Reinventing Dentistry: Wally’s $249/Year Membership Model with CEO Tyler Burnett

Alan Li (00:01)
Tyler, thanks so much for joining the Opening Soon podcast.

Tyler (00:04)
Thanks for having me, Alan.

Alan Li (00:06)
So really excited to dive into Wally. But before we dive into what you've built, could you give the audience a quick overview of your background?

Tyler (00:14)
For sure. Okay, I'll introduce myself. My name's Tyler Burnett. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Wally Health. What we're doing at Wally Health is building the future of dental care. So we're a startup. We've been around for a few years now. And I'll just define very quickly first what the future means because I think a lot of brands and companies like to throw around.

big statements like that. For us, it's no insurance, no long wait times, no surprise costs, no drilling, no pain. So these are kind of the core values that we define the future of and ⁓ really based off of our own personal experiences as founders, but as patients who go to the dentist, just like everyone else. So we really started Wally to build the future that frankly we wanted to live in as

patients who go to the dentist. ⁓ yeah, I can give you just like the quick on how I got Wally started or kind of dive in.

Alan Li (01:14)
Yeah, I mean, we'd love to

like, even before you dive into Wally specifically, like, what were you doing before? How did you even stumble upon this idea? How did everything start?

Tyler (01:24)
Yeah, so myself, I've co-founded a couple companies in my past. First one back in 09, finished my undergrad. I kind of joke I became an entrepreneur out of necessity because, you know, kind of a young 20 something year old with a finance degree in spring of 09 wasn't too sexy.

Alan Li (01:44)
Yeah, I bet.

Tyler (01:45)
And yeah, so we, my friend and I actually started and grew the largest network of digital Idaho media throughout Western Canada. So I'm a Canadian originally. And we sold that business about three years after starting it and to one of the largest private companies in Canada, the Paterson Group. So it was like a really nice exit. We were kind of at this inflection point of did we want to invest the next five to 10 years of our lives into building this media company? And the answer for both myself and my co-founder

was no, let's take some money off the table as two young guys and we kind of went our separate ways on just our journey on what we wanted to do next. For me, it was then co-founding a fintech business also based in Canada. We sold payment processing software into the crypto space. ⁓ Before it was even being called crypto, like right at the time in 2014 where crypto was even like a word that people were using. ⁓ Very interesting ride, ups and downs. I think the thing I took from both of these experiences that I

talk a lot about is ⁓ why...

you know, going into old kind of antiquated legacy industries. It looks like from a customer experience standpoint and my obsession and kind of being maniacal around improving that customer experience is really fun in these old, old industries. And so that's kind of what brought me to Wally. I was actually in the United States. I was supposed to be here temporarily for, for a company I was advising for. And I had to go to the dentist and I went to the dentist and was told I needed eight fillings and he wanted to do the

right there on the spot and charge me a bunch of money. Clearly, you being an entrepreneur who thought and cares deeply about customer experiences, I was pretty riveted by this by this experience and fought my way out and kind of went on this little crusade to understand what what the hell just happened to me. So I spoke with other patients, started hearing over and over again that literally to almost the same number of teeth that this type of experience is really common. ⁓ And I always mentioned I started dating my now wife and she

at the time I'd just graduated from Tufts Dental School in the Boston area. And so I was able to also start getting some insight into the clinical side, which was very helpful as I started to form kind of the mission for ultimately what became Wally.

Alan Li (04:02)
Yeah,

and what year was this when you got eight fillings?

Tyler (04:07)
So this was back in 2017. Yeah, quite a while ago.

Alan Li (04:11)
Okay. And your wife is also

a dentist too.

Tyler (04:15)
She is, she's an orthodontist now, yeah.

Alan Li (04:17)
Okay. And had you had any cavities or fillings before that experience was.

Tyler (04:22)
I'd had one

before. So I'd had a tooth drilled at some point in my life and...

So I knew what it was all about. And that's why I made it even more unbelievable that I had eight that had somehow been missed. And I didn't mention Alan, like I grew up in a family that really prioritized oral health, going to the dentist twice a year for routine cleanings. My parents were, you know, ⁓ invested enough that they got, you know, they got me braces twice because I needed them more than once, ⁓ which really sucks. But, you know, it just kind of give you some insight into like how I personally viewed going to the dentist, you know, my whole life I was brought up.

know, raised to really prioritize the importance of oral health.

Alan Li (05:02)
Yeah. I

also had braces twice, once when I think I was 12, 13, and once as an adult post-college, which was a traumatizing experience. But ⁓ I also had a very similar experience in college. I had never had a cavity. And I went to a dentist, and they suggested I fill two or three cavities. And I was also shocked because I never had one before. And I was a little bit skeptical. And I got a second opinion, and they said,

Tyler (05:10)
That's unfortunate.

