The Same Faces on Every Stage: Why Toronto Founder Built a Global Podcast for the Builders No One Puts in the Spotlight
Tenacity with Sonia C, the podcast hosted by Toronto tech founder Sonia Couto, now ranks in the top 2.5% of podcasts globally.
Frustrated by the same voices at every conference, tech founder Sonia Couto built "Tenacity with Sonia C" for overlooked builders. Now top 2.5% globally.
The people who should have been on stage were the ones I met in the hallway. I built this show to give them the microphone no one else would.”
TORONTO, ON, CANADA, July 31, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Sonia Couto kept noticing the same thing at every tech conference she attended. The same handful of high-profile names, on the same stages, saying the same things. She would see the identical speakers at three, four, five different events. It was, she says, getting boring.— Sonia Couto
But that was not the part that bothered her most.
"The people who were not on the stage, the ones I would run into in the hallways and end up in real conversation with, those were the builders who should have been up there," says Couto, a Toronto-based technology founder and Managing Director of the software company Konverge. "I would walk away from those hallway conversations with more useful, actionable insight than I got from any keynote. And I kept thinking, why isn't anyone giving these people a microphone?"
So she did.
Couto is the host of Tenacity with Sonia C, a podcast she launched to capture exactly those overlooked conversations, the honest, practical, hard-won stories of founders and operators who rarely get invited on stage. What began as a personal frustration with the conference echo chamber has grown into a globally recognized show. With 132 episodes and more than 136,000 downloads, Tenacity with Sonia C now ranks in the top 2.5% of podcasts worldwide.
The show's premise runs directly counter to the polished, highlight-reel tone of much of the business-podcast world. Couto is not interested in overnight-success stories. She wants the truth about what building actually costs.
"Everyone wants to tell you what worked. Almost no one wants to tell you what it actually cost them," she says. "Tenacity is not about motivation. It is about the discipline it takes to keep building when the path is unclear, and the honest conversations most people are too polished to have in public."
That commitment to honesty is rooted in Couto's own story. She immigrated to Canada from the Azores at ten years old without speaking English, entered the technology industry at 26 with no degree, coming from a background in manufacturing and accounting, and went on to found two global software products, MenuSano and Field Eagle. In 2017, she was diagnosed with breast cancer while running three companies simultaneously, and rebuilt both her business and herself in the years that followed. She has been, in her words, starting over her whole life.
She was also, for two decades, often the only woman in the room. That experience shaped who she now seeks out as guests.
"Being a woman in tech twenty years ago was hard in a way that is difficult to describe to people who were not there," Couto says. "I know what it feels like to be underestimated and overlooked. So this show is deliberately a place for the voices the mainstream circuit keeps missing, founders from all over the world, women building in male-dominated spaces, and people who have failed and started over and have something real to say about it."
Couto also treats the podcast as a genuine connection engine rather than a broadcast. For every episode, she publishes a dedicated page on her website linking to the guest's bio and social channels, because the goal, she says, is to help listeners build the same kind of relationships those original hallway conversations gave her.
Her philosophy extends to her own appearances as a speaker. "I tell every event host the same thing: do not hide me in the green room. I want to be out on the floor, in the hallways, where the real conversations happen. Because after 132 episodes, I am still learning too. The best insight in the room is very often coming from the person nobody thought to put a spotlight on."
Tenacity with Sonia C is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube and all major platforms. New episodes are released weekly. To listen or learn more, visit soniacouto.com/podcast
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ABOUT SONIA COUTO
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Sonia Couto is a Toronto-based technology founder, keynote speaker, and breast cancer survivor who has been starting over her whole life. She is the founder of MenuSano and Field Eagle, Managing Director of Konverge, a published author, and the host of Tenacity with Sonia C., a globally ranked podcast in the top 2.5% worldwide. She speaks at conferences, corporate events, and leadership summits about leadership, reinvention, resilience, and life after breast cancer. Learn more at soniacouto.com.
Sonia Couto
Konverge
+1 647-838-4839
Sonia@SoniaCouto.com
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