The Group Dentistry Now Show: The Voice of the DSO Industry

Dr. Jeremy Krell, Managing Partner of Revere Partners discusses DSO technology. His shares his thoughts on this podcast including:

DSOs’ biggest tech related challenges
Trending dental technology solutions
Alternative asset investing- when & how
Much more

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DSO Podcast transcript – DSO Technology and Technology Investing with Jeremy Krell.

Welcome to the Group Dentistry Now show, the voice of the DSO industry. Kim Larson and Bill Neumann talk to industry leaders about their challenges, successes, and the future of group dentistry. Visit groupdentistrynow.com for more DSO analysis, news, and events. Looking for a job or have a job to fill? Visit joindso.com. We hope you enjoy today’s show.

Bill Neumann: Welcome back, everyone, to the Group Dentistry Now show. I’m Bill Neumann, and as always, we appreciate you watching us, whether it’s on our YouTube channel or on groupdentistrynow.com. We appreciate your support. Without a great audience like you, we wouldn’t have great guests and, of course, awesome topics to talk about. You have probably seen this dentist before at a trade show, at a booth, on a podcast in the DSO world, potentially. His name is Dr. Jeremy Krell. He is a managing partner of Revere Partners. And we’re going to find out exactly what the heck Revere Partners is and who is Dr. Jeremy Krell. So it’s really good to have you on here. I’ve known Jeremy for a long time and it’s a shame, but first time I had you on the podcast and I’m really excited.

Jeremy Krell: Yes, really excited to be here, Bill. Thanks so much for the conversation.

Bill Neumann: So Jeremy, maybe a little bit about your background for the folks that maybe have seen you. I mean, like I said, Revere has really been at just about every major dental trade show, certainly at the DSO events. You know, you tend to get booth space or should I say sometimes sections of halls to highlight a lot of your portfolio companies. So maybe a little bit about your background. You are a dentist. by trade. Do you still practice?

Jeremy Krell: Yeah, sure. Happy to give a little bit about my background. So yes, I’m a licensed dentist by trade. I practiced for just about 10 years. I don’t practice anymore, so retired or recovering dentist, whichever you prefer. I really am and brand myself a startup guy. So i started in tech having nothing to do with health care at all had some exits early exits in. I’m in the tech space and web and graphic design then went to a luxury goods and commodity services company that i was part of the early team of any scaled and sold four years later. Went on to found an incubator that was industry agnostic in Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and led that for five years. Transitioned into the health tech space from general tech, and I took a leadership role at Oscar Health Insurance, leading strategic provider innovations and development, so six hospital partners across three states, about 125,000 patient panel and all the technology integrations into them, and we IPO’d. And I went to Quip, the subscription electric toothbrush, oral health product and professional services company. So from health tech to sort of dental tech. And we became a VC-backed unicorn company. I ran the professional channel there. And from there, after kind of fully vesting and looking for my next opportunity, I started my own family office, the Barchester Bay Group, sort of advising, investing, companies, about 40 different companies under dental healthcare and even more broadly, and kept running into this problem of tons of innovation in dental but hindered capital flow. That was problem number one. Problem number two, a big gap between how the corporate side of dentistry, not just DSOs, but a lot of the other types of corporates, manufacturers, distributors, insurers, how they bridge the gap with smaller or earlier stage technology companies and that’s when we found it revere partners about five years ago it’s really the industry’s first vc fund dedicated to dental technology and is is really not just a fund but also an ecosystem and that’s what i focus my day on now.

Bill Neumann: I think that’s how we connected originally on LinkedIn. I remember the conversation that you were, you and I were following a lot of the same people, I think, and it was one of LinkedIn’s suggestions for each one of us to connect. So I’m glad we were able to do it. And So let’s talk, before we talk more, we’re going to dive into, you know, what is VC? Some of the, we can talk about some of the portfolio companies, Revere partners, and maybe the opportunities for listeners and viewers in our audience, whether they are tech companies looking for support from somebody like Revere or maybe investors. So I want to get to all those things, but maybe let’s start off with You know, there’s a reason that you started Revere Partners. So let’s talk about some, some of the larger tech-related challenges that DSOs and group practices have. And I think you get a lot of this information from, you know, what you see from your working with DSOs and then also your portfolio companies. So what are some of these challenges that you see out there?