Alan Li (05:31)
My teeth were fine. So I think I had a similar experience to you where, I don't know, you want to seek second opinions in sort of this area or go to someone who's more trusted.

Tyler (05:45)
Yeah, yeah, look, I mean, I could talk for an hour or hours about, you know, cavities and drilling and filling, know, drilling and filling on its own. It's a huge problem. You know, we estimate it's like 20, $25 billion every year are spent by patients getting their teeth drilled that don't need to be. So a huge problem.

Alan Li (06:04)
Yeah. Okay. So you got a bunch of cavities filled. ⁓ Your wife was a dentist, now orthodontist. How does that go from that experience to then, hey, I should actually build a business in this arena?

Tyler (06:18)
Yeah, I think just the pain I personally felt at that one interaction I had. ⁓

You know, was so profound and it was probably magnified because I, you know, I was kind of new in, in a new country. mean, it's more kind of like acutely aware of everything that was going on around me, but nonetheless, it was just so painful that it really stuck with me. And as a founder who really obsesses over customer experiences, I just couldn't shake it. And it felt like something had to be done. And honestly, the more I talked to people, both on the patient side, I got fueled because I saw, this isn't

this isn't like some small problem. This is a big, big problem. People hate going to the dentist, but they actually want to go. This is the crazy part is, and we have a ton of data around this now, I won't get into it right now, but people want to go to the dentist and they don't go. And then on the clinician side, the more I interacted with dentists, I started to learn more about all of the intermingling between insurance companies, their rules, how dentists operate businesses, and it's different across the board. But it also began to

really fuel my fire too, just on, you know, I think many people kind of healthcare brands or providers out there saying they're building something that is patient friendly, you know, the future of this, that, or the other thing. And I would look at it say, this isn't the future for anyone, but maybe themselves as the owner. you know, that also kind of fueled me. So I think there's gotta be a few different things that kind of stoke those early embers like it did for myself.

Alan Li (07:49)
Okay. So,

so what is Wally?

Tyler (07:53)
So what Wally, we're a membership based dental care company, $249 per year gets our members access to unlimited preventative care. So cleanings, diagnostics, exams with the dentist. It's that simple. And that's giving people really what they want, which is easy access to cleanings. Of course, you know, we have a whole digital layer to our experience, which makes it easy, accessible, convenient. And we deliver care out of five locations currently in New York and New Jersey.

also mentioned on top of the membership, have expanded very selectively into offering a few very innovative sort of newest technology type treatments. ⁓ One we're in particular really proud of is a cavity reversal treatment from Switzerland. So core to our mission of like killing the drill altogether in dentistry, we are reversing the same types of cavities I was told I needed to get drilled. We're reversing those in five minutes, which

without any drilling.

Alan Li (08:55)
Hmm. How does that work?

Tyler (08:59)
Yeah, so the technology, I mean, it's not to get too kind of geeky on this. It's a peptide solution. What it essentially does is it saturates the lesion or the cavity area. ⁓ As long as the cavity isn't too progressed, at some point, if you leave something long enough, it will require a drill and fill. But our belief is you can get on all of these early enough that drilling and filling should be a thing of the past. But what it does is it saturates the lesion. It brings in healthy ⁓

minerals that are naturally occurring in your mouth to stop the decay from progressing and in many cases also rebuild your enamel and completely erase that cavity.

Alan Li (09:38)
I see. So I guess a common question you probably get is, you know, for $250 a year with unlimited cleanings, how do you guys make money? Because I think just one cleaning probably costs $150, $200, generally.

Tyler (09:55)
Yeah, I mean, look, some of our competitors, it's more, it's like three, if you're paying out of pocket, 350 to even like above 500 bucks for a cleaning. You know, I think the best question back to that question is like, why do dentists charge so much for cleanings, right? Like, why are they charging $350? ⁓ I think it's because their businesses are very different than ours. ⁓

a dentist's business revolves around dentistry. And when I say dentistry, it's really all about restoration, restorative dentistry. So, you know, dentists go to dental school to become dentists and to do dentistry. And really, you know, again, ⁓ these businesses then really focus on the reactive sort of needs of a patient. And so when you sort of think about all of the different people you need to hire, all of the different equipment you need to buy to do all of these restorative treatments, sometimes around 300

types of treatments, it's very expensive. right. And so then you look at the preventative side, the cleaning side, and you just view that as a patient feeder for restorative care. And so you're not really thinking about how to do that, you know, in the most efficient way and the lowest cost way, but in the best way with the highest margin, you're just thinking about as a feeder. so, you know, depending on how ⁓ the rest of your business operates as a dentist, it just creates this margin profile that they feel like they need to charge a lot of money. So for us,

I can tell you very clearly like we're making ⁓ strong margin on just the membership assuming someone you doesn't spend any other money with us on any other additional needs. But of course when you blend you know what people do spend in addition to memberships across our whole membership base, our LTV of course on a per member basis gets much healthier.

