Episode #18: My Dentist Is on TikTok

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  Sam:
  Hey, I’m Sam, and I’ll be your humble guide through today’s episode, sprinkling some footnotes here and there. Today we ask, is your dentist on TikTok? This is the Tech Optimist.

  Mike:
  Yeah. It’s not digitally native, that’s for sure, right? I mean, yeah.

  Gregg:
  These three young dentists, great guys, got together and said, we think we can do this differently.

  Sam:
  In a world captivated by criticism, it’s easy to overlook the groundbreaking technologies shaping our future. Let’s shine a light on innovators who are propelling us forward. As the most active venture capital firm in the US, we have an exceptional view of tech’s real-world impact. Join us as we explore, celebrate, and contribute to the stories of those creating tomorrow. Welcome to the Tech Optimist.

  As a reminder, the Tech Optimist podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not personalized advice and it’s not an offer to buy or sell securities. For additional important details, please see the text description accompanying this episode.

  Mike:
  Yes, I’m here today with Gregg Kaplan. He’s the CEO of Dentologie, and hopefully… Did I get that right, Gregg?

  Gregg:
  Yeah. No, you got it right, Dentologie, yep.

  Mike:
  Dentologie, and it’s an AV portfolio company, and here to learn a little bit more about the company and where they are in their journey. So Gregg, why don’t you first give us your background. I mean, you’re an HBS grad. How’d you end up where you’re at?

  Gregg:
  Philosophy major undergrad, somehow found my way into investment banking for a few years in New York. Went off to, as you pointed out, HBS, and graduated right when the .com world was starting to take off, and I got the entrepreneurial bug.

  I was part of two different startups—early employee at one in Boston, which went public. I left there and went to another one in Chicago, which also went public. Not mine, other people had started them, but I was close enough to the early days to see how things happened.

  Then I decided I wanted to do it myself and found my way—I’ll do the summary version here—into a very little venture that had just gotten going, didn’t have a name, and this was part of McDonald’s new business development group. That ultimately became Redbox.

  I ended up jumping in during the very early days, refocusing it, taking it over, giving it a name—Redbox—and then we ultimately spun it out of McDonald’s. Over the next 11 years, we grew from essentially zero revenue to about $2 billion in revenue when I left, with 45,000 locations.

  Mike:
  Yeah, no, Redbox, tremendous story.

  Gregg:
  It was a lot of fun and really very lucky. We hit a lot of different trends all at the right time and it took off. It was a lot of fun.

  Sam:
  I want to provide a little more context about Redbox. Gregg is being pretty humble here in this conversation with Mike, but during the time that Redbox was founded—or this whole idea started to spring up in 2002—Gregg was a strategy and development executive at McDonald’s, which is a pretty gold job to have.

  Redbox was part of the company’s business expansion initiative called Project 361. The main goal was to create a convenient way for consumers to rent new release movies at a low nightly price without having to subscribe to monthly services like their competitors, Netflix or Blockbuster.

  After testing kiosks in a few McDonald’s locations, they found that DVD rentals were the most appealing option. In 2003, they shut down all other kiosk tests, and in 2004, launched their first fully automated kiosks in Denver, Colorado.

  Redbox’s goal was to make entertainment more accessible to everyone, and they succeeded. Today, there are around 40,000 Redbox kiosks located in storefronts across the country. You’ve definitely seen them. You definitely know what they are. You’ve probably even used one.

  Let’s keep going—take it away.

  Gregg:
  We sold the company to a business called Coinstar out of Seattle. I was there for a few years and then took a couple of years off following some personal tragedy. My then-wife of 18 years passed away, and I became a stay-at-home dad for a few years, which was the right call.

  I then got into private equity for six years in Chicago as an operating partner, but decided I wanted to do the entrepreneurial thing again.

  Mike:
  Yeah, once you try it, you can take a break, but it’s hard not to.

  Gregg:
  Yeah, it pulls you back.

  Mike:
  It’s hard not to go back at some point, I find.

  Gregg:
  Yeah. So my criteria wasn’t about dentistry—we’ll get to that in a moment—it was about working in a really thoughtful, solid, innovative business with great people. That may sound like a very amorphous set of criteria, but when you’ve been through a lot of startups, you kind of know it when you see it.

  I got a call from a venture capitalist in Chicago I’ve worked with for a long time and have a lot of respect for. He said, “I’ve got a really interesting business called Dentologie,” and—I’ll stop there for the moment, then I can tell you a little more about the business.

  Mike:
  Yeah, no, I mean, when you’re looking to scale something that everybody’s familiar with, what are the criteria? What was your framework for thinking, “Hey, I think this is an opportunity, and there’s a logical reason why this hasn’t been done before”? That’s always what jumps into your head when you hear, “We want to create a national brand.”

  Gregg:
  Yeah, great question. Maybe I’ll give a little background on Dentologie and then explain my own process of why I invested and jumped in as CEO.

  Dentologie was started by three innovative young dentists—friends from high school—who were all working at different dental practices. They were a bit disillusioned with the dentistry world and said, “We think we can do this better.”

