Empowering Families with Tiny Health: A Conversation with Cheryl Sew Hoy

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Welcome to our podcast, From the Ground Up, where we interview startup founders exploring their journeys, their success, challenges, and lessons learned. We hope you be inspired in discovering what it takes to build a thriving startup. I'm your host, Jake Aaron Villarreal, and here with us today we have Cheryl Sew Hoy, founder and CEO of Tiny Health. Cheryl, welcome to the show.

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Hey Jake, thanks for having me.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, well thanks for joining us here today. A little bit about Cheryl, uh she's an accomplished and repeat founder including a successful consumer software startup that was acquired by Walmart Labs in 2013. She's since launched Tiny Health, the first at-home gut microbiome testing platform for families using metagenomics. She'll tell us all about it and why it's important. Make sure to listen to the whole episode so you understand what it is, the process, and how it can help your kids and family in the future. Before we dive in here Cheryl, on your background, uh where are you calling in from today?

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Austin, Texas.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Austin! All right, go Texas. Are you originally from there?

Cheryl Sew Hoy: No. In fact, we moved here about two years ago, just a little bit over, from California. So I spent about maybe over 10 years in the Bay Area and with each kid we moved out to the East Bay further and further. And at that point, at towards the end of the pandemic, we felt like it didn't make sense to stay in California. We've been there for so long and we knew that Austin was a thriving startup scene, so we decided to move here. But uh originally I'm from Malaysia, uh in Southeast Asia.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Very cool. I like that. What was uh, we'll talk about your company Tiny Health and excited to really learn the details and your journey there. Um what was uh the the process of being from Malaysia and coming to the US? What was the driving force around that?

Cheryl Sew Hoy: I actually got a scholarship from the government of Malaysia to go to college in uh New York basically. I went to Cornell University. Uh so it was a full ride which is really nice out of high school. Uh you know, in Malaysia I come from a really humble family. We didn't really have savings for my upper education or college. Um so it was really cool when um we have a huge national exam during high school to like rank all the kids. Everyone was ranked on the same examination and I happened to be the top 100 in my country in that year.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy: And so the scholarship is definitely not not easy to achieve. Um I'm kind of in a minority group in Malaysia. I'm of Chinese origin and we're a minority in my own country. Um so for someone like me to get a full ride from the government was quite rare. And I'm really thankful because the scholarship from Cornell was about a quarter million dollars for four years including room and board. So it was really nice um to get that.

And then you know came... it was really my first time out of the country, out of Malaysia because we were uh, we didn't have a lot of money to go on trips. So I never left the country. And at 18 um I took uh the first journey on my own without, you know, I had no family in the US, had never been here. I didn't get the the luxury of doing these college tours to figure out what university was ideal for me. But at the time I wanted to study uh chemical engineering and Cornell was ranked one of the top ones in Ivy League, so I picked that. Uh but very quickly discovered I didn't really, my heart wasn't in the lab you know. And so I switched out to Operations Research and Industrial Engineering. I knew I wanted to be an engineer and my scholarship was for engineering. So I I switched to Operations Research and Industrial Engineering because that was the more business-like engineering major. Uh there's a lot of math and stats involved and you know a lot of people from that major went on to be management consultants or uh banking and finance.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: What was your path coming out of school? What did you get into, the management consulting track or what did you uh, where did you start?

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Yeah I actually started as a, a finance analyst or business analyst for an environmental engineering consulting firm. And I moved to Arizona um from New York, followed a boy there actually out of college. So I did that for a little bit. And then yeah, I I got another scholarship from Cornell to do my master's in engineering. So that's when I went back to Cornell and then finished that up um in a year. And then I moved to New York and then finally was a strategic, like management consultant uh at Opera Solutions. So that was when um you know I had always like wanted to be a management consultant at the time when it was trendy, back when it was trendy. But unfortunately at the time, it was interesting because it was 2008 when I graduated from my master's and got the job in New York. Um it was a downturn. It the start of the financial downturn. And so a lot of the management consulting jobs ended up not being strategic, but more about um cost cutting, outsourcing the IT department uh from, to India basically. So a lot of um those kinds of projects and it was kind of a miserable time.

