Dental venture capital barely existed as a category six years ago — and Dr. Jeremy Krell built the infrastructure to change that. On this milestone 50th episode of The Technology Evangelist Podcast, host Dr. John Flucke sits down with the founder of Revere Partners, the first independent venture capital fund dedicated exclusively to oral health, to talk about how dental startups get funded, what investors look for, how dentist-entrepreneurs can get involved, and why the dental industry’s insularity has historically been both its greatest weakness and its greatest untapped opportunity. This episode is brought to you by Medidenta Digital Solutions, the proud sponsor making this podcast possible.
Key Insights on Dental Venture Capital and Startup Innovation:
- An Entrepreneurial Foundation Built Before Dental School: Dr. Krell’s path to dental venture capital started not in a practice but in a series of small businesses he launched in high school and college — a web and graphic design company, a campus services startup called Dorm Made offering room cleaning, appliance rental, and laundry pickup. Those experiences gave him a working knowledge of financial statements, marketing efficiency, and operational scaling that dental school never provides. He went on to earn his DMD at Tufts Dental and his MBA from the University of Chicago, practiced dentistry, grew and sold practices across the Chicago and New York metro areas, then moved into health care startups — holding senior roles at Oscar Health, quip, and Simplifeye before founding Revere Partners approximately six years ago.
- Why Dental Venture Capital Didn’t Exist Before Revere: Dr. Krell describes a persistent market failure that motivated Revere’s founding: dental startups seeking outside investment were consistently told by general venture capital firms that dentistry was either too small or too unfamiliar to underwrite. Companies like quip responded by calling themselves beauty or consumer products companies. Simplifeye positioned itself as a marketing technology or fintech platform. The masquerade was necessary because there was no investment data — no Pitchbook coverage, no performance benchmarks, no established deal flow for dental technology as an asset class. Revere commissioned cornerstone research that established, for the first time, that dental startup transactions average 4.8 years to exit at a 5.2x return — data that now gives institutional investors and family offices the factual basis they previously lacked to participate in the sector.
- How Revere Partners Works: Revere focuses primarily on Series A stage companies — businesses that are already commercially available, regulatory approved, generating revenue, and scaling rapidly. The fund conducts deep diligence across clinical, financial, operational, and technical dimensions before investing, with a team of 117 people globally who know the dental industry from the inside. Once invested, Revere functions as a strategic partner: helping portfolio companies raise subsequent rounds, identify channel partnerships and distribution relationships, and navigate toward eventual acquisition or exit. The fund has now invested in 47 companies across two funds, successfully exiting seven. Roughly 70% of portfolio companies have applications beyond dentistry, but all must have a primary dental use case, and approximately 35% operate internationally.
- The Doctors Fund — Dental Venture Capital Built for Dentists: One of Revere’s most distinctive offerings is a dedicated investment vehicle structured specifically around how dentists are able to invest. Minimum check sizes, capital call payment plans, and investor education programming are all calibrated to the realities of a practicing clinician’s financial life. Beyond the financial mechanics, the Doctors Fund gives dentist-investors active involvement in the deal selection process — which Dr. Krell notes appeals directly to the profession’s preference for control — as well as access to early-stage product testing, the Revere network of founders and corporates, and in-person engagement opportunities. Warren Buffett’s core principle of investing in what you know, Dr. Krell argues, should logically lead dentists toward dental technology rather than toward restaurant investments or real estate deals recommended by a brother-in-law.
- What Revere Looks for in a Founder: Dr. Krell is direct that a company’s leadership matters as much as its financials. His primary filter is coachability: the ability to seek feedback, genuinely internalize it, and respond constructively — rather than defending a product as the best thing since sliced bread regardless of what the market says. He applies a concept he calls “gravity as your best business model,” meaning that the natural resistance a product faces from the market is the most reliable test of whether it has real momentum. Founders who demonstrate growth in spite of that friction give investors far more confidence than founders who have never tested their ideas against real-world pushback. He also cautions against “all or nothing” thinking, noting that staged rollouts — launching a basic version, gathering feedback, iterating, and adding regulatory-approved features incrementally — typically outperform holding back for a perfect launch that takes years and millions of dollars to reach.
- Navigating the FDA and the Road to Market: For dentist-entrepreneurs with a product that has not yet approached regulatory approval, Dr. Krell offers a framework rather than a formula: understand which regulatory pathway applies and why, consider doing a pre-submission meeting with the FDA before formally filing, and know what marketing claims you plan to make on approval and whether those claims align with your pathway selection. The timeline to market varies enormously by product type and stage — software workflow tools can move quickly, while robotics or pharmaceutical applications may take years. Revere typically directs pre-commercial companies toward regulatory consultants and incubation partners rather than attempting to fund them at that stage, but the team will engage early to point founders toward the right next steps.
- Where Dental Startup Ideas Actually Come From: Dr. Krell notes that the vast majority of Revere’s deal flow — roughly 80% — comes from founders with at least some connection to the dental industry, whether as clinicians, operators, or team members with prior industry experience. The remaining 20% who arrive from outside the industry most commonly have a personal patient experience that drove the idea, or a family member in dentistry who helped them identify the problem. He cites the origin story of dental AI company Dental Intelligence founder Dmitri as an example: a background in mathematics and computer science, a terrible personal root canal experience, and the realization that earlier detection might have prevented the whole ordeal. Completely outside teams with no dental exposure at all are a significant risk factor in Revere’s diligence framework.
- The Bridge Between Academic Research and Commercial Innovation: One of the more nuanced observations Dr. Krell offers concerns translational research — innovations that originate in academic or grant-funded settings and need to cross into the commercial environment to help patients at scale. The scientific method and the startup funding cycle operate on very different timelines and with very different success metrics, and founders who come from research backgrounds frequently underestimate what it will take to reach market. He encourages all early-stage founders, regardless of background, to answer the basic commercial questions — market size, regulatory pathway, funding requirements, go-to-market strategy — as early as possible, rather than waiting until the science is fully validated.
Dr. Jeremy Krell has built something that genuinely did not exist before he built it — a dental venture capital ecosystem that connects innovators with capital, mentorship, and the industry knowledge to turn great ideas into products that actually reach patients. Whether you are a dentist with an idea and no idea where to start, a clinician looking to put your investment dollars into the field you know best, or a startup founder trying to understand what institutional investors actually look for, Revere Partners is the resource the dental industry has needed for a long time. To submit a startup application, explore investor opportunities, or learn more, visit reverepartnersvc.com.
