After Curing Her Debilitating Pain With Traditional Chinese Medicine, She Started a Business to Deliver Ancient Treatments With Modern Tech: 'You Saved My Life.' Founder and CEO Camilla Sievers shares the inspiration and growth story of Qi Health, a digital health platform focused on providing women access to TCM treatments.
By Dan Bova Edited by Jessica Thomas
Key Takeaways
- Camilla Sievers, CEO of Qi Health, turned her struggle with period pain into a digital health platform leveraging traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to aid women with chronic conditions.
- Qi Health aims to grow its digital TCM solutions, tapping into a market projected to reach $229 billion by 2033.
- Sievers emphasizes the power of customer feedback in developing Qi Health's platform and the importance of targeted fundraising in the niche market of women's healthcare.
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For years, Camilla Sievers suffered debilitating period pain. "Five days out of every month, I was completely out of order," she tells Entrepreneur. Despite the very real pain she was experiencing, doctor after doctor told her that tests showed that "nothing was wrong."
When a friend found her curled up on the kitchen floor in agony, she offered to bring Sievers to a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner. "I didn't know what TCM was, but I felt I had nothing to lose," she says. "I went there, and I walked out with some herbs. And then, a month later, I had 70% less pain. And two months after that, I was pain-free."
This transformative experience led Sievers to become the co-founder and CEO of Qi Health, alongside co-founder and CTO Nam Le. Launched in 2022, Qi Health is a digital health platform that provides women access to natural and evidence-based treatments rooted in TCM. As the company prepares for its next phase of growth, we spoke with Sievers about her plans to help tens of thousands of women across the country.
Entrepreneur: Please give us the elevator pitch for Qi Health.
Camilla Sievers: The oldest medicine in the world is traditional Chinese medicine, which has existed for thousands of years. Globally, 80% of the world's population utilizes alternative medicine, but it's really not been brought online in the United States. So we're trying to make it accessible, trustworthy and transparent to help women with chronic health conditions. We see a huge need for women to find relief from various symptoms, so we're taking the oldest medicine in the world and putting it into a modern framework.
What inspired you to create this company?
Like so many other women, I was put on hormonal birth control in my teens. And then, when I stopped using hormonal birth control, I would get debilitating period pain. I went to many experts in Germany, where I'm originally from, and Austria, and everybody told me the same thing: "We can't find anything." The translation is "We can't help you." So, I just endured the pain. After TCM treatment, my energy changed. My sleep changed. My appearance had changed. My cycle changed. It changed my life. And that made me want to learn and do more. Women's health has just been chronically overlooked, understudied and underresearched.
Have you met resistance from customers who are not familiar with TCM?
We see women come to us after they've explored everything that insurance covers and then explored everything that insurance doesn't cover. They pay out of pocket for treatments, but it still doesn't work. Then they say, "Let me try something alternative." So we're getting them at the very end, and they can sometimes lack trust that anything will work. But when they do decide to have a consultation, their minds are blown. They see such fast results after enduring 10-15 years of no results and are really grateful.
Credit: Qi Health
Are there any moments in your entrepreneurial journey that stand out to you?
After my personal success with TCM, we did an in-house trial to see if my story could be replicated. I thought that it couldn't be this unicorn that magically works for everyone, right? Well, it did. What we found was that many women didn't come to us with just one condition they were hoping to heal, but on average, they presented with eight symptoms. So you might come for period pain or infertility, but you also have insomnia, night sweats, bad digestion, all of these things. And all eight symptoms were healed within an average of four months. Seeing people cry with relief and reading emails they sent saying, "You saved my life!" sticks with you.
What is your advice to entrepreneurs who are seeking funding?
Meet with very specific people. We initially spoke with generic funds that invest in everything and learned that they will not invest in women's healthcare. It is too niche — even though we're talking about 50% of the population. Target specific VCs who understand your industry.
Can you talk about your goals?
Currently, the complementary and alternative medicine market in the U.S. is $29 billion. (Complementary refers to medicine used alongside conventional medicine.) In 2033, the market will be $229 billion. That's because 60% of Americans have one chronic condition, 40% have two, and the Western healthcare system is failing. People are looking for something that's not failing them, so you're going to see this explosion. Traditional Chinese medicine is becoming a huge market in the U.S. There are over 40,000 practitioners now — more than the number of yoga studios in the U.S. Our growth has been through word-of-mouth for a long time, and now our company is positioned to bring TCM to the forefront.
What is your advice for developing a community of customers?
We've learned so much by listening to our users. We built our entire platform the way it is because people told us, "I would like this and not this." It's important to find your first 100 or 200 people who are committed and loyal and want you to succeed and listen to them. You build momentum and manageable growth as they spread the word. And you're getting all that great input to improve your product and, for us, ready for new partnerships that will unlock tens of thousands of customers.
Related: All True Entrepreneurs Share This One Personality Trait, Says the Founder of Spicewell
What's something aspiring business owners think they need but actually don't?
Lots of funding. There's so much that you can do with so little money. Starting up has evolved so much from when I started my first business in 2014. You can incorporate for just a couple hundred dollars. You don't have to build your website or app from scratch. There are so many platforms, like Shopify, that let you stay lean, build a prototype and start testing your business idea as soon as possible. Don't go out and raise before you really know what you're building and who you're building it for.
Any advice for getting through the tough times that entrepreneurship often entails?
Being an entrepreneur is really putting out fires all day long. And for me, it's an extreme privilege. When I wake up, I think about how privileged I am to do this and focus on the positives. Those emails and the testimonials saying how we changed people's lives — for me, those far outweigh the struggles and make it all worth it.
