Venture Capital's Role in Oral Health Innovation with Dr. Jeremy Krell, Managing Partner of Revere Partners and Rise Health

[00:00:00] Welcome to Think Oral, where we connect the unconnected between oral and physical health. I'm your host, Dr. Jonathan Levine. And I'm your host, Maria Filippova. Let's get at it. Jonathan, what an exciting next episode we have as part of a series of Investing in Oral Health.

[00:00:29] Next episode, well, we have Jeremy Krell, who is the founder, the brainchild behind Revere Partners that in the last four years has become the preeminent venture capital firm supporting in so many different ways, not just with money, but with expertise and

[00:00:48] experts and collaborations and bringing in healthcare venture capital also at the same time. I'm looking so forward to this conversation. I'm so excited. I got to tell you these couple of episodes around impact investing and just early stage

[00:01:01] investing in oral health has been very near and dear to my heart. You know, I started my career as a trader on the trading floor, trading public securities like equities and bonds. And I think of venture capital as an asset class, right?

[00:01:16] If I'm an investor, do I want to put my money in equity and bonds or do I want to put my money in early stage companies? Very different profile of investing. But I think between Jeremy, between Dai Feng and all the other investors we're bringing

[00:01:31] in, we're starting to really show the value of venture capital in promoting innovation, in putting bets when others wouldn't. That's right. So not afraid to not only be able to pick the winning teams, but also to sometimes put

[00:01:47] money behind technologies that might be too early to get them. Taking that risk early. They are so necessary for the ecosystem. Maria, let's go. I'm excited to jump in on this. Let's get to it. Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of the Think Oral Health podcast.

[00:02:05] I am Maria Filippova and as usual, I'm joined by our co-host, Dr. Jonathan Levine. And today we're privileged to introduce you to another trailblazer and investor in oral health, Dr. Jeremy Correll. Before I welcome Jeremy officially, I want to give you a little bit more background on Jeremy.

[00:02:26] He is not only a general dentist, but he has over 18 years of proven track record of building, scaling, exiting startups, fundraising and helping other startups grow. Dr. Correll or Jeremy as we fondly like to call him is a managing partner of Revere Partners.

[00:02:46] This is the first independent venture capital focused on oral health. He's also the managing partner of Rice Health. This is the only inclusion driven venture capital fund that's focused on oral health.

[00:02:59] So as I, when I say trailblazer, we were, we will really dig into on what it looks like to be an early investor in oral health. Jeremy previously built out the Barchester Bay Group, which is a portfolio consistent of over 40 ventures.

[00:03:15] He's also one of our favorite type of investors because he's an operator, he has a lot of He held operator roles at startups, including head of marketing and chief dental officer at Simplify, which was acquired. And then chief marketing officer at Verana Solutions.

[00:03:32] He also led clinical growth at Quip as we all know the successful unicorn in oral health. And he was also a strategic provider innovation and development at Oscar Health, which I built in 2021 as we all know.

[00:03:47] I will, Jeremy's also very much involved in advisory work, academic work, shaping the future minds of the future dentists that we see in healthcare. And with that, I am so happy to welcome Dr. Jeremy Corral to our podcast. Jeremy, hi and welcome. Hi Maria. Hi Jonathan.

[00:04:03] The pleasure is really all mine. It's an honor to be here. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Jeremy, I just got a little nervous because I didn't know when Maria would stop with

[00:04:13] that introduction because you've accomplished so much in the last kind of 18 to 20 years in the industry and you are a trailblazer. So I got question number one, if I could tee it up, and that really is the old expression, what got you here won't get you there.

[00:04:31] So when you think about your past experiences, what has happened in your past experiences that has gotten you ready for all the things you're doing now with Revere, with investing, with supporting these companies? What were your experiences that led you up to where you are today? Yeah.

[00:04:50] And if I, it's a great question. And if I could borrow from someone who I've had the opportunity to meet and is a, is similarly a trailblazer in dentistry, Jim Glidewell, right. And he wrote a book called Constant Change. And I think that's it.

