Inam funded Overjet's first year using her house down payment
Warda Inam · She quit her job without a startup idea. Then built a $550M startup from a bad dentist appointmen... · PMF Show · Jun 3, 2024 · at 17:13
Warda Inam is the founder and CEO of Overjet, a dental AI company valued at $550M. She discusses how she bootstrapped the company's first year before raising venture capital.
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“My parents had given me when I graduated and married that given me, you know, a check for putting down payment on Our house. And so we use that. That was our, you know, seed money there. And then I started going to dentist though. And then there was another dentist who provided the person who gave us the initial data. He provided the second check and that lasted us for about a year.”
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Pre-seed angel investor refused to fund Overjet without a male CEO
“An investor, this was an angel investor, they have a fund, a pre-seed fund, who basically told me, hey, I really like you. However the chances of you getting funded next are so low that I don't want to put, you know money in because I think the statistics they…”
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“There is significant amount more under diagnosis in dentistry. And treatments that are not happening then over diagnosis.”
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“And then I shared my x-rays with other dentists as well, and I got different opinions. And that what didn't sit Well with me where it felt more of an art rather than a science. There has to be one truth, you know, like, what is it?”
Inam: First-gen healthcare AI companies like Viz.ai failed at VC scale
“There were some companies like Wizz AI, I think the first generation of companies which could not in, especially healthcare could not make it work in at a larger scale. So the, you know, it was, They did solve a very good problem. However, adoption of that tec…”
Dental practices measured finances but lacked clinical quality metrics before Overjet
“There were ways of measuring financial performance. There was no way of measuring clinical quality in dental practices, and I felt that if we did not do anything about it, we would head in, in a very wrong direction.”
Inam: Dental practices record billed treatments rather than underlying diseases
“So the interesting thing about dentistry is that if you went to a dental practice and you wanted to query how many patients have cavities, you won't be able to query that because disease is not recorded in dental practices. Treatments are recorded, but disease…”