Growing From Grassroots with Sonya Satveit – June 9th 2020

Sometimes when you don’t fit the mould, you need to break it – just ask Sonya Satveit, Founder & CEO, Qanik DX Inc.

Sonya’s journey to becoming a FemTech Founder began with her own health story. When unaddressed hormone issues led to two miscarriages, Sonya realized our healthcare system wasn’t designed to serve the unique needs of women. The guiding principle, “let your pain become your purpose” led her to become a women’s health advocate through her blog Hormone Soup. When the blog reached women in 175 countries, she knew she had to do more to help so she set out to transform women’s health.

Sonya founded Open Source Health which piloted the first precision medicine platform for women’s health – a multinational project involving multiple stakeholders from the US, Canada and Europe. Sonya published the results in the peer-reviewed journal, Learning Health Systems.  

She didn’t stop there, her vision to remove the gatekeepers to lab testing, give women control over their data and empower them with knowledge resulted in her latest venture - a company called Qanik DX. She and her team have developed a mini-lab for the home to allow women to test their hormones and get real-time results delivered to their smartphone all in the comfort of their own home.

“One of the biggest things is I don’t fit the stereotype of a typical tech founder. I don’t check all the boxes, and I saw that as an opportunity to redefine what being a founder looks like.”

In this week’s episode of the #StartupCanadaPodcast, sponsored by Mastercard and Ceridian, Sonya discusses the importance of carving out your own corner in entrepreneurship.