So that was actually the the genesis of my first startup uh that I built in New York in '09 actually, towards the tail end of the financial crisis. Um a lot of my friends in I-banking and whatnot were being laid off. And you know, feels familiar now, right? Like you know we're experiencing that a little bit now uh in a different sector, but like that, at that time a lot of my consulting and uh finance friends were being laid off. And and then that's actually how the New York tech startup scene kind of grew. Like out of those layoffs, right? Um so it's kind of part of that scene, a lot of the hurrah of like, "we are New York tech and we can do it too." So I quit my consulting job because I was so miserable in it. And I started my first company in '09. Um and you know we ended up working on that and you know it's, it's a really cool kind of tech scene at a time because New York was just building its ecosystem up. So it's part of a lot of the initial founder breakfasts and a lot of uh you know a lot of the uh co-working spaces at General Assembly and the first WeWork Labs um with the first hundred um entrepreneurs as part of that labs. And so that was kind of a, a really cool scene to be part of. Uh and ended up selling that company to Walmart Labs in 2013. So we moved out to the, the West Coast to the Bay Area for the uh acquisition.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. It's we, you know there's a lot of companies that are started but they don't always get acquired or go public or have a successful... so it's good that you've had you know that full cycle uh experience under your belt. Um we're going to talk about your company Tiny Health and I'm sure there's some lessons learned that you've applied to your new company. But before we do that give us a little insight about what inspired you to create Tiny Health and what's the problem you're solving.

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Yeah, so right before I started Tiny Health I was an Entrepreneur in Residence or Founder in Residence is what they call it at Silicon Valley Bank. Um so I had about a year and a half to really figure out what I wanted to do next from my previous startup or previous like gig, sorry. Um I, for my next company I even explored kind of getting into venture capital um and raising a small fund because a lot of my friends seem to be doing that at the time. This was like in 20... I want to say 20... I can't remember, 2020 maybe. Uh but I ended up deciding against that because um you know the the part that I didn't like the most about being a founder is fundraising. And being a VC, especially a solo GP, you end up fundraising all the time. So it's less about helping founders, which is the part that I enjoy, uh but more about managing your LPs and raising money perpetually. So decided that wasn't for me, started to figure out what I wanted to to do next, what you, company I wanted to built.

And you know because I built a consumer company that I pivoted to be retail focused... so we ended up with a B2B model but it was not a SaaS model. And obviously software, SaaS, you know in the previous years has been really hot. So initially wanted to build something around the SaaS space. But um kind of had a co-founder, a technical co-founder I joined up with to explore some ideas when I was an EIR. Um but nothing really clicked between the two of us right. He went off to built his own consumer health company actually. And I, you know, initially um I remember like three of my closest uh kind of tech friends, we were sitting in a co-working space kind of just like we each wanted to build a company. And we were debating ideas and they were kind of like, "oh there's this old company called uBiome and the gut microbiome space that you know was very promising but their user, their user experience sucked. Look at this report!" U- my friend Sharon said you know like was pulling the report out. And I was telling them my story about my, my daughter. I had a c-section with my daughter about six years ago and how I learned a lot about the gut microbiome and how c-section baby guts look very different from vaginally born babies because they're not passing through the vaginal canal and they're being exposed to the mom's antibiotics during operations. And how that leads to more risk of um eczema, food allergy, asthma, and host of immune conditions. So I was explaining to my friends you know this kind of idea around gut health, baby gut health.

So that's when my friend was like, "You should build a um a gut health testing company around mom and baby's you know health." And I remember at a time all three of them were like, "Oh my gosh this is so on brand for you." And I was resisting that because I felt like, "Oh this is such a like, you know like another mom building a mom company" right. I was really resisting that. "No I want to build a software SaaS company." Um it's funny but you know from that initial seeding of an idea I I kept coming back to it. Like, geez, I am really passionate about it. I was reading a ton of papers and studies around gut health and how 80% of our immune system is in our gut and you're acquiring it in early life, right, in the first 10,000 days. So if mom's gut and vaginal microbiome is in the right balance, you may not even be passing it on to your baby if you had a vaginal birth. So I learned all about how your immune system is really informed by these bugs in your gut. So it's so essential for human health, um longevity, health span, lifespan, gut-brain axis connection, so it's it's so crucial. And I was super passionate about it, you know, and I began to adopt a lot of these you know gut, like you know gut friendly lifestyle.