Alan Li (11:40)
I see.

So I want to go back to before you even open your first location. So I think we understand generally what Wally does and what Wally stands for. ⁓ how do you go from, OK, I want to do this to actually opening and testing out your first location?

Tyler (11:57)
Yeah, I think there's a lot of testing, right? think the earliest days when it was being an idea, literally just be testing.

you know, my hypothesis, you know, whatever I thought was important on people around me that I was talking to and trying to understand like what resonates, what doesn't. And then ultimately, like starting to go and build a team. And that's where at the time I met my co-founder, Steve, earlier on, because I wanted to build this business with with someone else ⁓ early on. You know, I'm not I don't want to be like a solo co-founder. That's that's not my style. ⁓

Alan Li (12:37)
Mm-hmm.

Tyler (12:38)
And I also wanted the technical strength too. And so I went out on a search and you know, met Steve and like the fit couldn't have been more perfect. And so then all of sudden it's like, we have two people, there's two of us kind of like testing, you know, even with decks kind of like building some product and you know, you really just start acting quick. It's like testing, but having a strong sort of bias towards action in those tests to really get that feedback very quickly on like what's working and why is it working and what isn't. And then I think very quickly you start to get on this path.

.

Alan Li (13:08)
Yeah, what does

testing mean specifically in this regard?

Tyler (13:12)
So testing

could be, you know, it could be just testing in conversations. It could be putting something, you know, in front of, you know, your potential customer. So for us early days, we didn't know if our initial customer was going to be patients directly or if it was going to be dentists. And so that's again, whereas we were talking to a lot of patients, a lot of dentists, and actually initially we went down the dentist path. We thought that, you know, you could sort of solve this insurance problem, which was causing, and it causes a lot of these patients

experience issues today, we thought we could solve it by arming the dentist with a membership. ⁓

kind of product for their practice. So then they could offer it to their patients, not be bowled into insurance and all be happy. ⁓ Turned out we did that. So we built some Scraputec. I went in, you we sold it to a few dentists and ⁓ they began using it. We learned really quickly that, you know, it wasn't actually improving the patient experience. They weren't using it in a way that we intended for it to be used. And we were all of sudden caught in this flywheel too of just like feature requests that we didn't think were important to the patient. And so we had started this company really around

the patient experience. And so we pivoted very quickly after three months of that type of testing. So it was conversations, it was getting product in people's hands quickly. ⁓ We learned that this wasn't the path we wanted to pursue and we very quickly switched course.

Alan Li (14:33)
I see. Tyler,

what did your wife think about your business?

Tyler (14:38)
⁓ Yeah, I mean, look, we've had a lot of interesting conversations. think, know, different perspectives and tension kind of creates forward progress is our belief. ⁓ And even with me and my co-founder, Steve as well. ⁓ You know, I think she's asked a lot of the good questions. I've gotten a lot of good insight from her, ⁓ a lot of good intel. So there's a lot, but you overall.

She's super proud because she has worked as a general dentist for five years before pursuing a specialty in ortho. And, you know, she's kind of seen it all, ⁓ the good and the very dirty side of what general dentistry can be.

Alan Li (15:19)
sense. I know that you went down the venture capital path. Can you talk a little bit about that decision why you decided to raise funding versus starting up a single clinic yourself?

Tyler (15:31)
Yeah, it's like it's a good question. The answer and like all my answers, you know, kind of in our conversation aren't, you know, kind of they're just based on what I know and kind of what we did. It's not always right, but myself and my co-founder both had experience working in venture-backed had, you know, I raised venture before. So this was sort of like an area that I was familiar with.

But ultimately we wanted to do it not because we had been a part of these like explosive growth stories before, but because we wanted to solve a problem at scale. I think that's really important. So we didn't want to just sort of do this slowly, you know, for a few people in New York. Like our mission is to solve the dental experience, to improve it in a significant way for millions of Americans coast to coast. And we strongly believe that the fastest way for us to get there was

by raising venture early on.

Alan Li (16:29)
⁓

When did you feel like you had product market fit or hey, this is clearly working, let's expand.

