Stijn Smit

Stijn Smit is the founder of STN Studio, an AI implementation studio focused on turning stuck business processes into working software. Rather than starting with a model or technology stack, he starts with the workflow itself: identifying where time, knowledge or decision-making gets stuck, testing whether AI can materially improve it, and only then building the appropriate system.

His work spans RAG applications, LLM-powered internal tools and custom AI software. One example is Bronwijzer, a retrieval system developed for Dutch educational organisations that connects complex practitioner questions to the relevant source material. His work sits deliberately between product, business and engineering rather than treating AI as a standalone technical discipline.

In summer 2026, Stijn co-founded Back to Being with Max Helmantel and Caesar Schoorl. The three walked the Camino Portugués from Valença to Santiago while building a mental health application without relying on a conventional desk-based development process. The resulting app, Weertje, translates mental wellbeing check-ins into an accessible weather metaphor and combines them with practical exercises, challenges and mental-health information. After the walk, the team donated the application to Stichting MIND, the Dutch national mental health foundation, which is taking it forward.

Stijn graduated summa cum laude from the Associate Degree Smart Media Production at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, receiving a 10 for his graduation project. The programme gave him a foundation across digital product design, media and applied AI. He subsequently completed a minor in Entrepreneurship at the University of Amsterdam and is now continuing his technical education, starting with Scientific Programming & Machine Learning That combination increasingly defines his work: understanding the commercial and human problem, designing an interface people will actually use, and being technical enough to build and understand the AI systems underneath it.