 Chan and Satharasinghe founded Sparrho in 2013 as a solution to issues in staying up to date with scientific literature encountered over the course of Chan's biochemistry PhD.Inspiration for Sparrho came from Steve, a postdoctoral researcher in Chan's research lab who would read several key journals and bring paper recommendations to Chan's research group every morning.When Chan described this problem to Satharasinghe, he suggested 'digitising Steve'.