Tyler (16:40)
Yeah, it's tough. know I've heard other founders say it's like super clear. ⁓ I don't know if it's ever super clear. think like growth is the moment you think you sort of have it, you find out maybe you don't. And so there's always, you know, it's hard. ⁓ I think though there are kind of like key moments in time where

you sort of see the pendulum shift. And for us, that was, there's a few key moments, I guess. So after we've kind of pivoted from selling to dentists, ⁓ we tested a lot virtually. So we actually mailed out some at-home kits to like 40,000 people through some Reddit ads we did, Reddit posts. I'll kind of skip past that, but ultimately where we wanted to go was into the delivery of care. We knew if we wanted to solve the patient experience and really

approve

it, we had to deliver the front door of this experience. So what we did was we went out, I met a dentist in New York. I convinced him to let us kind of test a membership based model out of his practice on days he wasn't operating. And that was like Fridays and Saturdays. And what we did was we put up some ads on, on, on Instagram and we got 500 people to sign up before we even tested this. So 500 people signed up within a couple of weeks. We started seeing them over the course of two months. And what.

Alan Li (18:01)
What

Tyler (18:01)
not just

Alan Li (18:01)
was the ad for the 500 people to sign up? Was it like, hey, get free cleanings for a year?

Tyler (18:05)
It was on

the same tagline we still use pretty strongly today, which is unlimited dental cleanings and whitening for $199.

at the time, we've now raised prices to $249. But ⁓ it was very simple value prop and we just saw the pull, it was a violent pull off minimal marketing dollars. And then when we actually delivered care for them in a pretty crummy experience, this is like our MVP experience, we had no clue what we were doing. I was there sitting at the front desk ⁓ talking with everyone and the things I was hearing and just the excitement before, after, ⁓ weeks after, months after and some

a lot of these patients are still members today, just told us very early on that we're onto something big. And so that was like a moment in time that said, hey, we got to keep going and we got to go harder and faster. And that's kind of what we did. And then, know, one other kind of moment I'll mention is just around, again, around growth, I think, for us being a customer, a consumer facing business, it's like.

what are our customers telling us? How are they telling us that with their dollars, right? And so I was the following summer from that, so about nine months later, we started pumping a little more into paid social and we just, we started seeing thousands of people signing up and for very low marketing dollars. And again, it was just this another kind of validation point that, this wasn't just like something really interesting for a few hundred people. This is something way bigger.

Alan Li (19:30)
Yeah. And what were some of the early customers saying? Like what was that feedback to you that you were listening in on?

Tyler (19:37)
Just that people want, they want to be going to the dentist, but they can't.

And they can't for a lot of different reasons, but it typically goes back to just really poor ⁓ experiences going to the dentist. So it's like what I had, people just don't have trust. They think they're going to be up. So this uncertainty, it's like, ⁓ yeah, I'm going to go for a cleaning and I'm going to leave with like eight fillings, right? Or like a thousand dollar bill. And it sounds crazy, but that's what people have experienced and they're afraid of that. So they don't want to go back. They want cleanings, but they don't want to go and get a cleaning and be

forced to spend more money that maybe they don't have or endure pain that they don't want to be kind of enduring because they were told by, you know, a quote unquote professional that this had to be done. So I heard this over and over again, sort of similar to my personal experience and in slightly, you know, different variations just, just kept, hearing it.

Alan Li (20:30)
Hmm. And are these people without insurance? Are they with insurance? Like who are you targeting?

Tyler (20:34)
Both.

both. ⁓ So without insurance, there's a huge financial burden to going to the dentist. So it's like a no brainer. We're affordable. give it. Yeah, we deliver a good, good experience. People with insurance, again, what back to what I was kind of just mentioning, it's like they've been to the dentist. They've used their insurance. It's the cleaning wasn't free. The cleaning maybe on paper was free, but they left with a five hundred dollar bill and a few cavities. Right. ⁓ They had to book six months out for that cleaning and then it would only be every six months. Like so all.

Alan Li (20:41)
Yep. That makes sense.

Tyler (21:06)
All of these gotchas and pain points, whether you have insurance or don't, it just all kind of bubbles up to the top. It's the same thing, which is it's a bad, bad experience.

Alan Li (21:16)
Okay.

What constructive feedback have customers given you about the Wally experience?

Tyler (21:24)
Constructive. ⁓ Yeah, nothing's constructive, but everything is at the same time. Building in New York is the best, by the way, because I'm a Canadian and I've built companies up there. I mean, you could build a company for two years and not know. ⁓

what you were doing right or wrong. New York, it's like you have that immediate feedback loop. People will tell you straight away, yeah, like you suck. This wasn't right. Like I waited 60 minutes for my appointment, right? Like just of course, it's like edge case stuff where you wanna keep it edge case, but no, I we have tight feedback loops and I think we listen to everything our customers say. We admit when we're wrong. ⁓

Alan Li (21:43)
good.

Yeah

Tyler (22:01)
and try to solve those problems fast. Some of them you can't solve fast and some of them are like the good problems when you're growing fast, you have a ton of demand and that's when like, know, wait times start to happen. And, you know, fortunately we've invested a lot into solving that problem we have.