[00:05:04] If I had to put it in two words, you have to get really comfortable in work life and that will drip right on over into home life, dealing with constant change. I'm not talking about having more kids, right?

[00:05:16] I'm talking about when your work and professional life has extremely high ups and extremely low lows and it's so volatile like that. And it's so subject to variety of externalities in the market that you can't control the COVID,

[00:05:33] the thousand and eight market crashes, being able to deal with that, being able to weather that constant rocking boat. A lot of people get seasickness, right? They just, they don't like that feeling of instability. It's something that for whatever reason I've always thrived off of.

[00:05:49] I really enjoy that when I wake up in the morning, it is a new set. It is a new day. It is truly a new day. Whatever happened yesterday, good or bad, it's over. And it's a new set of challenges the next day. Right?

[00:06:03] So the ability to thrive off of constant change, I think is what has helped me to be there. I think being able to learn from mistakes as many, and thank you Maria for the generous and kind introduction, which I think captures... We're only halfway through it.

[00:06:17] What are you talking about? That captures nicely and conveniently captures a lot of the success stories. Even those come with scrapes and bruises, but behind each of those success stories, I can tell you that there were a number of failures.

[00:06:29] So I think the second piece to this is being able to learn from those mistakes and not let any one of them be enough to keep you down, but to somehow take a look at it from

[00:06:39] a different perspective, process that, understand it, accept it, and then support it in your next journey. I think that's really important in this world because there is no doubt that there are going to be those failures. There are going to be those things that just don't work out.

[00:06:53] And hey, look, some of the best baseball players, for example, bat at a third, right? A great batting average is a third, right? So you have to keep that in context and in mind about... Is that a great batting average for a VC investor in oral health?

[00:07:09] Some VC investors, I'm not saying this is Revere's model, but some VC investors, by most VC standards, a third is pretty darn good. So what makes a good investor in oral health other than somebody who can weather the ups

[00:07:22] and downs and can manage the key costs and change? I think the key part of that is... There's maybe one dose of kind of me and my background. I'll tell you what I think that is, but I really think the key part of that is in oral

[00:07:36] health, right? Because there's a whole set of things that may make a good VC investor. Maybe the first thing I'll say applies to that. But I think the other things really are particular to this very quirky space that we've all come to know and love.

[00:07:46] Maybe the part of it in me that applies to more generally VC is like you said in my intro, I'm an operator. I love building things. That really is my background and my passion.

[00:07:56] And I don't think I'd even be on the investor side of things if I didn't get to build my own thing here. It solves key problems. So although, oh yes, Revere's primary order of business is diligencing and investing and

[00:08:07] supporting top dental technologies, internally, the culture is really that of a startup, right? Where we're built, constantly built. So that's maybe the general answer, right? But to the oral health part, what makes a good oral health VC?

[00:08:21] I think it's understanding, number one, the data in this space, which was very hard to come by initially and was a real challenge when we started this thing about four years ago. It was held very close to the chest and like many things in dentistry, quite fragmented, right?

[00:08:34] So we really had to do the research. We really had to pull that together. We spent about 18 months on that, right? It's just really, if we couldn't prove it to ourselves that this space performs, how could we possibly prove that to any other investor?

[00:08:45] So I think that's one piece is the data. Number two, in this space, it helps that I have a background in clinical dentistry as well as in business. I come from the startup world. I have an MBA too.

[00:08:57] So being able to be bilingual there or even trilingual, if you consider startup a different dialectic business, then you have to be able to see it from both sides because at the end of the day, we're building things for providers and for patients.

[00:09:09] So if you can't see it from their side, that super clinical lens, you're going to have real trouble delivering really good products. And on the other hand, if you can't see it from the startup founder side or from the,

[00:09:20] some of the traditional business frameworks, it's also really tough to pick good companies that overall operate well. I think the third and final piece really is dentistry. Maybe this is the most important of all the pieces. Dentistry is so heavily built on relationships, right?