Jeremy Krell: Yeah, and my job is both interesting and challenging for the reason that we have to not only know what is the trend or the problem now, but we have to track out five years, ten years from now and understand what will it be then. Right so we’re always trying to do this you know sort of future funding right or or gap solving that has both a current and future sense to it. Some of the big longitudinal challenges that we have here in the industry staffing. Continues to be a major hindrance for dental, but not just dental, also healthcare as a whole. So we’ve invested in companies like Cloud Dentistry, Tutheo, and we see many, many, many more enter this space with different unique solutions to solving the staffing and workforce management crisis. We see data transportability and interoperability be a huge challenge in this space, just understanding how to get data clean. So clean data in means clean data out, right, in terms of the business intelligence or CRM or insights that you’re able to respond to, being able to translate it to the patient in a way that is meaningful and soon to be required. For them, having the providers able to sort of make sense of complex data or high volumes of medical data. So we’ve invested in companies like Braid Health and partnered with companies like Toothapps to solve some of those tricky interoperability problems and big data problems. Uh, another major topic is this area of oral systemic health links, the mouth being a part of the body, uh, and, and all of the related areas from, um, the microbiome and how it affects, you know, the oral health, but also the gut health and brain health and cardiovascular health, uh, as well as, uh, you know, Other challenges there on the oral systemic health fringe, AI, what is it finding, oral cancer, what is it related to, right? These types of topics and how we can sort of translate that model into the dental practice, right? How is the dental care provider, you know, not just a provider of oral health, but overall health, how is the dental care provider part of primary care in this country? So that would be another major sort of challenge that we look to solve. So there are certainly many, many of them, but these are three that raise to the top of mind.

Bill Neumann: So a lot of challenges out there, and you at Revere, you’re constantly having conversations and evaluating different startup companies that are solving for some of these challenges that we’re talking about, and maybe some other challenges that we haven’t discussed yet. So when you go through this evaluation process, and obviously a lot of them don’t get to the point where they become partner with Revere, but some do. So what are some of the trending DSO solutions that you see right now, maybe companies you’re working with? Just maybe some things that people in our audience haven’t really, you know, seen yet or companies that they haven’t heard about yet. What are, I’m really kind of curious, like what should we be paying attention to now?

Jeremy Krell: Yeah, there are just so many opportunities. I’ll suggest a few of them. You may have heard of some and not of others, but they’re not always the most obvious, right? Some of the other trend areas I gave have started to rise to the occasion of panel discussions and major article discussions and big posts all over social media that trend with engagement, but not every problem is necessarily that visual. Some other solutions, for example, there’s the problem of downtime in your office due to equipment failure. This is a serious problem for DSOs and understanding in an intelligent way the health of the equipment. For example, we’ve invested in Uptime Health. Uptime Health have broadened their service sets to uptime services. They have acquired front office rocks and also dental whale, they’ve been transforming the business and that sector, right, really approaching it from an equipment intelligence standpoint and helping you turn downtime into uptime. So that’s a, there’s a there’s a, you know, classic example of something a little less obvious, but highly impactful, that’s operating through a lot of these DSOs. Another one would be this area of conversational intelligence. So applying AI in a specific niche case that is impactful, For example pure logic is a is an investment of ours and it’s focused on that conversation between the front desk in the patient in a fully automated fully sas based solution running it’s a i models on millions upon millions of minutes of these conversations. and finding key areas to change and tracking that change all the way through to production differences is another major category that multiple players are frankly addressing from different perspectives. So that’s yet another example. You may ask yourself about whether you’re a specialty DSO or you’re a general DSO, how do I get more specialty starts? If you’re trying to bring in something like implants, how do you do that? Maybe it’s complete specialty solutions and Santosh’s team that can help you, either by leveraging their SaaS platform or by them helping with their services and how to manage that. Or maybe it’s in terms of how to get GPs to handle more complex ortho cases and start them. So, uh, ortho founded two front, uh, is, is a solution that’s directly partnered with a line to be able to help the practices do that. So many, many, many different solutions there to solve and help really move the needle for, for DSO KPIs.

Bill Neumann: And some great names of some organizations out there, some that I know of, some that I don’t, but certainly some companies that you partnered with, or should I say Revere partnered with, early on. And now some of them, like you mentioned, Uptime and their acquisition of DentalWell. So you have a, you know, a relatively young company, you know, just out of the startup phase acquiring, you know, a well-established company. So that’s just really interesting to see how quickly these companies are scaling up and how quickly technology is evolving and impacting our industry. It’s so difficult to keep up with things. And your point earlier was you have to plan out for five, 10 years ahead. Like what’s, all right, we’re here now. What’s the trend going to be? And I just can’t imagine that task as it’s hard to stay three months ahead of the trends.