So over the course of maybe a year exploring other ideas, I kept being pulled back to this idea. Um and then I, I was pregnant with my second child at the time, and so remember I, I mentioned I had a c-section with my daughter and she has a lot, she has eczema and all these health, health conditions. And so I was like, "oh with my son I was worried um I was going to have an c-section again." And so I decided yeah maybe I should start this company so I can prevent these chronic conditions for him if I, if I did have a c-section. And I can find out early on if his gut was imbalanced and I can course correct. So it really came out of a need, a personal need, a personal you know kind of finding. And you know I, I did some research and I couldn't find a gut test for babies because the baby's gut is fundamentally different from an adult gut. You can't use an adult stool test for a baby.

So I decided to accept that this is really what I'm passionate about. And now, you know, as a founder, kind of like advising other founders who are like exploring new ideas and what companies to start, um I think it's actually really interesting if you have a certain perspective, personal perspective on you know like solving a problem that, where there's no solution yet in this world, right? And because you are solving the problem for yourself, you not only have that insight that other people, you know, who's just looking for a startup to build may, may not have, you are also personally invested in the solution. So I do like, you know I do some angel investing on the side, but not not so active anymore, but I do look out for founders now who um, or in the past, who like have this perspective, this very kind of personal perspective because they really bring a unique angle to the table.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. And passion too, and if it's solving your own problem and it can help others, it's you know why, how would you not be wanting to make that more available and hopefully solve other problems. So I, I just want to go back a little bit to the test itself. So how exactly is the test administered?

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Yeah, it's a, basically an at-home test. So um you know, with COVID it's made a lot of at-home testing more accessible and available and acceptable too. So you kind of get a kit like that and you get a swab that looks like this. Um this is just peanut butter don't worry. But this is how much stool you need to collect uh from a soiled diaper if you're sampling a baby or toddler or from a soiled toilet paper. So this is how little you need. There's the yellowish part is actually a drying desiccant, so it kind of preserves the sample, the DNA of the stool, the bacteria in the sample. So when you, when you close it, it kind, kind of um kind of uh seals like you know there's no oxygen that can get into it. And you put it in a prepaid envelope, drop it into your mailbox, use any USPS mailbox, um it gets to our lab, our lab extracts the DNA of the stool, of the microbes in the stool, and then in about a few weeks you get a report back online that shows you all the microbes in your gut. Including you know, most of it will be bacteria but they may be viruses, hopefully not parasites, but they could be parasites, um fungi as well. So we give you a report on what all the bugs in your gut are, they in range, out of range, what does it mean for your health, and how can you improve your gut health from a dietary, nutrition, supplement, or lifestyle perspective.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. So for the listeners that aren't watching the video, it looks like almost like a um a Q-tip or something you would pull out of a capsule. And then you would swab the, the diaper and, and, and take what you need to take out of that, and then you put it back in this little capsule and, and it sounds like you're kind of done with it. It's about 3 and a half, maybe 4 inches, something like that, looks pretty streamlined. What's the result tell you and what can you do once you get the results? It's one thing to test, but then what do you do with the results when you get the test?