But that's been one where people say, this isn't acceptable. I want to be booking next day or in two days my cleaning. I don't want to be booking four weeks out. ⁓ And we're like four weeks. Well, that's five months better than the traditional system. And then we have to remind ourselves, hey, we're not just trying to be better. We're trying to be 10x, 100x better. And so that's a totally different game that we're really.

Alan Li (22:38)
Yeah. Why did you pick New York as the first area to start and test this idea?

Tyler (22:47)
Yeah, I part of what I just said, think there's population density, there's these kind of like feedback loops from customers. There's also, I mean, I'm kind of going back like a handful of years now, we just saw this kind of health and wellness, kind of consumerized healthcare.

kind of like surge happening. A lot of those brands had brick and mortar as well located in New York. And we thought, hey, the customer base is kind of primed and already buying into this as kind of like a market. So ⁓ this seems like the right place to launch. We also had some other data points just on some other testing. Again, we like to do cheap testing early on to get data, usually over social and paid social. ⁓ And we had some early data points that there was just a huge pull from New Yorkers too.

we kind of threw it all together and we were all based in Boston so we thought, hey, this is close enough and it makes the most sense, let's start it in New York.

Alan Li (23:40)
I see. And Tyler, I know that currently you live in Austin, but most of your stores are in New York. How are you finding managing teams remotely? ⁓ Yeah.

Tyler (23:51)
Yeah, think, look, I get asked this question a lot. Actually, all myself, Stipe, Chelsea, third co-founder as well, we're all in different places. ⁓ None of us are based in New York. And I think that it's been kind of like a blessing in disguise. It wasn't easy early on.

And there's definitely some trade-offs to sort of building, you know, without being boots on the ground 100 % of the time. But what it forced us to do was separate ourselves as kind of thinking about the future and what we were building here from like the daily operational grind. Right? So I'm in New York enough and I'm close enough to the operations. I'm never going to change that. Like I'll clean toilets. I'll do whatever when I'm there. But if you're there 100 % of the time, that's all you're getting sucked into doing, which you will be.

with an in-person store and brick and mortar experience, then all of a sudden it's like you're gonna get fatigued and you're not gonna be spending enough time thinking about what am I doing next? What are we doing with this to go from a thousand customers to 10,000 to 100,000 to a million? That becomes very hard if every single day you're inside a store fixing things.

Alan Li (25:06)
Yeah.

Yeah. And what are some of the stats currently? How many locations, how many customers have you treated? How many dentists are you overseeing? How big's the team? What can you share with us?

Tyler (25:18)
Yeah, we have about 25,000 members. Team, we have about 10 on our HQ team, about 50 on our clinical team. We have five locations, four in New York. We just launched one in Jersey City. We're gonna do another two this year. So over the next three months here to close out 2025. And...

Alan Li (25:37)
in New York or Jersey?

Tyler (25:39)
New York, yep. And we have really ambitious growth plans to do about 100 in 2026. And so I can't talk about exactly how we're gonna do that, but we have a model and we have a playbook and we have a real estate partner that we're gonna be looking to push that with.

Alan Li (25:59)
Wow, ⁓ that's incredible. Are you able to say where ⁓ some of these locations will be?

Tyler (26:08)
I can't yet, but I mean, you can kind of think like major, you know, some of the major cities across the country were super excited to go into. And I think one thing I will say around like, how do do that? Right. Because we're talking about stores in particular here and brick and mortar. And, you know, one thing we knew we had to solve early on and really innovate around was the physical part of our of our business. Right. It's it's like the most challenging. It's also the most fun and fulfilling. It creates defensive

It doesn't customer experience like so many amazing things happen from having the in-person part of experience But it but it also is really challenging like from raising money to operations to a lot of things and so we wanted to solve some of those complexities very early on we wanted to ensure we could launch stores quickly and for like a really low cost and so when you have dentists, know spending six to twelve months in a million bucks to launch a practice we can do it, you know for

$100,000, $200,000 in 24 hours. Like that's a very different sort of.

Alan Li (27:17)
Let's dive a little bit deeper into that. said typical dentist office take about six to 12 months and cost a million dollars. You can do it in 24 hours and $100,000. Is that what you said?

Tyler (27:28)
Yeah, yeah. So again, it varies, you know, size wise, depending on how many chairs we're sort of like plugging into a space because we've really built a couple of reasons. again, we're not doing restorative. We're not doing 300 types of treatments that your typical dentist does. We're doing less than five. So the equipment we need is much more specific.

Alan Li (27:30)
How?

Tyler (27:52)
and there's less of it. ⁓ We also invest in the best equipment and it just so happens that this equipment is very much plug and play. So we're not doing like expensive build-out plumbing spaces. We're not doing all the complex stuff that dentists like to do. And that allows us to get up and running, you know, really, really fast. Literally, we just, you know, turned Jersey City on myself and one other person actually. We opened it up in 24 hours. ⁓

Alan Li (28:21)
How many dentists or dentist offices are there in the US and how big can Wally get?