  Their vision, which I ultimately bought into, was that if you look at the typical dentistry experience and compare it to how young people live today—think Amazon, Grubhub, Uber—they’re used to a completely different retail consumer experience.

  But when we go to the dentist (and much of healthcare, for that matter), we kind of suspend judgment. The real estate itself tends to be out of the way, not very convenient…

  Gregg:
  Literally, the look and feel of the office feels very sterile, like it comes out of the seventies—short hours. Why is it that every other store in America is open 18 hours a day, or sometimes 24 hours a day, but the dentist’s office is open weird hours that are not terribly convenient? You still have this experience where you’re filling out, sometimes with a clipboard—paper and pen—your insurance information, for the third time, and it feels very backwards. A lot of dentists have an older kind of environment. It’s not young and vibrant. The billing is confusing. Nobody understands how it fits with insurance.

  Mike:
  It’s not digitally native, that’s for sure. I mean, yeah.

  Gregg:
  And by the way, there’s no marketing, there’s nothing about it. So these three young dentists, great guys, got together and said, “We think we can do this differently.”

  Meera:
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  Gregg:
  They opened a location about 10 years ago in the South Loop of Chicago, which went really well, then opened a second location in Streeterville. Soon after opening their third location is when I got involved. They had reached out to some venture capitalists, including one that was a good friend and colleague of mine, and said, “We think we can scale this.”

  He reached out to me and said, “We love the concept because it’s taking something big and known that everybody has experienced, but isn’t done particularly well, and changing it—and we like that. We’d love to have someone who has scaled a multi-unit kind of business.”

  When they called me, I said, “Let me spend about six months doing research and diligence.” This comes back to your original question about my criteria.

  My first criterion was, having been a founder myself, I know that founders are quirky individuals. I needed to know that I could work successfully with these three founder-dentists. We spent a lot of time just getting to know each other. I asked them tough questions, partially to see their reaction. The reaction was great: “Those are really good questions. We’re still in learning mode. We’d love the ideas.” That’s exactly what you want in partners—folks who are open to learning and hearing new ways of doing things.

  I then dug into the business fundamentals. It turns out dentistry is a $160 billion business in the US, massively fragmented. Most businesses are literally mom-and-pop dentists that we’re all familiar with. The industry grows faster than GDP. It’s always going to grow. It’s a solid, non-cyclical, non-seasonal business. But as we discussed earlier, it suffers from a lack of what I call general business sophistication, because most of the folks in it have been trained as dentists—they’re great at that—but not as business people. We saw an opportunity to do it differently.

  Sam:
  I want to highlight what Gregg just said—the massive fact that dentistry is a $160 billion business. The HBI and American Dental Association note that dental offices generate an annual economic impact of $478 billion. That alone is insane. Another insane fact is that dental offices support 2.5 million jobs in the US every year. On top of that, each of those 2.5 million jobs generates an additional 1.4 jobs in other sectors of the economy. Seems like a pretty good investment.

  Mike:
  Now, part of the challenge I would think is the dentists themselves. That’s one part—you can get the software, you can get the location, you can figure out those formulas and get better over time. How do you think about the people side of the business? You have educated professionals—what’s the incentive for a dentist to become part of this brand?

  Gregg:
  Yeah, it’s a great question, and we’ve had a lot of success recruiting dentists in a world where it’s challenging. The reason why is that in addition to the stuff that is very consumer-facing, we’re also innovating in areas that maybe consumers don’t see as clearly, like recruiting and retaining dentists, hygienists, and dental professionals.

  I’m trying to use some of my old playbooks from building a great, fast-growth tech culture—progressive, young, excited about building a business and growing fast. We spend a lot of time on employee engagement and culture.

  If you’re a young dentist who just graduated from dental school, you typically have a lot of loans. Hanging up your own shingle is less of an option these days than it used to be. So your options tend to be:

  • Going to a private equity-backed dental business, which has a tough reputation for being a bit of a sweatshop with a revolving door focused solely on the bottom line.

  • Or going to a single-dentist practice in the suburbs.

  We’re trying to become the employer of choice: young, diverse, hip, fast-growing, with lots of opportunities for advancement.

  Mike:
  Urban, probably, right? Yeah.

  Gregg:
  Exactly. The end result is that we’ve successfully hired a lot of dentists and created a buzz as the place to go. It’s worked out really well.

  Mike:
  I’ve noticed—we have offices in Chicago, and I’ve definitely seen you guys there. That’s always a sign. Where are you in the journey now? What’s your next round of fundraising? What’s the timing? Where are you in terms of number of locations? What are your next KPIs or thresholds you want to hit?

  Gregg:
  We’ve raised two rounds—Series A and Series B. Alumni Ventures has been part of both. We’ve raised $41 million in equity so far, and we also have some venture debt.

  That’s allowed us to—let me describe the business today—we’re at 10 locations, all in Chicago, doing really well. We’ll open 8 more locations this year (2024). The next one should open in a few weeks. Four of those will be additional Chicago locations. Four will be in a new market: Seattle.