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Yeah, yeah, um, um, our flagship product is the like pregnancy gut test, stool test, and vaginal test test, and then the um baby tests from 0 to 3 years of age. But now we have an older kid, 3 to 18-year-old um children's test, and an adult test as well. Um, we, because we created this primarily initially to solve my own problem right as, as a parent I don't want to get a result, like a report about my child's health and not be able to do anything about it. So we really um you know, there's a really personalized action plan for you from a, a diet perspective. Perspective. So if you have, you have a baby under six months, they're only breastfeeding, so what can you do from that perspective? From mom's uh diet if they're breastfeeding or formula, which formula could be a good, a better option? And then as the child gets, eats more solids, then what foods should the growing baby uh consume based on their gut needs? And because we chart out the developmental needs of the baby's gut, that's so intrinsically tied to their immune system, and then from lifestyle perspective. Um we, we used to spend 90% of our time outdoors in farms and you know all that, um and getting exposed to a lot of uh the microbiome from nature, from pets and animals. Now it's the reverse. We spend 90% indoors, maybe more, right? Maybe some people spend 99% of their time indoors esec- especially during winter time. So we're really not being exposed enough to a diversity of microbes, and the decreased diversity is causing a lot of issues like allergies and, and um chronic conditions is, is contributing to it. So we do give advice from a lifestyle perspective reminding people to get outside, to get a pet and things like that. Um and we show the diversity of your gut so you know for regular adults it's, yeah people really love our tests because we tell them specifically maybe what fiber rich foods to eat, um what proteins to eat, if they have, their guts have the microbes that can support v- vitamin production for example, and whether you may need extra supplementation. Um so it's, it's very actionable basically and you can see if you're deficient in certain categories. Like um like Bifidobacteria is one of the most popular probiotic, you may be completely deficient in that, and a lot of people do the test to find out and then follow our action plan and retest in three months and they see that going from zero to five or 10%. Um so you can really buy a, biohack your way to improve your gut and most of the time the symptoms that um you know come along with a deficient gut will disappear once you fix those metrics.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. You know, it takes a long time for new products and services to get approved through the FDA and you know doctors oftentimes don't have the time to go out and do the research. They essentially are just, you know, what medications are being pushed to them they might try and use from pharmaceutical sales and whatnot. But not being a doctor and being able to create a new product or service is, you know... some might say, "That's great, I want to try it." Some might say, "Well, if it's not a doctor I don't necessarily want to try something." But for you as an innovator, walk through the process of if you're not an expert in a field, being able to become an expert, being able to acquire the right talent and advisors to build a world class team that you don't have to be the doc- doctor, but you got the outside experts that are guiding you to create a product that might not exist. What's that like? Because a lot of people have ideas, how do you actually execute on that?

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Yeah, that's, that's a great question and something I also get asked a lot. Um first of all I want to clarify so that what we offer at Tiny Health is not medical advice, it really isn't a diagnostic test at all, it is a wellness test. So it is category of tests, they're in a wellness category where it's educational. You know, we're informing you all the bugs that are in your gut. You, you know, it's your data. Like you should deserve to know what's in your gut, right? And you know, just kind of add on a lot of evidence-based, cited studies on you know "these bugs that are related to XYZ conditions and and or you know related to health, and you know here are the foods you can eat to replenish that if you're missing certain key beneficial bacteria." So that's kind of what we do, it's a wellness test. Um and what I learned through starting this company, before I started the company, was that [it] takes an average 10 to 15 years to, for any groundbreaking academic research to um be adopted in clinical practice. Maybe rightfully so. It takes time um because you need to go through like clinical studies, um there needs to be enough evidence. But most of all, doctors today you know, conventional doctors that you go see at you know, as your primary care, they, they went to school maybe 10, 20 years ago when microbiome... microbiome is just not taught in medical school school at all, right? Um I, I think nutrition is not even really a focus of medical school, you don't really learn about diet and supplements and you know sort of like preventative care. So doctors are great when you have an acute problem like a maybe a stomach bug where you need some uh treatment for immediately. If you break a leg or you need operations, that's great. But the problems we're tackling are a lot of chronic conditions and that are affecting kids or adults today, right? Um and a lot of these chronic conditions like allergies, asthma, eczema, you know, adult autoimmune conditions or IBD, IBS, bloating issues, are, are more connected to the gut. So something like, you know, that yo- your conventional, conventional doctors may not have went to school for.

So for me, like what I learn is that when, if you are getting your um microbiome, your gut microbiome from your mom in the early days days um, and it's sort of developing in the first three years, like this is really the time to course correct if there are major imbalances. For example, uh we see some four-month old babies with 90% E. coli type bugs and that's highly inflammatory for their immune system. So it should be maybe 10% E. coli, shouldn't be 90% E. coli in a baby. And for adults, we should have zero E. coli technically in our guts. Um so there you know and you can course correct that within a month. We've seen now with so many, we're supporting tens and thousands of families now, that in one month you know, if you follow our protocol you can turn a baby's gut around. Like from 90% E. coli you can reduce that down to 10%. And I wouldn't say you know the kind of solutions we're offering are you know they need FDA approval or they're medically indicated. Um you can solve them through natural means like breastfeeding, if the mom had the right gut microbes. So we would recommend [to] test mom's microbes too. Um adding prebiotics, the food to the probiotics, certain strains of probiotics they're infant approved. So we're just recommending you things that are in market already um that you can buy. And what's uh like the, right now like a lot of parents are either not giving their kids probiotics or they're giving their kids probiotics with the wrong strains that their babies don't need. And then there's also the element of sometimes babies don't need a probiotic at all. They're, they're good, their gut looks pretty good. And there is a danger of over-supplementing uh when a baby doesn't need probiotics. And what happens if you have too much of a good thing, it kind of inhibits natural diversification which we want as the baby grows older.

