A 28-year-old Wharton MBA dropout launched a dental company that's raised $8 million from Colgate-Palmolive and landed partnerships with leading brands like GE and Ocean Spray. This is how she did it.
- 28-year-old Eva Sadej is the founder of dental company Floss Bar.
- When she was 26, she dropped out of The Wharton School's MBA program to start her company, and today it's raised $8 million in funding from Colgate-Palmolive and landed partnerships with over 100 leading brands including General Electric, Pitney Bowes, Ocean Spray, and WeWork.
- Sadej shared with Business Insider how she got her idea off the ground, including how she pivoted from a B2C to a B2B company.
- Her advice for aspiring entrepreneurs? "When things are going well, leaders need to push forward and prepare for potential problems. They are the temper to chaos as well as the excitement needed to keep the company balanced and moving forward," she said.
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Just two years ago, Eva Sadej, who at the time was 26, was getting her MBA at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
With a BA in economics from Harvard, followed by five years as an analyst at the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, Sadej had been admitted to Wharton's prestigious MBA program in 2017, where she planned to major in finance and strategic management.
But a year into the graduate business program, Sadej decided to put her education on hold to focus all of her efforts in a new direction: disrupting the multibillion-dollar dental industry. Today, while Sadej doesn't have a Wharton MBA, the 28-year-old has become the founder and CEO of Floss Bar, which provides hassle-free workplace dental services.
"Think of Floss Bar as the flu-shot program at an employer, except fun and more frequent," said Sadej.
In just six months since securing Colgate's multimillion-dollar investment in 2019, Floss Bar reports quarter over quarter revenue growth of 315%, and the company's staff has doubled from 16 to 32 employees. Floss Bar now serves clients in 40 US states.
Sadej shared the story of her entrepreneurial rise with Business Insider.
Necessity becomes the mother of inventionSadej dreamed up Floss Bar when she noticed how complicated it was to get basic dental care without taking three hours off of work or getting offered multiple extra services.
"I would have rather gotten a cavity than take the time to go to the dentist," she said.
It all started when the New York-based Sadej, then at Wharton, was trying to book a hygienist appointment for her Canadian boyfriend. "I learned what a hassle it was for someone without insurance, how expensive it was, and how limited the opening hours were," said Sadej. "Taking half a day off or call[ing] in sick to get to the dentist just doesn't work for most people."
Investigating further, Sadej discovered that around 35% of Americans are not going to the dentist. What really scared her, though, was finding out that according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about half of American adults 30 and older suffer from periodontitis, a gum disease that can lead to other chronic inflammatory diseases.
Sadej learned that these negative health outcomes can be completely avoided simply by making regular dental visits and practicing good oral hygiene.
"I decided to make routine dental care that is necessary to remain healthy as easy and affordable as booking a room on Airbnb, to make it accessible to everyone," explained Sadej. "My long-term goal is getting Americans back into the dental chair for their recommended twice-a-year cleanings to help them avoid unnecessary diseases and optimize their health."
The fork in the road: business school or entrepreneurship?Before Sadej could bring her new vision to life, though, there was a practical matter to deal with: the fact that she was midway through her MBA at one of the world's top business schools.
But she shared that Floss Bar felt like an important business solution she had to pursue - and that putting her MBA on pause was a crucial step in that.
"I am very lucky that I go to a school which lets you come back within five years if you fail," said Sadej. (Wharton allows students a five-year grace period if they wish to temporarily terminate their studies.) "Taking a chance while in the nest is a no-brainer to me."
The Wharton dropout elaborated that if you can prove people are willing to pay for something you made, it can lead to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
"Many of us have creative ideas. I plan to have plenty along my 100 years of life," said Sadej. "But I only see myself executing them effectively and safely when I am young."
She added that "Once you get out of business school, you just paid a whopping $200,000 and made $0 income for two years. Seriously, how likely are you to continue your startup then?"
Going all in and setting up a business that benefits allSadej's first step when she started Floss Bar - after self-funding the company from $100,000 of her own savings and then raising $900,000 in a seed round in early 2018 - was to order all the necessary equipment and tools her team would need to run the business out of dentists' offices. Her initial idea for the business was to follow a direct-to-customer (D2C) model - to get individuals to come to existing local dental offices during off hours.
"Working nights and weekends in dentists' spaces was a sure way to make dental care more accessible to working people," she said. "[I] realized that bringing the dentist to working people, right into their offices, was a win-win for everyone. This way, people would be saving their weekends for the fun stuff, while saving 80% of the time it would take to go to a conventional off-site dentist appointment."
The equipment was analyzed and selected through a robust consulting contract with a hygienist in New York City, who was assigned to research portable equipment while optimizing the variables of cost, quality, and size.
"[The hygienist] was given a budget to order and test equipment and delivered a write-up as well as training videos," explained Sadej. "Floss Bar is always learning and evolving their equipment to optimize these variables as new products enter the market."
Switching to a business-to-business modelSadej pivoted Floss Bar to a business-to-business model (B2B) mid-2019, and the company now offers mobile dentistry services to employers as part of their corporate wellness programs. This evolution means that Floss Bar now goes directly to company offices and sets up a "pop-up" or full-time dentist office in an available conference room or medical space. The company also has several trailers for industrial and rural engagements.
"The team found that the D2C model had much higher cost of customer acquisition compared to the B2B model, as the HR team within a company is a nexus of influence that can get many employees to care about dental care as a group, minimizing advertising spend that is required to get individuals to go to the dentist," said Sadej.
While the actual act of dentistry is performed by local dentists and hygienists, the Floss Bar team assists them by developing relationships with workplace clients, booking the events, running marketing, maintaining and transporting all the equipment, and performing the billing services for the providers.
"The clinical services are performed by the local providers and the non-clinical services are handled by Floss Bar," explained Sadej. "This makes the model more scalable, as Floss Bar does not need to hire dental staff, but rather collaborates with them."
The company generates income for the dentists they work with and bills patients and insurance companies on their behalf. In turn, Floss Bar bills the dentists they work with, who benefit from the income they were able to gain working at the events and through advanced-care referrals.
"From the busy professional with great insurance cover[age], the uninsured freelancer or startup coworker, the family to the less affluent, [there is] no discrimination," she said about her clientele, noting that for uninsured patients, either their employer can cover the fee or they can pay directly. A basic cleaning starts at $95.
While cleanings, X-rays, and teeth whitening are Floss Bar's bread and butter, the company added vision and hearing checks in March 2019, which required additional staff training and equipment purchases.
Sadej explained that since millennials and younger generations aren't going to the dentist, "overhead costs for dentists to keep their businesses afloat are forcing many to shut down. Floss Bar not only brings the dentists to the millennials' places of work, but it empowers the dentists and hygienists by creating a new funnel for patient acquisition."
Sadej suggested to aspiring founders that even though startup culture is notoriously casual, you do need to still dress the part if you want to succeed as an entrepreneur.
"Silicon Valley has not taken over NYC!" she said. "Your clients are not the same as your startup culture, so you need to dress up for the clients you're going for and investors you're researching." Sadej shared that her usual outfit consists of slacks, a blouse, and a pashmina scarf, noting that "comfortable, professional heels are a must."
She added that a leader's job is to be the "cool head" that prevails.
"They need the ability to put situations into perspective and calm people down," she said. "When things are going well, leaders need to push forward and prepare for potential problems. They are the temper to chaos as well as the excitement needed to keep the company balanced and moving forward."
She noted that when a client event goes very well and the company gets more business, she celebrates with her team. But after a couple of days, she said, "it's time to push."