[00:09:37] So if I didn't spend the last 10 to 15 years, cause I, it took me a while to get smart enough to do this, showing up at every one of the events, right? Not just going to the events, but going out after the events, shaking those hands, drinking

[00:09:51] those drinks, that's tending the networking. Even if I'm seeing familiar faces, but then meeting some new faces, every single one of those for years and years until this critical mass of people and build this rapport and this trust, it really is a relationship driven business through and through.

[00:10:08] It would not have been possible had I not put in the over 10 years of time to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Let's unpack that a little bit, Maria, with Jeremy. We know venture capital, private equity, a lot of the capital and the capital partners, they're not operators.

[00:10:26] They might not have that wonderful insight of what it's like to grind and to persevere through the thick and thin and the ups and downs of starting a business and being an entrepreneur. You have that. And let's unpack a little bit. What do you think that is?

[00:10:43] What is it being an operator that has given you that lens to one, to determine where you want to put your dollars? Who are you going to get behind? Who are you going to bring in next to that person? What's that competitive advantage being the operator? Yeah.

[00:11:01] Maybe I'll do a little myth busting to get into that, which is- Oh, that's our favorite part. Yeah. We love myth busting. Did Jonathan Curie weigh in on this? This is our favorite part of the podcast. You are on point. Doug, go for it.

[00:11:13] I think a lot of people think that VCs have this fancy, sturdy, stable, perfect matrix that you plug a bunch of numbers in and out pops the other end with a great decision. What should the valuation be? How much should I invest?

[00:11:27] Should I even invest or not invest? It's all programmed and structured. If I have news for you, it's not. And I don't know, a single VC, we work with some of the top on Sandhill all the way down

[00:11:36] to some of the smallest and most focused funds out there. And none of them that do a good job anyway have something that looks like that. Because if you only look through that lens, you're seeing a very narrow tunnel vision

[00:11:48] version of what that company is or could be. And it's a very imperfect science because most startups are investing off of projections. Not much, a little bit, but much less off of historical. So that really doesn't work. There's a portion that is doing your analytics.

[00:12:04] Don't get me wrong. We'll certainly do a lot of financial diligence and we will crunch the numbers on these companies, but it's being able to see them and evaluate them on the softer side, the more subjective side as well. Who is on that team? What are their backgrounds?

[00:12:19] Are those backgrounds going to mesh well with what they're trying to do? Is this person a leader? Are they coachable? If we get into a difficult situation with this company, is this person going to be able to weather that storm and work with us through it?

[00:12:31] Are they doing something good in the space and do they really have the right motivation to be doing that good thing? Are they in it for the value chain, right? Do they ultimately see patients or providers paying off, right? Were they just dollars hungry and money driven?

[00:12:47] Some of these softer sciences are a lot harder to ascertain if you're trying to look through rigid models that rely purely on numbers and you're just missing a lot of the pictures. I think me coming from that background and understanding that day to day up and down,

[00:13:04] that day to day grind, look, you're the person that even though I have a bunch of maybe too many credentials, I've maybe spent too many years in school and certainly have a lot of student debt, but there are lots of student debt to prove it.

[00:13:15] But I do understand when you work in a company and you take a haircut on salary, a significant haircut on salary, you're not at mark to market value, you're not being paid, but you're choosing to be there.

[00:13:29] You're choosing to take that salary haircut, you're choosing to bring that more difficult financial situation home with you because you're working for something or doing something that you're passionate about, a cause that's bigger than you.

[00:13:42] If you can't see that person and that lifestyle, that day to day work ethic for what it is, if you don't know what that looks like and what it takes in a person to do that, it's going to be much harder to choose good companies.

[00:13:53] And that's just, it's just a more subjective science. It reminds me, Maria, it reminds me that you guys both have MBAs and there are things that you learn in class, you learn in your case studies, but there's something else you learn by just doing it.