So there really, in this, in this first 10,000 days there was, there's really this fine-tuned development stage. And for me when I found out like how profound it is, um how, how easy it is to impact and course correct u- a child's gut, that was the sort of no-brainer to me. Why, why isn't there a product like this in the market where it's so impactful? Um these kids with a lot of these symptoms like GI symptoms, bloating you know digestion issues, eczema, when we course correct their gut in the early days the symptoms really do go away. And so we start there with you know this, this where the science is really strong in the mom-baby gut, and then kind of slowly make our way up to kids, older kids and adult gut where it's more diverse, it's more mature. And frankly in the adult microbiome space there's a lot of snake oil in this space. It's really hard for consumers to differentiate whether or not like a product is scientifically backed or not, you know, is it just marketing? So from the beginning I knew I wasn't a scientist or a doctor, but I took a lot of courses, I read a lot of papers, and I, I, from the papers I read, I went to the authors, the first authors on those papers to ask if they would be our scientific advisor. Um because I knew I needed to establish credibility and I, if I was to build a company that I want scientists to kind of um sort of validate or you know sort of see our company as a credible scientifically backed company, I needed scientists on board. So my first instinct was to get the scientists on my board of advisor, um, and then, and then I, then I got the medical um, the doctors, MDs on board. So I really you know, before starting Tiny Health, knew that I needed that support and backing and expertise to be building the right company, that's credible.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. And talk just a little about the advisors where... where you don't have to go into specific names and whatnot, but where are they coming from, where are they working? Are they at some of the top hospitals? What's their background?

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Yeah, uh Dr. Noel Mueller is one of our top advisors. He comes from Johns Hopkins and he wrote uh, he does a lot of research in um maternal and infant microbiome. So, so like frequently speak at conferences and cited as an expert in this area. We have um other kind of scientists who are experts in the breast milk microbiome. We know that mom can transfer her, her vaginal and gut microbes uh during birth and labor, but she also continues to transfer her microbes uh while breastfeeding for example, so she's an expert in that. Uh and we have other kind of um experts from Cornell and UCSD, uh UCSF. Um our, our medical uh board also comes from you know they have experience in Kaiser Permanente and yeah like places like UCSF for example. So um...

Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great, good credibility there. From a um, talk a little bit about the funding. Where are you at from a funding perspective and what were some of the challenges that you went through as you were pitching, presenting and receiving?

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Yeah, we, we raised our seed round, that was the first round we raised, in 2021. So admittedly that was during um a really good time in the fund-, the founders' fundraising journey. Um we were, we were only targeting 2 million and we were quickly oversubscribed and reached four and a half instead. So you know, I, and and now we're just kind of like coming off of a, closing a, a Series A fundraise which we'll announce soon. Uh we haven't quite announced it yet but I'm excited to um next couple weeks.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Thank you. Yeah.

Cheryl Sew Hoy: And so this environment is really different, right, from a couple years ago. But I've always been you know, pretty disciplined about how I treat funding. This is my second venture-funded company. I you know, I mentioned my, my earlier one I had raised maybe um a million plus, but that was like a different time, that was in '09. And so with the four and a half mill that I raised, I knew that you know, I had only set out to raise 2 million. So what I did was I acted as if I only raised two million and almost like just kept two and a half million in the bank for a rainy day or if I needed it. And again like I remember my, my investors kind of like, "Cheryl, why aren't you spending money?" Um and I was, I was just holding back. I'm like, "We didn't have a product yet, we you know when I pitched the idea [it] was on paper, frankly it was just an idea. I didn't have a product, didn't even have a website." Um so I spent another year completing R&D before launching the product in April 2022 when tinyhealth.com was you know a thing, was publicly launched. Um so I didn't want to, it didn't make sense even when we launched. I wanted to take a really uh thoughtful, intentional approach in doing a lot of market validation, "what was the messaging?" uh instead of just spending money on ads. It took us about 10 months before we actually spent money on ads. Um so it was a lot of experimentation and making sure our product was useful to users and they would come back and, and buy again, right? Um so in the same approach this time we're raising, uh closing the Series A, I think we um we, we would be very dis- even more disciplined in this market and in hiring and um just like planning out the marketing around expansion.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yep, that's really cool. What's the landscape like in the microbiome space and what are some of the challenges that you see?

