NY Launch Pod: Welcome to the New York Launch Pod, the New York Press Club, award-winning podcast highlighting the most interesting new startups, businesses and openings in the New York City area. I’m your host and New York attorney Hal Coopersmith, and in this episode, we are speaking all about your teeth and why you may not enjoy going to the dentist, even if you have a brilliant oral healthcare routine or you don’t, going to the dentist is not a patient-centered experience. Our guest, Tyler Burnett, co-founder of Wally, wants to change all of that. Here’s Tyler:
Tyler Burnett: Let’s talk about my personal experience, right? Because being upsold treatment is a pretty common experience. Unfortunately, it’s not one that we like to, really talk too much about, but is one that through speaking tens and tens of thousands of patients, the vast majority have experienced something around surprise bills, unnecessary treatment, upselling of treatment dishonesty, opaqueness, not understanding these things. This is how patients talk about what’s happened in their previous experiences.
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NY Launch Pod: So are you a dentist?
Tyler Burnett: I am not a dentist.
NY Launch Pod: And yet you’ve started a dental startup, why?
Tyler Burnett: My experience going to the dentist and now being married to one.
NY Launch Pod: So you’re married to a dentist and your experience going to the dentist, how did that lead you to start Wally?
Tyler Burnett: Long story short, a series of pretty bad experiences going to the dentist that accumulated over, you know, the last 30 years, right? Since I can remember, being a young child growing up in Western Canada, going to the dentist twice a year, brushing and flossing, but always having these continuous issues. So for someone growing up, and this is kind of a common story that I’ve learned about with other people, having this sort of guilt, shame, embarrassment, really deep, negative emotions tied up around the dental experience starts at a really young age. And so for me, that was, that was entirely true, cause I was doing all the right things, but I kept sort of failing, right. I would have cavities, I would need fillings when I’d go to the dentist. My parents had to get me braces twice, you know, a lot of like pain and emotion. And then kind of the bow that got tied around this whole lifelong journey was about five years ago. I moved out to Boston from Canada and I had a toothache and I had to go to the dentist. I had to navigate sort of an entirely new healthcare system. There’s a lot of things that I was looking at. I was very curious about as I was going through this experience and I met a dentist who ultimately, you know, stood over me as I was in his chair and told me I needed eight fillings told me I had eight cavities.
NY Launch Pod: Eight! How many teeth do people have?
Tyler Burnett: I think something around 30, somewhere.
NY Launch Pod: So eight out of 30 of your teeth?
Tyler Burnett: So for someone, you know, like myself who is really curious and looking at this and feeling pain in one tooth called bullshit, and really, you know, decided to take a deeper look at this, I didn’t say yes to the treatment that was being proposed to me, that was also very aggressively trying to be done same day, same minute. And I didn’t say yes. I said no. And I went out and got a second and third opinion and learned that yes, seven of those were unnecessary.
NY Launch Pod: Why do you think that was? Why do you think that dentist had told you that you had eight cavities?
Tyler Burnett: So this just really started the bigger journey, right? At the time I was dating my now wife, as I said, I’m married to a dentist. She was a recent graduate from Tufts Dental School. I started being able to tap into this clinical insight on one side and then bringing sort of this painful, personal experience that I was kind of going through. And I started to really try and unpack what had just happened. Right, and it actually took a couple years for me to unpack that personal experience of mine. Ultimately, I can’t speak for, for that specific dentist and what was going on, you know, with his life, with his business, you know, at Wally here and across our team, who our team members have also experienced similar type experiences, it really goes to the top of the dental care experience and who really dictates terms on that experience and its insurance companies, right? So insurance companies have sort of incentivized this more reactionary care and reactionary specifically around types of treatments that can sort of pass-through and be reimbursed. The easiest billings, unfortunately, are one of those types of treatments that are very easy to sort of be treatment plan and then ultimately be covered by someone’s insurance. And so what you found is this model, this kind of perverse model that, you know, a lot of dentists to survive, really push. And that’s what I experienced was that type of model that saw an opportunity to sell a few extra fillings and, and went for it.
