Healthcare has seen major advances in recent decades, from wearable fitness trackers to continuous glucose monitors that help people manage diabetes in real time. Yet one area has remained surprisingly difficult to track: hormones. Despite their critical role in fertility, metabolism, stress, aging, and overall well-being, hormone levels are still largely measured through occasional laboratory tests that provide only a snapshot of a person’s health.
Ula Rustamova believes that it can change.
As the Founder and CEO of Level Zero Health, Rustamova is leading a company that is developing continuous hormone-monitoring technology designed to give healthcare professionals and patients access to real-time hormonal data. Her vision is ambitious, but it is rooted in years of technical experience, a passion for solving meaningful problems, and a determination to bring modern data-driven healthcare to an area that has long lacked innovation.
Today, Rustamova is regarded as one of the emerging entrepreneurs in the European health technology sector. Through Level Zero Health, she is helping to create a new approach to hormone monitoring that could improve clinical decision-making, support fertility treatments, and advance personalized healthcare.
Early Life and Interest in Technology
Ula Rustamova, whose full name is Ulviyya Rustamova, developed an interest in technology at an early age. Long before founding a health technology company, she was fascinated by how engineering and software could be used to solve practical problems.
One of her earliest achievements came when she was just sixteen years old. She won a Microsoft-sponsored competition that gave her an opportunity to work on wearable technology. During that period, she contributed to the development of a wearable posture-correcting device. Although the project was very different from the healthcare technology she works on today, it introduced her to the world of product development and showed her how technology could improve people’s daily lives.
The experience left a lasting impression. Rather than seeing technology as simply a technical field, Rustamova began to view it as a tool for solving real human challenges. That perspective would later become a defining feature of her entrepreneurial career. She continued her education in computer science and related technical disciplines, building strong engineering and analytical skills that prepared her for a future in software and technology leadership.
Building a Career in Technology
Before becoming an entrepreneur, Rustamova gained experience in the technology industry by working with complex software systems and large-scale data projects. One of the most important chapters in her professional journey was her time at Palantir Technologies. There, she served as an Enterprise Technical Lead and worked with sophisticated data platforms used by major organizations. The role exposed her to advanced data analysis, enterprise technology infrastructure, and large-scale problem-solving.
Her experience at Palantir taught her how valuable continuous streams of data can be when making important decisions. Rather than relying on isolated information points, organizations could make better choices when they had access to ongoing, real-time insights. Although the industries were different, this lesson would later influence her thinking about healthcare. She began to wonder why many medical decisions still relied on occasional tests when continuous monitoring had already transformed other fields.
While she enjoyed her work in technology, Rustamova increasingly felt drawn toward entrepreneurship. She wanted to build something that could directly improve people’s lives while addressing a major unmet need. That ambition eventually led her to Entrepreneur First, a talent investor and startup accelerator that helps ambitious individuals find co-founders and launch technology companies.
Meeting a Co-Founder and Finding a Problem Worth Solving
A major turning point in Rustamova’s career came through Entrepreneur First, where she met Irene Jia. The two founders came from complementary backgrounds. Rustamova brought expertise in software engineering, data systems, and technology leadership. Jia brought deep knowledge of biosensors, biomaterials, and medical devices.
As they explored potential business ideas together, they became increasingly interested in hormone health. The more research they conducted, the more they realized that hormone monitoring represented a significant gap in modern healthcare. While continuous glucose monitoring had become common for diabetes management, hormone testing remained dependent on blood samples and laboratory analysis.
Patients often needed multiple clinic visits. Doctors frequently had to make decisions using limited data collected at a single point in time. Important hormonal fluctuations could go unnoticed between tests. For Rustamova, this represented both a challenge and an opportunity. She believed that healthcare providers and patients deserved access to better information. If hormone levels could be monitored continuously, doctors might gain a clearer understanding of how treatments were working and how a patient’s condition was changing over time. That idea became the foundation for Level Zero Health.
Founding Level Zero Health
In 2023, Rustamova and Jia launched Level Zero Health with a mission to develop technology capable of continuously monitoring hormones. The company focuses on creating wearable biosensors that can measure hormone levels through interstitial fluid, the fluid that surrounds cells throughout the body. The goal is to provide ongoing measurements rather than isolated snapshots.
From the beginning, the founders recognized that building such technology would be technically challenging. Hormones are more difficult to measure continuously than substances like glucose. Success would require advances in biosensor design, data processing, and clinical validation. Instead of pursuing quick results, the team focused on building strong scientific foundations.
Their approach attracted attention from investors, researchers, and healthcare professionals who recognized the potential value of continuous hormone monitoring. The company initially concentrated on hormones such as progesterone, estrogen, cortisol, and testosterone. These hormones play important roles in fertility treatment, reproductive health, stress management, and hormone replacement therapies. By focusing on areas where hormone data can directly influence medical decisions, Level Zero Health positioned itself to address meaningful healthcare challenges from the start.