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Um there's, you know, it's interesting. So in the baby space, the mom and baby space where we started, there's almost no competition. So we are the market leader right now and we want to maintain that. In the, as we expand into the adult space, we see more competition so we want to be smart about how we do that. Uh and you know, take a different approach. So expanding through perhaps partnerships and, and uh we have a B2B business uh kind of growing. We, we are primarily D2C right now from a revenue perspective, but coming up in 2024 um certainly my, my focus is on a lot of B2B relationships and partnerships and clinical studies. A lot of um nutrition companies are coming to us to use our vaginal and stool tests for their clinical trials and clinical studies. Um so I'm personally pretty excited about that opportunity.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: What differentiates you as you look in the market and you're carving out your niche or your, your wedge to get into companies?

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Um so like there's, there's some education here. Like a lot of the stool tests that [are] in the market right now that are used by more functional, holistic practitioners are using qPCR-based stool tests. So technology-wise it's different. So we're using something very new called shotgun metagenomic sequencing and this is currently the gold standard in microbiome research. Um so kind of just education, ed- educating practitioners who are already using stool test um about the differences and why this technology is more comprehensive and more superior is something that we're actively working on. Um but yeah, like you know, I think it is, it is challenging in terms of, like I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of, you know, it's really hard for consumers to untangle what microbiome companies or supplements are um you know, legit and what are, what is all marketing. Um so we, we certainly want to keep sort of... we have a ve- a brand that is very evidence-based right now, very scientific, very trustworthy. And sort of the relationship with our consumers are really strong right now because you know again, coming back to building the product for yourself and solving your own problem, um our customers know that I built the company out of my own need and solving my own problem. So I am the customer. So when we launched our Facebook community, um it, it certainly shines through that you know we, the company cares about their issues. And a lot of people who come to Tiny Health have a chronic condition that they're tackling. And you know, as a mom of a kid with chronic conditions, uh I understand their problems, right? So I think that is really important in building a brand and a business that is tr- trustworthy and, and then we try to grow from there.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: You know, when companies go out and they're taking a new product or idea to market, they go, they get the funding, they hope they get new customers, they can optimize their product, but they also try to scale. And sometimes there's things in the business you can't scale, it's the unscalable parts of the business. What are some of those things that you have today that are important for you to, to get right, but also understand that's part of the process of building a company?

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Yeah it's um, you know funny, like I recently had my last podcast, the interviewer said uh, because he's one of our Tiny, one of uh... he's a, like in his 50s, he's a male and he uses a Tiny Health test. And he wrote in one day to hello@tinyhealth.com just you know, regular like support question. And I actually answered it, his, his email and he was quite surprised and he asked me about this in his podcast as well. Like "How are you the CEO, a busy person, answering support questions?" Uh so this is the one unscalable thing that I'm still doing at the company today. I'm reading... I get all the hello@tinyhealth.com emails and I skim through a lot of the, the subject headlines. To me as a founder in relatively early stage company, it's really important for me to continue doing that even though it seems unscalable and it's, it's impossible to read hundreds of emails every day. I do have my methods and I think it really gives me like a really... a heat map uh of "Are our consumers happy? Do I see like a lot of like praises? Do I see complaints?" And oftentimes when I see complaints, something is wrong operationally or from a fulfillment perspective, or are they unhappy with a report? I really zoom in and kind of reply on my own because I want, I want to understand like how are we serving our customers. And I feel like sometimes as companies scale and founders grow their company, that is the element that maybe you hire other people to come kind of fil- you hire your product manager. I certainly have a product manager, but I'm still on these emails because ultimately you're making a lot of product calls and product decisions. Um and for as long as I can, I want to remain on top of like, what is the customer sentiment.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, really cool, I love that. And being able to take that insight and then you know, optimize the product or the service or make changes based on that feedback I think is really cool. Um and really valuable, that many times doesn't quite get to the founders. Um just want to touch on quickly as we wrap up here, you talked about direct to consumer and also B2B. Talk a little bit more about the business model and as a consumer what uh, what can they expect to pay to maybe do a test or to subscribe to your service? Kind of give us insights there.