[00:14:10] And by living that process of being the entrepreneur and hitting the headwinds and figuring it out, how do we survive long enough to thrive? Jeremy, when you're talking to these different companies and you're looking at that leader,

[00:14:25] that CEO, founder, the inventor, what are you looking at specifically at that person from their ability to build a team, the leadership? And you started talking a little bit about it where I think it's this concept of big

[00:14:39] ego versus humility, leadership styles of command and control maybe versus building trust and inspiring their people. Just to tee it up, what do you specifically go after when you really peel it back?

[00:14:54] Yeah, and look, I think it comes down to how we do the whole thing and we get really one on one with that person, right? Everybody in on our team is roll up your sleeves when getting it.

[00:15:03] I don't, as the managing partner of this firm, I don't sit behind some desk 18 layers away. We talk to, we'll meet, we network with, we really try to personally form a relationship at all levels with a startup that we're investing in. We become family.

[00:15:20] So in order to do that, you got to get one on one with that person and you really have to understand what do they want out of this, right? Who are they? What do they really want here?

[00:15:32] And that can really help to plan the next phase of that business and its growth. For example, we often will find an inventor that is so passionate about the product or the service that they've created.

[00:15:46] And while they have this title, founder, CEO, owner, something like that, it's really actually a misnomer that if they had more resources in a team, instead of being founder and CEO, having all these different administrative finance, governance, other business discipline

[00:16:04] purposes, they'd actually really like to just obsess over finessing that product. Right? Yeah. And that's totally fine. But if they have somebody who knows what they want, and even if they don't, but they

[00:16:14] need a little help realizing it and making sure that they get into that right position so that somebody else can be in the other position, that's a key piece of it. And then another key piece, because we are a venture capital firm is we do want to see

[00:16:27] this very steep, I say logarithmic, but very progressive growth for a company, right? That's what a lot of our model looks for. But at the end of the day, somebody wants to run something, there's nothing wrong with running

[00:16:40] a pizza shop, a dental practice, or any other brick and mortar type, for example, business, run it at an even level. Maybe it grows a little bit and you pay salaries and you're comfortable and you're happy and you shut it down.

[00:16:54] Maybe you sell it at the end of the day. There's nothing wrong with that type of business, but that also isn't an appropriate VC investment. So understanding what is it that person wants out of this, right?

[00:17:05] And are they going to, are they willing to do what it takes to drive to that end? It's not an easy one to reach. There's enormous amount of personal sacrifice that goes on, right? Sometimes it takes seeing the bigger picture.

[00:17:16] Sometimes it takes giving away or handing off your baby to someone else. It involves bringing in bigger decision makers and powers and egos, right? It involves a lot of different things over the transformation of making a product or service successful. And does that person want that?

[00:17:34] Do they want to see that for this? And are they willing to do it? So I think getting one-on-one with a person, looking them in the eye and that nothing can really beat that.

[00:17:43] And understanding what it is they want out of the journey, I think is critical to the process. Very good. Very good. Jeremy, I know you have a whole process on analyzing these companies that are coming to you as to disclose an advisor or Revere.

[00:18:00] And I love working with the team and as these young companies come in to Revere, maybe you could tell all of our listeners, how do you analyze it? How do you bring in the experts of the different categories? How do you look at that?

[00:18:13] How have you built the Revere fund with that whole kind of group of advisors and your new infrastructure that is growing so nicely? And I'd like to add into this question, how do you support your portfolio companies as an operator? Not only the investor.

[00:18:30] Writing the check, I would argue, is the easy part, relatively speaking. How do you support? How do you support your portfolio companies? Yeah, absolutely. And all this has really changed over the course of the last four years.

[00:18:43] We've really matured the process and grown the process as we've scaled. So just for all listeners, there's four departments of Revere. BizOps, that's where I sit. Not going to talk about that here. Fundraising and investor relations. We're constantly always fundraising and helping investors be successful.

[00:18:59] Also not going to mention that here. And then the fourth area is really our corporate services where we're serving the organized side of dentistry with kind of client services relationships. Skipping that. Where we're going to hone in is on bucket number three, which is our investment team,

[00:19:13] our portfolio team. They really have two sides to them. The front of house, which are new deals, assessing new deals that come in, diligencing them, choosing the best investments, the whole investment and negotiation process.