Tyler (28:29)
Yeah, what's a $200 billion market and that's with

you know, half the population even going to the dentist. So it's like, you know, I'll tell you that 80 % of people want to be going to the dentist in the next 12 months. Only 35 % will. I can also tell you that from our own survey of tens of thousands of New Yorkers, 85 % want to be going more to the dentist. So when you think about the $200 billion current market is very small compared to what it can be. So it's big. We like it. We think, you know, we're solving a big problem for the existing pie that is

out there, but this pie we believe we're going to make a lot bigger. So that answers maybe part of your question. It's a big market. There's a lot of pain around the experience. There is about 200,000 dentists. There's a ton of dentists. And again, doing all different types of dentistry, different types of models, you can kind of think there's probably 125 to 150,000 offices based off of that.

Alan Li (29:29)
Yeah. And you guys, what's the plan for 10 years? Like how many offices do think you guys can get to?

Tyler (29:35)
Yeah, we want to be hundreds, right? So we're going to go, our next big milestone is getting to a hundred locations. You know, we believe that, you know, of course, like that puts us north of being a unicorn. And that's not the only thing we're trying to do. We're trying again to really change the game for millions of Americans. And we believe like meeting people where they are is a really important part of the experience. And so we don't know if sky's the limit, but we're on a race to a hundred right now.

Alan Li (30:04)
What's the most number of times a customer has used the unlimited dental cleaning per year?

Tyler (30:11)
Jeez, I should know that, shouldn't I? Like I said, we literally, we have people who signed up for that first offering and they're still like super users. We have a few people who come for cleanings once a month. ⁓ So there's definitely people up there that have probably visited us like dozens of times over the past few years. But I can tell you on average, people are visiting us about three times a year.

Alan Li (30:29)
Uh-huh.

Tyler (30:36)
which when you think about, again, like on average, the average American is going to the dentist's list once a year, right? And so we're like, we're really changing kind of like the engagement metrics for what it looks like.

Alan Li (30:43)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tyler, on your path to hundreds of dentist offices for Wally, what do you think is the biggest obstacle from here to getting you there?

Tyler (31:05)
Yeah, I mean, look, there's a lot. You know, I'm pretty candid about, know, startups are hard.

they're not for the faint of heart, brick and mortar especially. You just need to look around. Over the past three, four years, I mean, we've seen so many concepts, brands that raised tons of money that looked really cool and like we would look up to, you know, close their doors, right? So yeah, there's...

Alan Li (31:29)
Mm-hmm.

And you're talking about physical location concepts

or just startups in general.

Tyler (31:37)
both, but I think physical location startups get hit hard. And it's typically after Big Fund or it was, it's hard to raise these big rounds nowadays, but ⁓ it, and because of some of our predecessors that did and kind of like didn't have their model figured out and then started to scale really fast and it blew up. So I think what we feel really good about is we did spend a little bit of extra time on figuring out our model.

we knew we wanted to get to sort of this plug and play copy and paste kind of mode and

And we're here now and it, you know, I wish we were here two years ago, but you know, we, spent a little bit of extra time. So we feel really good about that. But I think what, what keeps me up at night, but going from, you know, five to a hundred locations is, frankly like what I don't know yet. Right. Cause there's a lot as a founder, ⁓ you, you learn in real time and you have to just figure it out as you go and, kind of like be reactive and smart and, and nimble enough to sort of like change your thinking, you know, very quickly.

if needed. So I think there's a lot of it of what we don't know. Of course, there's like operational and like growth, you know, challenges that we face that we feel confident around. But these are definitely topics that I stay really close to and pay a lot of attention to.

Alan Li (32:53)
Yeah.

And I want to touch ⁓ briefly upon the fundraising front. So how much has Wally raised? How are those fundraising conversations given, you know, so many brick and mortar VC startups have failed over the last few years?

Tyler (33:06)
Yeah, they're really tough. ⁓ think, yeah, raising is really hard, especially from venture, right? Like there might be other kind of like types of investors, but yeah, lot of the like, you know, investors like to kind of like pattern match against other companies. And when the patterns and signals aren't good, it sucks. ⁓ So that's like number one. But what I will say is, I mean, look, if it's worth pursuing and...

Alan Li (33:10)
Pfft.

Tyler (33:34)
you and you're solving a big problem in a way that like matters to people, you will find investors who

to sort of share your vision and kind of see it, right? So it is kind of like a numbers game ⁓ for us. You know, we I've gotten I've gotten probably hundreds of no's, but we've also gotten the yeses that are really, really important and kind of like help change our trajectory as a business. So we've we've been able to find the right supporters. But, you know, it wasn't easy. We've raised about 20 million dollars since inception.