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Yeah, in the first year and a half we learned a lot about who our customers are, who, what they're coming from, for what they're needing. And in the, the coming months we're actually kind of modifying our um testing platform a little bit. In past you could have um just got a, a single test for 199. Now we're kind of increasing that pricing a little bit to 249. That comes with a consult call. So that we, you, you know after getting your results back you talk with a microbiome specialist to walk through your results and what are the actions you can take next. Um oftentimes people feel more confident in taking the next step and less overwhelmed when you have the extra support. And we're also realizing that a lot of people are coming for, they're either coming for a targeted problem like a chronic condition, like a bloating problem or a constipation issue or long COVID even for example. And so we're creating a bunch of programs that are targeted and helping you solve your chronic condition over six months. So it comes with two tests, a baseline test to get your current state and then you get on a, almost a monthly call with a functional practitioner to work through your problems, and you end up with a um stool test at the end to see how it's changed your microbiome. So that's for people with some sort of issue.

And then there's a subset of our customers who are um, you know, they just want to optimize their microbiome. They're proactive about their gut health, they understand how important it is and they just want to be testing their gut um twice a year for example. So we have a membership option for those people. Um you get two um stool tests up front for 399 a year, comes with a consult call, and you can get additional kits for 169. So a cheaper rate for your whole family because you can use it, maybe you want to use for your, your child, but you want... a lot of our parents, they get a baby gut test and then they test themselves. The mom tests, the dad test, and then the grandma, the granddad comes in as well, older kids. So the whole family really gets in and improves their gut health because it's a lifestyle. It's not just like that moment in time. Your gut changes according to what you eat, what you do, the supplements you take or don't take, if you have an illness, if you travel or even move to a different state. Like when we moved from California to Texas, our food and supply source changed and our whole family's microbiome took a dive for the worse. So now we're kind of like resourcing a lot of our food, doing a whole house filter to really improve our gut health. Um so there's just a lot of reasons why someone would want to proactively test their gut health and even vaginal health um every year. Just like how now there's a lot of startups coming out with blood biomarkers, home hormone tests and things like that to test proactively, make sure you're proactive about your, your overall health.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. Yeah, it seems like everything is coming to the home which is great. You know, from Amazon getting your products, to now you can do health checks. And uh I don't see how that's going away anytime soon. In fact, I've heard that there's already diagnostic tests and you know CT scanners and all sorts of crazy things that you can now buy at very low cost and have in your home and you know, not have to go to the doctor every time you want to take a look at your health and you know send your records in. And um, self-service seems to be the way to go.

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Yeah, and ultimately I think consumers, consumers are waking up to the theme of proactive healthcare right? I mean our healthcare system is broken in the sense that it's sick care. You only go to the doctor when you're sick. But that's too late. And so a lot of consumers are you know, following a lot of health podcasters like Andrew Huberman or Peter Attia or Rhonda Patrick um who proactively you know, you know, look at biomarkers and prevention, taking preventative actions to improve your health. So I think you know, especially like the Gen Z um are moving towards like more proactive care. So it's definitely something that we're noticing um you know, catching on. And so gut health is really part of it.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, especially for your kids. I mean you want to do everything you can for your kids. And if you can do things proactively early on and change their life or make their life better, uh why would you not try that? So I, I, I love what you're creating. I really um, I think it could be applied to not just the kids but the families and yourself. And you know if it improves your life as a founder too, whether it's health and energy and lifestyle and all those things, um you know, sign me up. So I'll be a customer of, you of yours moving forward. Uh let's switch gears a little bit to um just you know, you as a person. Three questions just a little bit more specific to you. Um you know, the roller coaster ride of a startup is a lot of ups and downs, left and right experiences. What do you do to keep a positive perspective, to stay mentally and maybe physically healthy and also positive?