[00:19:26] And then the back of house for the ones that we actually invest in, how do we support them? That's our portfolio success team. And so there's a number of ways that we do this. So we're just focusing on the new deals.

[00:19:36] One thing we've been really fortunate at Revere, and we have the whole industry to thank for this is we really don't have to outbound source deals at all. Today we have over 900 deals that have organically applied to Revere for funding. I think that helps to have.

[00:19:49] Could you just like boss here at 900 deals. 900 deals. Means people who have applied, like on the website, went in, submitted an application. That's right. And that's really the first part of it. At the very beginning, we didn't have that fancy application that we do now, but now

[00:20:08] yes, the application, they go in, they fill out this application. It's not overly cumbersome. That gets the process started. It kicks it into our CRM and then our internal team takes the next step.

[00:20:19] So our internal team, we have a head of investor relations under him and associate under them. We have analysts that focus on the front half and analysts that focus on the back. The deal sourcing side, we go through these, the diligence side, we go through a 26 point

[00:20:33] process, but the high level buckets are screening, primary diligence, secondary diligence, and then it goes into the investment conversation. So in primary diligence, what we're effectively doing after screening is we're taking out things that are clearly not a fit, right?

[00:20:48] Primary diligence is our team is doing research mostly based off of what an analysis, mostly based off of what the team has given us as some initial materials, their deck, maybe some basic financials, so on.

[00:21:00] If there's interest and we recreate this like three to 10 page report, we build our data from that. If there's still interest, it goes to a secondary diligence process. Once it goes to a secondary diligence process to Jonathan's question, we tack on a venture partner.

[00:21:13] We have five, each with subject matter expertise, and then two to three advisors who also have subject matter expertise. They join our internal management team in the diligence of that startup. They each have a matrix effectively that they fill out as we go on to secondary diligence,

[00:21:29] which involves some sort of 30 to a hundred page report. And now it goes deeper into their data room, requesting more materials from the company as well as does research outside of the company now, right?

[00:21:40] After that is done and there's still interest, meaning our venture partner and their advisory team, they agree that this should move forward. And the internal management team agree that this should move forward. It then goes to our investment, which includes all of those people I just mentioned, plus

[00:21:54] members of our management team and C-level officers on the team. We'll hear a presentation of this company and we'll make a decision of it, whether or not it should move. So at the end of the day, between a dozen and two dozen people touch a company before

[00:22:06] there is a decision that's made, right? Effectively on the investment. Right? It's not a one person breaks it all situation. We really want to give it a holistic look and understand what is the best fit. So that's really the diligence process.

[00:22:19] For those startups in the audience, could you just give us very brief, give us one example or two of reasons you would walk away from a deal? What is not a good fit for you guys? Yeah. Some key reasons we would walk away.

[00:22:32] We don't do a ton of investing if things are, I would say so many years away from market, like very pre-market, right? Something is biotech, but it's say five years away, right? And multiple rounds of regulatory and clinical trials and tens of millions of dollars before

[00:22:50] there's even the hopes of being in market. There are investors that do that. We don't do a ton of that. So I would say that's one area, a very different area. If we have red flags around the people and it is, it's a subjective matter that we discussed

[00:23:03] before. It's a little bit of a sniff test. We have to rely on various people on our team to assess that directly with the people on the startup team. But if we have people concerns this early in the process, I can only, but guarantee that

[00:23:16] if we go much further, those little red flags turn into giant gaping holes. And we don't want to have that as we move forward in the process. So those would be two examples.

[00:23:26] As we cross over and we actually make the investment in the company, we have a set of side letter terms that really enable us to be a strategic investor, right? I think a lot of investors say they're strategic investors. They're not.

[00:23:37] What's the, we don't like jargons on this show. What's side letter term? Yeah, side letter. So alongside the shareholder agreement that we sign, whatever investment document, it's a safe, it's a note, it's a some sort of purchase agreement of style alongside the actual investment agreement that we sign.