⁓ We're kind of like announcing our latest fundraise. My team would get mad if I kind of spilt it right now, but we'll be announcing kind of our Series A, which we raised. We did close it a few months ago. We'll be announcing that very shortly.

Alan Li (34:23)
Yeah.

Does AI fit into Wally at all?

Tyler (34:30)
Definitely. Yeah. We're like, we're sprinkling AI everywhere. ⁓ It keeps our team small, keeps the patient experience strong and it keeps it getting better. It also helps our clinicians. So like you think about just like supercharging everyone with AI. know, ⁓ cleanings dentistry, this hasn't been automated.

you know, by robots yet, I guess. ⁓ And, you know, we have no kind of like, you know, we have no insight into that right now. But what we can do is we kind of semi automate all of our team members. And that doesn't start stop with just like us on kind of the sort of HQ side. It we think a lot about clinicians, hygienists, assistants, doctors. And what are the things that we can provide them via AI that really supercharges their day to day and in turn provides

know, continues to provide that better patient experience.

Alan Li (35:25)
Yeah, can you give an

example of how you're using it?

Tyler (35:28)
Yeah, I mean, from the from the educational side and diagnosis that we use a lot of detection tools for AI. So it kind of supercharges our dentists who are providing exams and a lot of exams over and over again with objective analysis. And this is a huge problem in dentistry. This subjectiveness of diagnosis is why you went and were told, you you needed a whole bunch of fillings. went to another dentist. They told you don't need any of them. We've all this is why we all are told this is

because

it's actually maybe not that they don't exist. Maybe that first guy who told you they're there is right, right? But the problem is there's no regulatory and there's no alignment on how to diagnose what. And so we've brought an objective approach via AI. And then it also creates this very visual educational tool for the patient so they actually can see and understand what it is we're talking about when we show them an X or we're not just pointing to a screen. So that's one example. One other example, ⁓

guess I could talk about is ⁓ from scheduling, there's just a lot of patient engagement tools. So everything to make, in for your appointment sooner without having to staff up our team to being able to engage our patients around.

you know, what their next, you know, action item is that we're wanting them to take with us. We're just like constantly there to interact with, again, without having to sort of like staff up a big team of people to do this.

Alan Li (36:58)
Yeah. And

for everyone that has a dentist, which I imagine is a significant portion of our audience, ⁓ what questions should they be asking their dentist or how, signals are there to, Hey, I should get a second opinion.

Tyler (37:13)
Yeah, I mean, ask them what they think about Wally. ⁓ If they get defensive or they say we suck, you probably should find a new dentist. If they say we're, you know, we're actually helping out, you know, a problem, then like they're confident in what they do. They probably they don't have any like business issues, right? So I think who we sort of threaten the most are dentists who really rely on kind of this like upselling model. Getting people in the door for cleanings. They see us as taking away that door for them, even though we're not.

But then really again, it's a fragile, it's a brittle model.

that really relies on insurance rules and doing a lot of these drill-and-fills. And so I think that's where you sort of find these like more insecure providers. And they're the ones typically who really don't like what we're doing and are potentially fearful of what we're doing. And look, the great dentists, the really good dentists out there, we're friends with. We actually refer patients to. Typically they specialize in different areas of dentistry. And they see us as a really good thing because they're also hyper aware of like, hey, people don't like going to the dentist. So if you're going to a dentist who says,

suck that means they're too arrogant to know what's going on in their own backyard.

Alan Li (38:21)
What type of customer do you think is an ideal customer for Wally versus an ideal customer for a traditional dentist?

Tyler (38:30)
Look, we operate sort of, it's not one or the other. We believe at the front door of your experience, no one can match what we're doing for the price we're doing it for the experience we're giving. And then ultimately for the care we're providing, right? Like the technology we're using is the best. It cleans your teeth twice as good as traditional tools. Less than 1 % of dentists in the country are using it because it's expensive to buy. So you're literally getting the best patient experience, you're getting the best clinical experience for the best price.

us. But of course, we only go so far. Like our whole mission is around preventative care, proactive care. And so the you know, our bet is that if you start coming to us and you stay with us over the long term, restorative needs will go way down. But let's face it, like people will always need dentistry. And we're excited about that, too. And we'll work with, you know, really great dentists that we also refer our patients over to. So it's not it's not one or the other. I would say it's kind of like a combination approach of like we

be your primary care dentist and for anything specialty related there's really great specialists out there.

Alan Li (39:38)
For people that are interested in starting a brick and mortar business and thinking about ⁓ raising money or not raising money, what advice would you have for them?

