The Exchanges

Q Interesting. Okay, that's great. And did you, were you always sort of going this top-down approach, or back in twenty-twenty when you launched, were you going more bottoms up? I'm just trying to get a sense if there was a transition from sort of PLG to Enterprise Motion or something in between.

A Sure. Yeah, so with the discount plan, it was very much, um, well, it was kind of a hybrid. So we signed a deal with a nationwide dental network, so we sort of had a roster of dentists, very large one, nationwide. But we still had to go location by location by location, Getting individual dentists to opt in to being part of this discount plan. When we pivoted to AI, we started out with about half a dozen locations that we had prior relationships with, really to kind of prove the product out. Um, and then we started going to conferences. You know, we found with our last business, Silver Sheep, that, um, we really sold a lot to surgery centers, so we went to a lot of conferences in the space, and that worked well. So it started out more bottoms up, Um, simultaneously we were having conversations with, uh, larger DSOs and then private equity firms that own the DSOs, and as we've gotten more traction with them, we've been a little bit more focused on the, um, top-down, although we are going to, like, you know, a lot of conferences this year.

AI assessment note: “So it started out more bottoms up... we've been a little bit more focused on the, um, top-down”

Q How did you get that done, though? You lost all your leverage. Didn't they just pound you on valuation? It looks like you grew it to over eight figures of revenue.

A Yeah, so, um, yeah, we did. Um, the short, I don't know, but I think it's because we had a breakup fee. So we had, we had signed a term sheet with them. Uh, that term sheet expired. We had a competing offer. Uh, we had two competing verbal offers, and we had one competing term sheet. We got them back under term sheet, but as part of that, we required them to have a million dollar breakup fee. So I think the answer is, Probably because of the breakup fee. They, I mean, they wanted to buy us, but I think that that was the, the pill that they didn't want was to not close the deal and pass a million dollars.

AI assessment note: “I think it's because we had a breakup fee”

Q Um, okay, tell us more about the Fiona product. When I see it on your website, again, I'm, I'm a total novice here, right, just meeting you today. I'm looking at it going, well, why wouldn't someone just use like an intercom or a general support tool in the bottom right of their, of their sort of page? What's the answer to that?

A Yeah, so I think what you find is that in all of these verticals that are very specific and a little old school, so whether it's dental, healthcare more broadly, you You know, veterinary, um, even frankly, restaurant, you know, restaurants, like, like tech companies and maybe big, big companies that are very tech focused are going to use things like intercom, but they're really not specific to the industry vertical. So as an example in dental, the number one most important thing for a dentist in terms of communication with patients is Is booking those patients. It's really about scheduling and booking. So right off the bat, if you look at an intercom or a fin or, um, you know, one of those types of products, they're, they're not focused on scheduling. They're focused on conveying information. It's more like customer support. And if you look at what Fiona does, and we have some other products we haven't announced yet, but that are one, one that's Like, we're actually selling right now behind the scenes. Like, it's all very focused on booking patients, engaging, re-engaging with patients, getting them to come back for appointments. It's a more active motion, and so the product is a little bit different, and then the business logic behind the scenes is totally different. Like, being able to really nail scheduling is critical, and we had a lot of prior experience with that from our…

AI assessment note: “they're not focused on scheduling. They're focused on conveying information.”

Q You watch my show. So sign up at FounderPath.com and when you get the onboarding email, I reply and I see all those. Just reply and say, Nathan, I found you through YouTube and I'll make sure to prioritize you. I would love to cut you a check. Check out FounderPath.com. Can you take us through that storyline a bit? How, you know, when did you raise the seed round?

A So we raised a seed round for the original business in Right when the pandemic hit, we actually closed on the financing. Um, we actually didn't do anything with the money, so we went the, like, literally, four or five million, or? Uh, it was, like, three million. Um, and, like, again, we, we, the economy shut down, or the, the, everybody shut down, everybody was, you know, in, at home, isolated, and dental offices were closed, and so we were, like, oh, no, like, What do we do here? So we actually didn't pay ourselves anything. You know, we had some money, so we were comfortable. We didn't, we didn't need it. Um, and we literally just sat on the cash and we were kind of like, does this business even work? Should we fully change to a different model? Like with this cash? I don't know. We had a lot of conversations with our investors and between my co-founder and I, um, and actually when we had raised the money, the original model was to be like a better type of dental insurance, but we were actually going to be an insurer. And coming out of those conversations, um, we decided to do this discount plan. And we started talking to some dental practices and figuring out what their pain points were. And so we, we actually built the product. We didn't start hiring people and building it until fall of 20 20. And then we launched that original discount plan model, uh, in spring of, uh, 20…

AI assessment note: “Right when the pandemic hit, we actually closed on the financing.”