[00:23:53] We have an additional set of terms that we request that we put in this separate letter and that we align with the startup because each of the things that are in there help us help the startup, right?

[00:24:04] Like help them get revenue from additional sales you would want to be compensated for that. It's more along the lines of we want either a board position or board observer position, sometimes an advisor position with the company.

[00:24:16] We want a human being associated with the company that can act as a conduit that can independently serve that company, but they can also keep them really hooked up to different resources at Revere. It's also sometimes in there we ask for pro rata rights.

[00:24:32] We're making a strategic investment. It's usually not the biggest investment in the entire round. We want to be able to carry that forward for the companies that are doing a really great job. A third term in there, for example, is that we look really closely at information type

[00:24:46] rights. We don't ask for anything to be done uniquely. We understand the startups want to standardize, right? Because they have a lot of investors. We're not trying to disrupt that process, but we do need various bits of information

[00:24:58] in order for example, to even mark our own books and report to our own investors how our overall portfolio is doing, right? So we need to get certain reporting, basic reporting on a quarterly basis usually in

[00:25:11] order for us to even know how the company is doing in order to step in and help in various ways. Yeah. So those are common things that we ask for their market standard. They're not meant to be intrusive.

[00:25:23] They're really meant for us to be able to help the company. Then we move into the portfolio success part of what we do, and we have a whole set of processes there to help that company be successful.

[00:25:33] Besides the things I've mentioned, like the side letter terms, we basically have structured services around the key risks for the company. So for example, it's a key risk for the company if they don't raise enough money in this round or in another round.

[00:25:46] So we have Revere Plus, which is a network of one-off pooled investments or special purpose vehicles, SPVs. We have co-investor program with over six dozen other VC funds that are in it. So we have a program to help support the fundraising process.

[00:26:01] If it isn't Biotech for example, and it has some regulatory or some clinical trial left, we've partnered with the top institutions to be able to make that possible. Everything from, for example, the McGuire Institute or Michigan Weiss Pittsburgh or Foresight

[00:26:14] or we'll look at even our own portfolio synergies to help that company. So we've invested in a company in the Medio, we've invested in a company PharmaTrails. These are companies that can actually help the startup they're investing in through those processes and reduce the risk.

[00:26:29] Because if they have to go another clinical trial or if they miss the regulatory hurdle that they're trying to hit, it's many more years to market and it's a much tougher climb. So we try to get in front of that. Then after that, it usually comes to scaling.

[00:26:41] I don't love to hear that a startup wants to hire a 25 plus person sales team, that burns up P&Ls. So we try to pair them with a corporate that is going to channel partnership that is going to help them to scale, to do that efficiently.

[00:26:54] That's where our corporate services come in. And then the vast majority of companies in this space exit not by IPO but to a strategic in the space. So again, our corporate services come into play at that end stage of the lifecycle and help companies to find an acquirer.

[00:27:09] So we're really active at all stages of the lifecycle, trying to help them especially at points that are key milestones for the company. Darrell Miller, let's talk a little bit about evolution. Where you started, how many years ago is it now? It's just four. It's just four. Amazing.

[00:27:25] As you look at it today and we think about healthcare as the overall industry and we think back four years ago, how many venture capital funds there were in oral health? I think we all know that answer. Maybe as many as zero.

[00:27:38] And as you fast forward now, how other venture capital funds in healthcare looks at Revere almost with the quote unquote, here's the experts in the field. Tell us a little bit about the evolution today, where you are today and that relationship

[00:27:54] you have with the venture capital funds in all of healthcare. Yeah, this has been super important. And in working with this wide variety, this nearly six dozen different VC funds and growing, it's been really great. We usually start out by educating them, right?

[00:28:10] We'll talk to them about the, how this sphere performs different categories and the landscape within it. Areas then that might uniquely match. We'll do some additional legwork, find areas that might match their mandate, right? What kind of stage, what kind of size of check they invest in.