Jeremy Krell: That’s right. We get, you know, we get challenges now, right? Solving key gaps in the revenue cycle management process, bringing in an air pay or a zoo to help with insurance verification or, uh, you know, a dentist to help with claims processing and reporting. We get out of, you know, these are real problems happening. People are feeling the burn right now and into the future of dentistry of problems, right? The. Well, what role will robotics play? What about imaging modalities using structured light, right? Companies like Perceptive that do both of those things. They have a unique imaging capability where you can see into the tooth just using light, no ionizing radiation, the same form factor as an interaural scanner, and then doing robotics, prepping a crown in under 10 minutes in a fully automated capacity, right? And I did it myself. You have that crown prep, the crown fully fabricated before the tooth is even prepped due to the ability to see inside of it, plan the prep, and know that the robot is going to do it within microns of accuracy. But also taking it from the perspective of what is that adoption curve going to look like? That’s a very different way for practices and providers to practice the profession. Right what are what are there going to be their challenges what what kind of education is going to be needed. What about that implement implementation adoption curve is so hard to climb. Right it’s sort of like sales are easy but adoption and implementation is tough. Right so some solving some of those problems down in in the trenches for the future of technology problems.

Bill Neumann: With maybe any one of these companies that Revere is partnered with, do you have any DSO case studies or some examples that maybe you can kind of talk a little bit about? And I’m kind of curious, you know, our audience is made up of a pretty diverse group of people. So we’ve got the, you know, the large DSOs on one side of things, and then we’ve got a lot of the you know, young docs that are starting up their own, you know, multi-site, sometimes multi-specialty group practices, and then everybody in between. So, maybe just some examples of how like a PureLogic or an Uptime has really impacted some group practices.

Jeremy Krell: Yeah, and I’ll give a look at a set of different examples to make the broader point about tech with, you know, whether or not we’re partnering with them. Our chief science officer, Dominic Lysak, who’s based in Switzerland, he founded this Curadon Credentis, right, a major remineralization agent today that he sold to Vivardis. And Vivardis is now, you know, getting into the United States market. They face challenges with how payers are going to pay for this, how providers are going to get reimbursed for this. What’s the coding around this, right? How does it fit into the other procedure set that DSOs are used to providing? What about a one surface filling? What about a sealant? What about fluoride varnish? Where does it fall within this set? And I’ve seen some pretty compelling evidence, for example, of our friends over at Heartland really piloting this and then rolling this out through the Heartland organization, bringing minimally invasive dentistry and remineralization. So that’s an incredible example that I like to see. The example of Perceptive I gave previously, the robot, they did, and there’s a public article around some of their Procedure, you know, being tested with Pacific Dental, right? So another large DSO there, taking a future of dentistry technology, showing how it works, right? Pacific Dental is so prolific on the oral systemic health technology as well, looking so much, for example, also at microbiome screening, uh, implementing and testing multiple different salivary diagnostics in their, in their practice, using that as a way to generate real oral health impact, not just oral health, but overall health impact. Also generating, you know, real production off of that, right? Showing the rest of the industry how it’s, it’s possible to use and implement an early stage technology and still generate real health results for the patient and real business results for the DSO. So these are just some of the many pilots that are out there. And what is really a key point is the DSO developing a culture of innovation. And while these pilots cannot consume the bandwidth of the DSO that’s already so busy, having that culture to test and pilot things in a focused way and in an efficient way is so important to that DSO bringing new technology in to the impact it makes to the patient. to the impact it makes to the bottom and the top line economics for the DSO.

Bill Neumann: Switching gears a little bit for potential investors out there that may be in our audience that aren’t necessarily familiar with alternative asset investing, you know, venture capital. Can you give a little background on, you know, what that might be like for a first timer?

Jeremy Krell: Yeah, sure, exactly. When it comes to the point, this is not official financial advice, of course, Bill, but when it comes to the point to invest some of your money or some of your organization’s money, you should ask the experts around you about a diversified investment strategy. I’m not here to say don’t invest in the stock market, public assets or the healthcare S&P, CDs and mutual funds being a little less risk, the bond market and how it’s trending compared to other public securities. These are all types of investments. Many of the people in this space also invest in real estate. I’m here to make the point that we shouldn’t just invest in our practices and private equity. We shouldn’t just invest in real estate. We shouldn’t just invest in some of the most common public securities. We should also consider investing in the things we know and use in our practices, right? So investing in venture capital is a different type of investment. You put your money into the vehicle, right? The venture capitalists like myself and our investment committee at Revere decide where that investment should be made and you then wait for the company, the asset to exit, right? For that company to be bought by a private equity company or that company to be bought by a corporate strategic in our space and when they are, that exit comes back to the investors. That’s how a venture capital is Essentially works and revere today has a third fund open for investors who are who are interested in putting their money into some of the top performing dental technology companies.