Tyler (39:50)
I mean, yeah, don't raise unless you need to raise. ⁓ I think that's number one. ⁓ The more you raise, the earlier you raise it, the more diluted you get. That's just, you know, that's kind of just like basic math.

So don't raise if you don't need to. think like when you need to raise it'll be really apparent and it will be because hopefully like you have confidence that by raising you know X number of dollars it will sort of take you to this next level. And if you're not sure about that then like keep doing the scrappy things until you have that sort of level of confidence. Like I would just like follow your gut on that.

The other thing too is just like anything brick and mortar. I want to see more brick and mortar brands kind of like pop up and really like thrive, right? Because like we want more of us in this group.

⁓ to really show investors like, there is something new going on in brick and mortar and it's here to stay and these are gonna be multi-billion dollar businesses. ⁓ But what I can say is like, get ready, like you gotta buckle up. It's not, it's like, and I think that, you know, that goes true for starting any company, but I can assure you like anything with IRL kind of like brick and mortar experiences is really, really hard.

Alan Li (41:05)
What other ⁓ experiences brick and mortar are you excited about outside of dentistry?

Tyler (41:12)
That's a really good question. ⁓

So being in healthcare, kind of like being in my trench here, I don't get exposed to a lot in sort of other verticals. I guess maybe focusing on healthcare, I think we're excited by a lot in healthcare because there's also a lot of healthcare companies building really cool stuff that doesn't have working mortar part, you know, pieces to it. But I also believe that like healthcare...

you know, a big part of it is always going to need kind of an in-person touch. And so I think there are other, you know, brick and mortar healthcare companies that are doing interesting things ⁓ and vet companies. ⁓ But yeah, I think, you know, I think healthcare is where it's at and where I'm most excited right now with brick and

Alan Li (42:06)
Okay. Tyler, sort of looking back on your journey ⁓ over the last, call it seven, eight years now, ⁓ knowing what you know now, is there anything you would have changed ⁓ if you were to start over?

Tyler (42:21)
No, it's tough. It's tough to look back and say shoulda, woulda, coulda. I like to look forward and just try to always do better based off learnings. So no, I wouldn't change anything. I think you've heard me kind of allude to a few times here. It's hard. It always takes longer, or it did for us. Do I wish we were here two years ago? For sure. But I'm super proud of the fact that we are here today. We're alive and we're doing really, really well.

So I think it's like, don't spend a lot of time thinking about what I could have done or should have done. It's like, where are we at today? And because of this position we're in, what are we positioned to line ourselves up for next?

Alan Li (43:03)
Yeah. Tyler, I you mentioned a few times that it's been really hard, outside looking in, you you guys raised $20 million, you have five locations growing really fast. It looks like it's all working really well. Can you talk about a time that, you you felt, wow, this is, this is really difficult. This is challenging.

Tyler (43:22)
I mean, yeah, of course, like, you know, almost running out of money, like, many times. I think.

The more progress you make, it gets more exciting, right? think as founders, like I'm addicted to progress. think, you know, I think most founders, if not all would sort of share that. Like we all do this for sort of different reasons to like fulfill. think, you know, making progress and building something that is like moving forward, getting bigger. The team is getting bigger. You're servicing, you know, providing a great experience for more customers. Like all that's really, really exciting, but this

stakes

always get higher. And so it's like, you're kind of like, you prove one thing, you got permission to do the next thing, you kind of do it, you get a lot bigger, more pressure. And it's like, and then there's these kind of key moments where if you're on the venture, you know, kind of hamster wheel, and you're relying on money, you're not a profitable company yet. It's, pretty stressful. So I think the workaround here is to try to get to profitability as fast as you can, while at the same time trying to grow a really big business, right and timing.

of those things can be really challenging. for me it's always been really hard ⁓ and you know we've had to go out and raise money sometimes from people like not when we wanted to do it ⁓ but because of the progress we had we were able to kind of get it done but those situations are definitely what would keep you up at night for weeks or months.

Alan Li (44:54)
This has been awesome. Thank you for sharing your journey and starting and building Wally. If people are interested in getting in touch or learning more about you and Wally, ⁓ what's the best way?

Tyler (45:06)
Yeah, shoot me an email. Tylertylerathiwale.co.

Alan Li (45:11)
Great. Well, hopefully by the end of next year, ⁓ a lot of people will be able to visit a Wally in their own hometown. really. ⁓

Tyler (45:19)
Where should we go next, ⁓

What's the next city you want to see us in?

Alan Li (45:23)
What's the

next city I want to, well, I I live in New York, so it's fine here, but ⁓ my wife and my family live in Southern California. So if you go to LA and San Diego, ⁓ I could probably get you a few customers out there.

Tyler (45:37)
Okay, cool.

Alan Li (45:40)
Alright, thanks Tyler.

Tyler (45:43)
Thanks Alan.