Notes from Founders: Cheryl Sew Hoy

Our client Tiny Health just raised $8.5 million in Series A Funding recently. We got a chance to chat with Cheryl Sew Hoy, CEO & Founder, on her thoughts on iterating and managing the brand as they scale quickly and also expand to BTB space.

How has your perception of your own brand changed since going to market and now being in serious growth mode?

At the beginning, our brand was ultra-feminine and maternal—while very specific to our initial target audience, I knew it would limit our company’s growth and evolution over time.

I’ve always believed that brand is very important, which is why we were willing to invest in a reputable brand agency like Yung Studio to help us produce a really solid, evergreen brand. Brand sets the tone for everything; for the relationship we want to build with our customers, and how we want them to think of us.

We wanted to be seen as a credible, scientific and evidence-based company, yet an approachable and thoughtful partner helping families navigate their gut health journeys. Data and new microbiome science can feel overwhelming and scary sometimes, so how do we simplify and make it approachable? Our brand needed to be recognizable by scientists yet friendly and memorable to everyday people. And most importantly, we wanted our brand to feel empowering to parents, reinforcing that they can take control of their family’s health with our guidance and support.

Our brand balances scientific credibility and warmth, with recognizable microbe illustrations that are realistic without looking scary, and a palette to appeal to our young families demographic—mostly parents born in the 80s and 90s. The colors have meaning, with a soft green for beneficial bacteria, yellow for variable microbes, and a soft red for disruptive, all standing out against a soft, neutral background.

We also knew our name is vital to our brand. We believed “Tiny Health” would resonate with the target audience of our flagship product—mom and baby gut health tests for the first 1,000 days of life—referring to “tiny” babies. However, we always knew we wanted to expand to older children and adults. So “tiny” takes on a dual meaning, including the tiny microbes in the gut and vaginal microbiome, expanding with the growth of our company.

How have you used your brand to unlock growth in your own company?

We began as a D2C company geared towards parents, and our brand helped us carve out a space in the market. Where several competitors leaned into clinical, sterile and futuristic aesthetics, we leaned into humanizing the science of the microbiome.

Our microbe designs support our trustworthy and science-based foundation, and also reinforce our educational approach, helping our customers ease into their understanding of their microbiome. The soft palette and intimate, personal photography ground the science in humanity. And hand-written markups, underlines, and scribbles bring a personal touch to our designs.

This warm and welcoming personality has been a strong foundation for building community and raising strong advocates among parents, leading to great organic growth and paid advertising that resonates with parents. Our brand aligns naturally with other family-focused brands, supporting partnerships that help us expand our reach and open the doors to B2B opportunities.

As we’ve grown our B2B business, poweredbytiny.com, the dark background helps us emphasize our innovative technology and reinforces our scientific and clinical credibility. In this way, our brand has scaled quite nicely, enabling partnerships across research, clinical studies, and practitioners.

What has been the hardest part of brand management when scaling up?

While our brand has proven to be versatile, it’s been challenging to push beyond our “tiny” brand being associated only with babies. We are still navigating how to present ourselves as a company for the whole family with relevance to adults while maintaining our position as the market leader in the prenatal and baby gut testing space.

As a growing startup, we move quickly and work with several agencies and hundreds of influencers and partners, so brand management is always a challenge. While our brand foundation is strong, it’s also a living, breathing thing that we have to build upon, expanding to fit more use cases. It’s a constant balancing act between what we can and can’t control, what performs well vs. what’s on-brand, and how we stay true to our brand as we evolve as a company.

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Notes from Foundersis where Yung Studio talks to founders about all things brand as they launch, grow, or pivot their businesses.