at FemNest Lab, an initiative of Heels & Tech, the Nigerian EdTech organisation founded by Bisola Alabi. According to the organisation, the first cohort featured four women turning personal experiences into technology: a platform for menopausal and perimenopausal women, an AI-enabled breast cancer detection solution, reproductive healthcare for rural communities, and health education for girls in schools. Taken together, the cohort's projects share a focus on women's health needs that public awareness and existing services often miss — the same gap that motivated Aderoju's own platform.

Before pitching, participants completed an incubator of about two weeks, attending classes and receiving mentoring from women who had built platforms of their own. The mentors coached them on how to construct a pitch deck, what to include, and what to expect afterwards. Sessions often began at 7 or 8 pm and sometimes ran until 11 pm or midnight, particularly when each participant had to present before a panel.

Aderoju described the schedule as demanding but necessary.

"It wasn't really a tough moment," she said. "I guess it would be something that was not totally convenient, because those sessions were held in the evening."

Breaking the silence around menopause

Aderoju built the platform because menopause is widely misunderstood in Nigeria, across Africa and around the world. Many women do not recognise what is happening to them because information is scarce. The condition is often treated as shameful, or as the end of a woman's life, when in reality it is simply a stage of life rather than a disease.

Public awareness frequently stops at hot flushes, while sweating, insomnia, hair loss, skin problems, reduced sexual interest, vaginal dryness and painful sex often go unlinked to menopause. Because some of these symptoms are intimate and private, a stigma surrounds them, and women hesitate to discuss them or seek help. That taboo can leave them isolated, distressed and depressed.

Her community offers members an environment to ask questions openly. To illustrate the cost of low awareness, she recounted the story of a woman who spent ₦500,000 on a prayer-related intervention for insomnia that was, in fact, a symptom of menopause.

"People must be aware. I mean, somebody was paying 500K to a prayer prophet to take her to the mountain and pray because she was having insomnia. She couldn't sleep, you know. And it was basically just a symptom of menopause."

Aderoju also challenged the assumption that menopause starts at 50. Some women reach early menopause around 35, and in rare cases earlier, with causes including hysterectomy, medication and other health problems. Her goal is to educate, raise awareness and help women navigate their symptoms.

Bringing menopause support into the workplace

Her vision extends beyond the app. She wants to educate employers, companies and HR teams so that women experiencing menopause are supported rather than pushed out, noting that women remain in senior and board roles well into their 50s and 60s. She pointed to menopause-friendly workplaces in the UK as an example.

"I know that in the UK there are companies, major big multinational companies, who have a badge on their wall that they are menopause friendly. And what that means is that they support the women who work in the organisations, even when they're going through menopause," she said.

How that employer-facing ambition takes shape in practice — and whether HR teams closer to home follow the menopause-friendly example she points to abroad — is one thread worth watching as Meno Haven grows beyond its community roots.

Doubt, encouragement and a warm reception

Aderoju admitted she doubted herself more than anyone else did when she started. She turned 60 during her course, and once classmates learnt her age, some stopped using her first name and began calling her "Pastor" or "Mommy". The shift made her wonder whether she belonged in an environment of young people.

Those around her, however, kept her going. Organisers and fellow participants encouraged her to proceed, and the judges responded warmly to her idea. She added that some of the people involved in the pitch were themselves learning about menopause for the first time, reinforcing for her why raising awareness matters.

"I must really commend Bisola Alabi. She was such an encouragement. She was like, 'No, please go ahead.' Everybody encouraged me."

One of the women on the judging panel told Aderoju she was so impressed that she would introduce her to her mother.

"She started calling me 'my mom's new best friend'. They made it so easy for me."

Technology at any age

Asked what needs to change in the tech industry, Aderoju said technology should not be presented as exclusively for young people. She wants older women to be more visible in adverts, events and outreach, with a clear message that people can learn technology at any age. Campaigns urging people over 40 to learn AI are a good start, she said, but broader representation matters so that older women do not feel excluded.

Her message to the world, which doubles as her guiding belief, is that "nothing is impossible." In her view, age should not end anyone's ambitions — inactivity, not age, is what limits people. There is, in her words, "plenty of hope and plenty to do."

Aderoju's story shows what can happen when women are given the tools and the environment to turn lived experience into technology. Her platform has already given hundreds of women a place to talk openly about a subject many are told to keep quiet about.