[00:28:26] We'll start to share deal flow and diligence with them, right? We're really handholding. We're really doing a bunch of extra work to try to get other key investors from different areas, sometimes healthcare, sometimes tech, sometimes the various forms of engineering.

[00:28:41] They all have different, sometimes they have a retail or DTC background, whatever it is that their fund is all about really bringing them in and showing them what comparable in dental might look like and how that diversification could be important to their own portfolio.

[00:28:55] So we do a lot of extra work there behind the scenes to bring forward the rest of the venture capital community to understand the space. Their key reason for not investing in our experience is they just don't understand it, right? They're afraid they have plenty of money.

[00:29:10] They're afraid to put the money in because they don't know how to help this company besides money. And that's a really scary thing to do for anybody, right? To put your money, just think of a dentist putting their money and we should think about

[00:29:22] this cause we do this a lot, right? We put plenty of money into real estate. We put plenty of money into stocks, bonds, CDs. We put our own money that we make in oral health into a whole bunch of other spaces that

[00:29:32] we honestly don't know much about as individuals and we can't help them at all. The real estate market crashes, that's it, right? The stock market goes, that's it, right? We can't, we rely on some CPA or some CFA to help us.

[00:29:45] This is those firms, those VC funds relying on us, the industry experts to help them in this investment. And so they have been gracious and generous when they invest, even if they're the lead investor, not us. We're getting major investor or their lead investor terms.

[00:30:00] There's even a few cases where we've gotten better terms than the lead investor outsizing us by 10 million. So it's really a testament to our team and the work that we're doing to bring the rest of the VC community into some of these investments.

[00:30:13] They don't have to be in all of them. They don't even have to be in multiple of them, but hey, try one. They'll fit your mandate and understand it and we can help you understand. That's right. They give you some extra dry powder for these companies.

[00:30:26] Jeremy, where do you see the future going? What are you most excited about in oral health and dentistry? Some of the investments you're making, top of mind that really gets you and the team excited as you're casting out the next couple of years.

[00:30:39] Yeah, there's so many fun areas evolving in dental technology that it's hard. I think one key challenge in dentistry is interoperability. This is something that has plagued us. I can't tell you how many times I hear from different types of software and FinTech and related products and services.

[00:30:58] We just can't integrate with this or that. We just can't implement with this or that. It's a constant thorn in the shoe of everybody in this space. It's really hard to plug into things. So I think interoperability is really coming along.

[00:31:10] I'm excited about what our investment, Braid Health, is doing. I'm excited about what our partners at Tooth Apps are doing. I'm excited about some of the regulation that's coming down. The Cures Act now evolving with ODIN.

[00:31:23] And I've been on this committee at the ADA that's worked on setting a bunch of principles around giving patients access to data and data portability and security. There's a lot coming in that sphere. Companies are going to have to be compliant.

[00:31:37] Companies are going to have to think about how they plug into other things. They have to, and then I think the services side of the industry, the practices, the DSOs, they have to think about who's the center of the technology universe.

[00:31:47] Because I think we all thought it was the practice management system. And I'm not so sure that it is the practice management system. Is it the system instead where patients access their data?

[00:31:56] Because I think Epic would tell you as powerful as Epic is, my chart's pretty powerful too with 240 million Americans on it. I think that in dentistry and in medicine and healthcare, you'd hear from the Braid Health team that they are an entire network layer.

[00:32:11] They're a whole PAC system. They can operate on and off the fringe, right? You're hearing that other things are actually the center and that the practice management system, it might be a big peg, but it's not necessarily the hub. It is just a big spoke.

[00:32:25] So I think interoperability is one that is really, I think, going to push itself forward in the next couple of years here and is really a predecessor to so many more things that can be possible if that process is smoother.

