When Cheryl Sew Hoy couldn’t find a gut microbiome test for her newborn, she didn’t wait for someone else to build one. She incorporated Tiny Health one week after her son was born, self-funded a small study with nine moms, recruited scientific advisors from Mayo Clinic and top research institutions, and spent two years in R&D before launching a product that has since shipped over 100,000 test kits. This episode is a founder playbook for building credibility in a technical category you didn’t train for, surviving 100-plus investor pitches without losing your confidence, and designing the support systems that make it possible to scale a company while raising a family.
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In this conversation, Cheryl walks through the specific decisions that shaped Tiny Health’s trajectory, from putting $50,000 of her own money into a proof-of-concept study to cold-contacting the authors of scientific papers and asking them to join her advisory board. She explains how she discovered that her initial “vitamin” positioning (preventative health for pregnant moms) generated almost no demand, while a “painkiller” message (solutions for baby eczema and allergies) converted immediately. That insight reshaped her entire go-to-market strategy and continues to drive acquisition today. She also opens up about the emotional toll of fundraising, including closing her seed round in two months during COVID, then facing over a hundred rejections before landing three term sheets for her Series A. Her approach to managing that emotional rollercoaster, including using AI as a thought partner to process defensive reactions before responding to investors, is refreshingly honest and immediately applicable.
The enterprise and healthcare provider sales motions are still young, roughly two years old, and Cheryl is candid about the learning curve. She describes how the HCP team mirrors a more traditional sales process (conferences, booth leads, onboarding calls), while her enterprise partnerships are more bespoke, co-branding arrangements where Tiny Health powers the microbiome testing for longevity clinics and organizations like Mayo Clinic’s Exec Health program. The distinction matters because it reflects a strategic choice: Tiny Health’s test is not a commodity that can be white-labeled. The science, the sequencing pipeline, and the data analysis are the product, and that requires the Tiny Health brand to remain visible even inside a partner’s ecosystem.
What makes this episode particularly valuable is how directly Cheryl addresses the operational reality of building a company while raising three children. She negotiated specific responsibilities with her husband (he handles bedtime routines), recruited her aunt to travel with her and her infant so she could continue breastfeeding while on the road, and hired her mother full-time to run fulfillment from their front door. None of this happened by accident. Each arrangement was an explicit conversation, a negotiation, a trade-off made with clarity about what she needed in order to keep building without burning out. Her advice is practical: know what you need, ask for it directly, and budget for the help that makes growth sustainable.
Cheryl Sew Hoy is the CEO and Founder of Tiny Health, the leading microbiome health platform using shotgun metagenomic sequencing to help individuals and families optimize gut and vaginal health. A repeat founder, she previously built and sold Reclip.It to Walmart Labs in 2013, later led a $30M government-backed initiative to grow Southeast Asia’s startup ecosystem, and has raised $34M across her ventures. She holds a master’s in Engineering Management and Data Mining and a bachelor’s in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering from Cornell University, both on full scholarship.
One of the most striking moments in the conversation comes when Cheryl describes her approach to building credibility without a science background: “I had to surround myself with the expertise I didn’t necessarily have and built that credibility. ‘Cause who am I?” Rather than pretending to be something she wasn’t, she assembled an expert circle, recruiting a microbiologist from Mayo Clinic, contacting paper authors at Johns Hopkins and UCSF, and hiring a Chief Science Officer to build the scientific pipeline. She also captures the emotional discipline required in fundraising: “The moment you get a no or someone is just interested on a call, then you get on your next pitch, your confidence goes down. It really tanks. So I’ve learned how to take breaks in between calls.”
Three themes stand out for CEOs navigating similar territory. First, de-risk technical credibility by building the expert circle rather than trying to become the expert yourself. Cheryl’s playbook of self-funding a small study, recruiting published researchers as advisors, and hiring a dedicated science lead gave her company the authority it needed without requiring her to hold a PhD. Second, let early market data reshape your positioning. The shift from preventative “vitamin” messaging to condition-specific “painkiller” messaging (eczema, allergies, sleep) transformed Tiny Health’s customer acquisition economics and is a repeatable framework for any founder struggling with product-market fit. Third, design your support system before you need it. Cheryl’s explicit negotiations around household labor, childcare, and paid help were not afterthoughts. They were strategic decisions that directly enabled her capacity to lead a high-growth company.
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