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Yeah, I, I mean it's all, it comes back to again like you know wellness, right? Like I think um, I fall into the trap too. I'm in the wellness space, but I was sacrificing my sleep for you know, just being overworked and working to 1:00 a.m. So I started investing in myself and buying an Oura Ring and that really is a game changer for me. So prioritizing sleep is, is huge because I, I just learned that, you know, you get the deep sleep in the early, earlier in the night. So sleeping, when you're missing a lot of the deep restorative immune building sleep, and then my kids when they wake up, they wake me up early, so the, the last part of your sleep is the REM part right, that helps with memory and regeneration and things like that. So I was kind of killing myself by missing the deep sleep and the REM sleep. So now I'm really trying to change all that, sleeping earlier and waking up earlier. Um so it keeps me mentally focused and healthy because I really need to protect that to be the best CEO and founder. Um so I really think that is, has been game changing for me.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's really cool. Um what's some insight you can share with the listeners um as an angel investor or from other uh entrepreneurs that have shared with you that you think is priceless as they build their own startup?

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Um I think this is also through um personal experiences. Um I mentioned being really disciplined about funding and money. Like I, I think there's still a lot of uh emphasis put on fundraising you know as success. You know, they equate how much money you've raised to success. But for me, you're selling equity, you're giving away a big portion of your company. Is that really uh a time you, you should celebrate, right? So I take, you know, I take it really seriously. The amount of money we've raised is really hard earned money, right? Um and have a responsibility. So um the number one mistake I feel like founders make when they get a fresh round of funding is to hire, hire, hire. Like they hire, maybe even over-hire, right? So the way I approach it is, of course we have some urgent hires to fill and that's why we're raising money, but beyond the core group, I try to hire contractors or consultants uh before and, and kind of like tap out of that until we, we're absolutely sure we need to hire a full-time person. Um because you know once you've made a full-time hire, it's like something you can't easily remove. And that's why you know, in 2021 when a ton of companies raised a lot of money at a crazy amount of valuation, um you know, we're seeing all the layoffs happening now right, because they hired too quickly. So trying to recognize you know that mistake and try not to make it with our new fresh round of funding is to be really careful about hiring plans. And you know I, I think I am pushing my team, you know everyone is doing about two, three person's jobs. Um but, but it is what's needed in a small scaling startup and we really need to be tapping out until we make that full-time hire. So be very cautious about the next person that you bring into your company full-time.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. Um for you, where do you go or what do you do to get inspired, to get creative, to think big when you have to continue to innovate and optimize your company? What, what works for you?

Cheryl Sew Hoy: You know a lot of great ideas come to me at bedtime, which is not great for my sleep. I just like, you know, this is the part where my mind is raising, you know, racing, and, and I have so many ideas and I do have a notepad beside, next to my bed and I write down ideas. I'm shifting that towards my sauna time. So I'm you know, sort of investing in more sauna, like you know, there's a lot of health benefits to doing sauna and cold plunges and whatnot. Uh so the 20 minutes, I'm trying to do like five times a week, 20 minutes each time. So shifting that, you know, towards a little bit end of the day because that's usually, I'm, I'm a night person and some people are morning people. So depending on who you are. But for me the ideas come at night, and so that 20 minutes that I can't bring my phone in or kind, you know, my Zen time, is where I I go to think and brainstorm new ideas. And um you know, like trying to be better at bringing a notepad in to write ideas down in my sauna times.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love that. Well you know, if anybody wants to find you or find Tiny Health, um where do they go and how do they buy your product?

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Yeah, our website is tinyhealth.com. Tiny is not just for babies or kids, um but it's also the tiny microbes in your gut. So it's a, a really expandable name uh and hopefully memorable. Um and as I mentioned earlier, I do read a lot of hello@tinyhealth.com emails still. So if you want to reach me, you can always just, just send an email and, and I'll probably read it.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Very cool. Well Cheryl, thanks so much for joining. I appreciate you coming on and sharing your story. Having the courage to do it. And to the listeners for listening, it means a lot to me that you spent your time with us today. Um I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now. I can't wait to catch up with you all in the next episode. Until then, Cheryl, listeners, take care.

Cheryl Sew Hoy: Thank you.

Jake Aaron Villarreal: Before we wrap up I want to give a big shout out to all the entrepreneurs that have joined to make this podcast possible and for all the listeners for listening. It means the world to me that you chose to spend your time with us today. I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now. We can't wait to connect with you all soon on the next episode. Take care.  

This show is sponsored by Match Relevant, a company that helps venture-backed startups find the best people in the market and they do it in three simple steps. First, they sit down with founders to understand their story. Second, they tell their story into multiple candidate channels. And third, they schedule interviews within 48 hours. Find us at matchrelevant.com to learn more about how we do it.  

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