Bill Neumann: Excellent. And we can, at the end of the podcast, which is in a couple of minutes here, we’ll make sure that we give contact info. So if people want to reach out to you, how about for the startups out there that may be followers of Group Dentistry now watching this that are potentially interested in partnering with Revere, what would that look like? And then I also, want to make sure that you cover before you leave your corporate services side of the business. You covered the fund, the third fund. But what about, you know, hey, I’ve got to start up here. I need some assistance. What can Revere do for me?

Jeremy Krell: Yeah, absolutely. So maybe I can even blend the two together there. We helped and we partner with the DSO to help play matchmaker a little bit, right. To help find the dental technology solutions that are point solutions to some of their greatest challenges today, or for where their organization believes, uh, the opportunity is headed. So given the fact that we are already looking for our own investment purposes at over 1,200 dental technology companies that have organically applied to us for funding, we are able to look among our entire pipeline and we track them on so, so many structured data fields to be able to find on a set of parameters for that DSO, what PMS it integrates into, what technical specifications it must have. what valuation or amount of sales or number of customers or whatever else it is that the DSO is looking for to be able to help them find that right technology solution, introduce it and even help get pilots and implementation kicked off. So this is one of the primary ways that we partner with DSOs because we believe that it’s, you know, these technology solutions are only as good as they are distributed, right, into the hands of the providers into the hands or impact to the patient. So we have to, we really have to get them, uh, you know, get them there. Uh, you can also look to our group Revere’s group and it’s, it’s, it’s work with group dentistry. Now, Beau, you and the team have done a fantastic job in terms of helping some of these types of companies really communicate their value props. and really helping them find the right starting place based on geography, based on size and scale of an organization, based on where the organization is in its own technology adoption curve. So we’re trying to really work closely with experts like Bill and his team to make sure that these technology companies are putting their right foot forward and making good matches with their DSO counterparts. So our corporate services really cover that client services relationship where we were able to help pair dental technology solutions to DSOs in an efficient manner.

Bill Neumann: Dr. Crowell, if people in the audience want to find out more about Revere Partners, how do they do so?

Jeremy Krell: Yeah, please visit us at ReverePartnersVC.com. You’re always welcome to reach out to me at Jeremy at ReverePartnersVC.com. Thanks, Bill.

Bill Neumann: Yeah, that, that, that is great. Um, do you have 30 seconds to give us a little bit of insight onto what Revere has in store for itself and the industry in 2025?

Jeremy Krell: Yeah, of course, Bill. So Revere has fund three opened. Our fund is a hundred million dollar fund, targeting a hundred million dollar fund. We are in a strategic raise period now. It’s a great time for the dental industry and its counterparts to get involved. We are going to be investing over the course of three to four years that money into 20 to 30 of the top performing companies, probably 2 to 3 million, up to $5 million check sizes, putting about 70% of it into new companies and about 30% reinvesting into those winners. So if that sounds like something that is interesting to you or to your organization, of course, we’d love to connect. Revere is also focused on building out the ecosystem that supports all of these funds in dentistry. And so those corporate services are Revere Plus Syndicate, where any dental asset, like a startup, can transact with any accredited investor, like many of you. as well as our fund administration services that we now are able to kind of license out. And so we support about a dozen other dental technology investors, angel groups, and about three to five other traditional funds at any given time that are also investing in this space. So we’re building out that ecosystem to be able to bring even more resources to dental technology innovation.

Bill Neumann: All right, thank you, Jeremy. It was great to have you on. Next time, it won’t be so long. I feel like we should have had you on years ago, but everybody, you’ve got the opportunity to get into Revere’s third fund next year. Well, you could do it this year if you’d like. There still is some time. So reach out to Jeremy. We’ll drop his email address in the show notes. And again, the website is reverepartnersvc.com, reverepartnersvc.com. Thank you, Dr. Krell, and thanks everybody for watching us today. Until next time, this is the Group Dentistry Now Show.