  Back to the original thesis: Our locations are highly branded on busy urban streets—downtown Chicago neighborhoods where you’d expect to see a Starbucks, Chipotle, or Warby Parker. That’s the kind of real estate we’re choosing.

  We offer very inviting surroundings, a young, diverse dentist population, a fun vibe, and a tech-enabled experience. Patients can book appointments for treatment, cleaning, Invisalign, and more via the web, mobile, or our app. Results and insurance information are provided electronically.

  It’s a great experience. We measure Net Promoter Score (NPS) religiously, and we’ve been over 80 for the last seven or eight months.

  Mike:
  Oh, that’s fantastic. Yeah.

  Gregg:
  So that’s where we are. Our current funding will last well into 2025, which means we’ll be fundraising again later this year.

  Sam:
  Quick footnote for those who don’t know what a Net Promoter Score is: It’s a market research metric that measures how likely customers are to recommend a company, product, or service to others.

  Sometimes when you go to a store or website, you see a survey asking you to rate your experience on a scale of 1 to 10 (0 = not likely at all, 10 = extremely likely). Those ratings are converted into a score from -100 to 100.

  For context, Dentologie having a score of 80 means it’s very well-liked. Customers are incredibly happy with their product and dental offices around the country. So—good for you guys, good for Dentologie.

  Speaker 5:
  Ever wonder how the ultra-wealthy invest their money? They often back startups before they go public through venture capital. Now, individual investors like you can too with Alumni Ventures. Visit av.vc to get started.

  Mike:
  Do you have an ask for our audience? How can our community support and help the business?

  Gregg:
  Yeah, absolutely. I would say a couple of things: if you’re in Chicago or Seattle, come be a patient. Our patients are thrilled, happy, and come back often. If you’re in the dental world and are looking to join a fast-growing, thriving culture, we’d love to have you at Dentologie.

  And then, I didn’t mention this at the outset, Mike, but one of our assets is that one of the founders—the three dentist founders—is very active on social media. We’ve now developed a following of over a million followers between TikTok and Instagram who tune in to his content. His name is Sohail—he goes by Dr. M—and he delivers oral health tips in a fun, musical kind of way.

  It turns out that, again, while a lot of other businesses are using social media, not many in dentistry are. So we’ve actually brought in a lot of patients and dental professionals because they follow Dentologie and they follow Sohail, Dr. M.

  Sam:
  Dr. M on TikTok has 789,000 followers and 23.1 million likes on his page. Here are a few videos from his TikTok.

  Dr. M:
  I’m going to review my three favorite whitening products and tell you the cost and the pros and cons of all of them.

  Start with Crest White Strips. Here are the positives:

  1. They’re super easy to use and you can get them at basically any grocery store.

  2. They’re really cost-effective at $2 per use, which makes them a great product if you’re a beginner.

  Here are the cons:

  • It is really confusing to know which one to buy. The one that you should be buying is the Crest White Strip Supreme because it has 14% hydrogen peroxide.

  • The strips are really short, which could lead to the sides of your teeth being more yellow than the front.

  Let’s talk about Opalescence Go. Here’s the positive:

  • It has the highest concentration of any over-the-counter product at 15% hydrogen peroxide.

  • They come in pre-filled retainers, which are single-use and really easy to use.

  • They’re also wide enough to cover your whole smile.

  Here are the cons:

  • Because the retainer is not custom-made to your smile, you can get leakage of the whitening gel onto your gums, which can cause irritation.

  • They’re more expensive, at about $8 per use.

  Lastly, let’s talk about custom whitening trays that are made by your dentist. The positives:

  • They’re custom-made to your teeth, which minimizes how much whitening gel can touch your tissues and cause irritation.

  • They’re unbelievably effective and may be the most cost-effective solution in the long run.

  We charge $200 at my practice to make the trays, and it’s $15 per syringe, which usually lasts for five or six uses.

  Here are the cons:

  • You have to go to the dentist, which makes it less accessible than over-the-counter solutions.

  Always, if you have any questions, drop me a comment. Hope I was helpful.

  Mike:
  Yeah, no, listen—marketing and advertising in 2024 is about developing content, and content has to educate or entertain, or both. Very smart. This is a great example of no matter what space you’re in, if you’re creative enough, there’s a way to do interesting work.

  So yeah, Gregg, it was a real pleasure meeting you and introducing Dentologie to the company. It sounds like you’re still at the beginning of this journey. Hopefully, we’ll look back in 5 or 10 years and it’ll be a national brand and another great feather in your cap, Gregg. It was really nice meeting you.

  Gregg:
  Same here, Mike.

  Mike:
  Talk again soon. I appreciate it.

  Gregg:
  Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

  Mike:
  All right, have a good one.

  Gregg:
  Yeah, you too, Mike. Take care.

  Sam:
  Thanks again for tuning into the Tech Optimist. If you enjoyed this episode, we’d really appreciate it if you’d give us a rating on whichever podcast app you’re using and remember to subscribe to keep up with each episode. The Tech Optimist welcomes any questions, comments, or segment suggestions. Please email us at [email protected] with any of those, and be sure to visit our website at av.vc. As always, keep building.