NY Launch Pod: So what business mistakes are dentists doing? And we’ll separate that from your experience of the eight cavities, but I imagine at dental school, they do not teach you how to run a dental practice. Is that correct?
Tyler Burnett: That’s what I hear. Yeah, that’s definitely correct.
NY Launch Pod: So what business mistakes are dentists making?
Tyler Burnett: You know, we, obviously, we have a lot of dentists who are part of our team, hygienists, a lot of clinicians, the majority of dentists will openly admit that the point you just made, right experts, highly trained in very specific areas to deliver care and then are thrown to this other part of their career or job, which is much more business-oriented. So it’s like, how do you become amazing at that other thing too, at the same time. Right. And that’s a really big challenge. I’ve spent my career, you know, on the business side it would be like, okay, now become a great dentist. Like there’s no way I could do that. it’s a really good question. I think number one, though, when it comes to business, when it comes to how we think about business from Wally’s perspective and the principles we have, it’s all about building for the customer and in a dental experience, that’s a patient, right? It’s a healthcare company. So it’s everything going through this initial lens of what is right for, for the patient. I think that gets missed a lot, oftentimes talking about treatment in a way that seems right to, a provider, because it makes sense to them has makes no sense to a patient, to a person, to a human and other things that might also be important for the, their life to, at the end of the day, go forward with that recommendation, right? So if we’re all under the belief that, you know, we’re providing the, the best care to improve someone’s oral health, it, you know, it’s about making that process work for the patient. And that’s where we’re very different at Wally. And that’s sort of my, I guess my advice is being, you know, a hundred times more empathetic to what is going on in the patient’s life, how they’re seeing everything that is happening, because that’s what really matters.
NY Launch Pod: Can you give an example of how Wally is making a more positive experience in New York city than a local dentist or a dentist who may be closest to that patient?
Tyler Burnett: Let’s talk about my personal experience, right? Because being upsold treatment is a pretty common experience. Unfortunately, it’s not one that we like to, really talk too much about, but is one that through speaking tens and tens of thousands of patients, the vast majority have experienced something around surprise bills, unnecessary treatment, upselling of treatment dishonesty, opaqueness, not understanding these things. This is how patients talk about what’s happened in their previous experiences. So the big difference, you know, we’re doing here kind of starts at the very top, how we brand our experience, how we make it speak and be designed for patients in particular, you know, 25 to 45-year-olds, that’s been, you know, really important for our patients to see from day one. And then of course, you know, how we price it very straightforward, very affordable, transparent, easy to understand it’s a big deal. And then again, back to where I started here, how do we solve sort of the problem that I faced, right? It’s about rearranging and rebuilding, where the incentives lie. We aren’t incentivized by the same things that a traditional dentist is, a general dentist does around 300 different types of treatment. We do a handful here at Wally. So we’re very narrow in where our focus is and it’s on preventative proactive care. And that means we’re not incentivized to do things like upsell fillings. We, you know, provide diagnostics, we provide information and we arm our members with that information and we let them make the correct decisions that make sense for their life. And we help them do that, but we don’t rough it off of some of the things that would go against being a true preventative care company.
NY Launch Pod: And what is your pricing model?
Tyler Burnett: So we sell membership plans, right? So we, you know, we earn annual and also soon to be monthly, you know, membership pricing from our members and then depending on what a patient’s needs are, because we use that the first couple touch points with us, both remotely and in-person to really learn a lot about who you are as a patient, what your needs are one size fits all dentistry is a thing of the past as far as we’re concerned. So we look at real individual aspects to each person’s mouth and body and life to really curate a personalized plan. After that, there are other services that fall within preventative and proactive that we can discuss with patients. You know, we also earn additional revenue through a couple of those services on top of the membership pricing, but many of our members also just pay the annual membership and that’s it.
NY Launch Pod: And why do you choose a membership model as opposed to kind of a traditional dentist where it’s pay per visit?
Tyler Burnett: So simple, right? It’s transparent. It’s simple. People love it. The pay per visit, no one knows what the pay per visit price is gonna be. If you have insurance, you don’t know if you don’t have insurance, you don’t know. And that’s just, you know, I think how engraved, our past experiences of going to the dentist have been finances are confusing and a membership model takes that confusion out of it. And people really appreciate that.