[00:32:40] I think another area is really oral systemic health. I think we're also seeing it on the services side of the industry. There's now multiple examples of dental practices aligning themselves with medical practices

[00:32:52] or medical services and leveraging the fact that as much as we moan and groan that patients don't come in as frequently as we want, this two times a year every six months, that they

[00:33:01] actually come into the dentist a heck of a lot more than they come into the doctor on average, right? And we're leveraging that point of care opportunity to bring the two together, right? To bring the mouth and the body back together, so to speak.

[00:33:13] They really were never apart, right? But to put them professionally back in the same arena and on the technology side, we're seeing many different examples. We see it in the wearables and the salivary diagnostics space, for example.

[00:33:27] Companies like Lura Health, companies like Bristle, companies, so many more companies that are companies like Viome, right? So many companies that are doing these salivary diagnostics and understanding measures that while they may be present in the salivary and oral health, actually to reflect on

[00:33:43] somebody's overall health and how we have to work as a whole allied health network in order to treat that patient. So these are two of so many up and coming areas, but they just come top of mind.

[00:33:55] And what do you think about the breakthrough in dentistry with the research around sleep and the fact that the dentists are starting to have as a standard of care, cone beam, CBCTs as a standard and being able to see up airway restriction and that movement of

[00:34:10] airway aware within the general dentist and the specialty dentistry offices. How do you see sleep evolving? Yeah, I honestly, so big growth stories in dentistry. I think everybody points to implants first. If you look at them, they go up and then they tow off.

[00:34:26] They're still a gigantic market segment, huge product lines, big companies involved. The next wave behind that came ortho, right? A very large movement around clear aligners and moving teeth in different ways. I think, and at least myself included, many think that sleep is that next huge wave

[00:34:46] that comes behind those other two. These are not just waves, right? These are massive, right? Systems that have come up in dentistry. And I think sleep is one of them, but it is tricky and it is a tricky situation because

[00:34:57] you have questions around whose scope of practice is it, which is a sometimes a state by state issue in dentistry. You have huge issues around how do you train and educate, not these providers to get them to understand because we don't get it in dental school really.

[00:35:11] How do you really educate them on how to do it? There's other questions and issues around there's so many discrete parts in the workflow, right? And workflow is such a precious thing in the dental practice and disrupting is one of the golden rules of innovating in dentistry, right?

[00:35:26] That we have. Right. How do we, how do we integrate these technologies and also the adoption of our profession and learning these new concepts, these new ideas. And how do you pull across medical, especially with billing, right?

[00:35:38] Cause that's another piece, which a lot of the reimbursement maybe relies on the medical side, whereas maybe we're talking about the treatment modalities relying on the dental side, that's true integration that it takes to get that done.

[00:35:50] So companies like sleep architects that have created a 360 degree platform that allow the practice to outsource and solve these different pieces, right? That's key companies like Velmany. Right. Which is in the 2D, 3D AI space. And they are looking that I've seen them visualize the airway, right?

[00:36:07] The oral pharynx, not only to be able to stitch together different images, but to skin them, not only skin them, but segment and isolate them, not only isolate them, but to be able to measure them, you're able to effectively see the volume and the

[00:36:22] shape of the airway and watch change, track a change over time with treatment. That is huge advancement in science and technology can really benefit patients. Yeah, exactly. The visual image is so powerful. Maria, this has been amazing.

[00:36:36] We got such a great side of future and understanding what Revere is doing, disrupting this venture capital area. And thank God in oral health near and dear to my heart, Jeremy, the things that you're talking about, Maria's also so great to have you on our podcast.

[00:36:55] Thank you so much for coming here. And every time we speak, I learn about yet another platform or tentacle of Revere partners that is meeting an unmet need in the market. So thank you for bringing us the latest. This is amazing. Very happy. We really appreciate it.

[00:37:09] I appreciate both of you, our friendship, our partnership, your support, it means everything. So thank you so much for having me on the podcast here. Thank you, Jeremy. Thanks for listening to the Think Oral Podcast. For the show notes and resources from today's podcast, visit us at

[00:37:31] www.outcomesrocket.health/.thinkoral or start a conversation with us on social media. Until then, keep smiling and connecting care.