A Breakthrough Funding Milestone
One of the most significant moments in Rustamova’s entrepreneurial journey came in early 2025. Level Zero Health announced a $6.9 million pre-seed funding round led by Redalpine, with participation from HAX, SOSV, Entrepreneur First, and other investors.
The funding attracted attention across the European startup ecosystem because of both its size and the ambitious vision behind the company. Several industry publications reported that it was the largest pre-seed funding round raised by a female-founded company in Europe at the time. For Rustamova and her team, the investment represented more than financial support.
It provided validation that investors believed continuous hormone monitoring could become an important part of future healthcare. The funding enabled the company to accelerate research and development, expand its engineering and scientific teams, conduct clinical studies, and move closer to commercialization. It also strengthened the company’s ability to pursue regulatory pathways and establish partnerships with healthcare providers.
Leadership Style
Rustamova’s leadership style reflects both her technical background and her entrepreneurial mindset. She approaches challenges with curiosity, discipline, and a strong reliance on evidence. Rather than making decisions based on assumptions, she focuses on data, experimentation, and measurable results. This approach has been particularly valuable in healthcare technology, where scientific credibility and clinical validation are essential.
At the same time, Rustamova understands that successful innovation requires collaboration. Building a company at the intersection of software, biosensors, healthcare, and data science requires expertise from many different disciplines. As a result, she has emphasized creating a team that combines diverse technical and scientific knowledge.
Her leadership also reflects patience and long-term thinking. Developing a new category of medical technology takes time, rigorous testing, and regulatory approval. Instead of chasing short-term attention, she has focused on building a foundation that can support lasting impact.
People who follow the company’s progress often note that Level Zero Health has maintained a clear focus on solving a real healthcare problem rather than simply creating technology for its own sake. That focus begins with Rustamova’s leadership philosophy.
Industry Expertise and Vision
Rustamova’s expertise sits at the intersection of software engineering, wearable technology, health data, and entrepreneurship. Her early exposure to wearable devices, combined with her experience at Palantir and her work building a health technology company, has given her a unique perspective on how continuous data collection can improve decision-making.
Her vision extends beyond a single device. She believes healthcare is moving toward a future where patients and clinicians will have access to richer, more personalized information than ever before. Continuous hormone monitoring could play a major role in that transformation.
According to Level Zero Health, the company is working toward building what it describes as the world’s largest hormone-health dataset. Such a dataset could support future research, improve treatment protocols, and help scientists better understand hormonal patterns across different populations. For Rustamova, the long-term opportunity is not only to measure hormones more effectively but also to create a stronger foundation for personalized medicine.
Improving Efficiency in Healthcare
One of the most promising aspects of Level Zero Health’s technology is its potential to make healthcare more efficient. Traditional hormone testing often requires repeated blood draws, laboratory processing, and multiple clinic visits. The process can be time-consuming for both patients and healthcare providers.
Continuous monitoring could help address many of these challenges. Healthcare professionals may gain access to more complete information without requiring frequent testing appointments. Patients could spend less time undergoing routine procedures while receiving more personalized care.
In fertility clinics, for example, hormone fluctuations can significantly influence treatment decisions. More detailed and timely information could potentially help clinicians make better-informed choices. Similarly, hormone replacement therapy and other hormone-related treatments may benefit from more frequent monitoring and data-driven adjustments. Although the technology remains under development, the potential efficiency gains are one reason why investors and healthcare experts have shown interest in the company’s work.
Personal Approach
Despite working in a highly technical field, Rustamova communicates with clarity and practicality. Her public comments consistently emphasize patient outcomes, healthcare improvement, and scientific rigor. She often focuses on the real-world impact of technology rather than technical complexity. This approach reflects her broader philosophy as a founder.
She appears motivated by the desire to solve meaningful problems and create solutions that genuinely improve people’s lives. Throughout her career, she has demonstrated a willingness to tackle difficult challenges, whether that meant entering a highly regulated healthcare industry or pursuing a technological goal that many considered difficult to achieve. Her journey highlights the importance of persistence, curiosity, and long-term commitment.
Future Outlook
The coming years are likely to be important for both Rustamova and Level Zero Health. The company continues to advance its wearable hormone-monitoring platform through research, development, and clinical validation. As the technology progresses, it has the potential to influence fertility care, hormone therapy management, reproductive health, and personalized medicine.
If successful, Level Zero Health could help establish continuous hormone monitoring as a new category within healthcare, much as continuous glucose monitoring transformed diabetes management. For Rustamova, the mission remains clear. She is working to provide healthcare professionals and patients with better information, better tools, and ultimately better outcomes.
Her combination of technical expertise, entrepreneurial determination, and patient-centered vision has already helped her build one of Europe’s most closely watched health technology startups.
While the company’s journey is still unfolding, Ula Rustamova has established herself as a founder committed to solving one of healthcare’s most overlooked challenges. Through Level Zero Health, she is helping to bring hormone monitoring into a new era, one defined by continuous insights, smarter decisions, and more personalized care.