NY Launch Pod: It seems like to me, you’re not alone. There are competitors out there in addition to the traditional dentist, at least in New York City, you’ll see 10 around. I saw another one popping up by where I live. What is going on? Why are other companies addressing this need, this quote-unquote need.
Tyler Burnett: Yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s great to see, right? So there’s definitely a movement across all healthcare verticals, all healthcare experiences, there’s been a bit of an awakening or a revolution to start building for patients. So we’re not like, we’re not the pioneers of thinking that being, you know, maniacal about patient-driven being patient-centric is, the right thing. There’s, you know, it’s happening across the healthcare board. So I think it’s great that we’re starting to see some of it in dental. The reality though, with some of the names that you just mentioned, or , you know, one of the names you just mentioned, they’re not actually tackling the problem, right? So partially at a, at a very surface level, sure. Branding is important and appealing to, you know, younger age groups to be more friendly, consumer-friendly, to start engaging them early, you know, in their oral care journey, super important stuff. But the big but, is that only goes so far, right? And you can’t really call yourself a true patient-driven company. If all you’re doing is putting lipstick on it, you really need to be thinking about the underlying infrastructure and how you rewire that to be driven for the patient’s best interest. So I think that’s, what’s really important. So things like being incentivized to provide more care instead of less is still running rampant. And some of those new, more modern experiences that you just highlighted.
NY Launch Pod: And you’d mentioned your own experience at the dentist. It’s not fun. You are doing things wrong. People. I imagine still have these negative connotations, negative feelings about their own dental care. How can you get over that barrier for people to say I’ve had a terrible experience with my prior dentist. I don’t really like someone with a sharp object poking around my mouth. This will be better.
Tyler Burnett: So it starts with a question, starts with a couple questions. All of our members before they ever step foot in a Wally studio before they do anything else, they have an onboarding call with one of our remote clinicians. One of our virtual hygienists, you know, this onboarding call is really, really interesting and really important to help establish context for the journey, right? This modern dental care journey that this new member has just embarked on with us. So we set context, but we ask a few questions to learn about that member. And that question of, tell me about your past dental experience? Tell me, tell me what you didn’t like about it? Tell me what you liked about it? We’ve actually brought people to tears by asking them those simple questions and then, you know, acknowledging those questions and saying, Hey, in your first appointment, you know, we’re gonna make sure that that doesn’t happen or we’re gonna have that thing for you. We’re gonna have those earplugs for you. We’re gonna have something for you to really address that, that question. We’ve, you know, like I said, actually brought people to tears. And so I think, you know, listening and asking questions is really important.
NY Launch Pod: So you had this thinking for being more patient-driven. How did you decide to start this up? You’re not a dentist and you had this idea for patient-driven, dental care. How did you get this all off the ground?
Tyler Burnett: Started? Like I said, started talking to people, right? Trying to learn, you know, what was happening in, you know, the personal experience I had just gone through. So I was talking to a lot of clinicians in the Boston area, a lot of dentists trying to unpack what happened there. I started talking to a lot of patients too. And again, unfortunately learning that, hey, I wasn’t alone in this type of experience. While talking to people, I actually started, you know, meeting some really interesting people who, you know, over beers started to start discussing what solutions could look like. And you know, this diverse group of people. I ended up being, you know, the founding team here at wall. So steppe, my co-founder, we met almost three years ago now. And, you know, we, we just both talked a lot about our personal experiences. You know, we were both sort of foreigners here in the United States. Steppe is from Croatia, I’m from Canada. And we decided to launch Wally. And then we grew a team also us that was also very similar and very organic in the way that we just all shared this personal kind of passion for these experiences. We had all personally faced. And we wanted to sort of right the wrong because it just, it deserves to be done right.
NY Launch Pod: So you had this idea over beers, you met your co-founders. One of the things we like to ask about in the New York Launch Pod is what’s the benefit or attractiveness of starting your business in New York.
Tyler Burnett: New York’s crazy. So look, I grew up in a small town up in Canada. So New York is sort of like the dream spot for me personally. But the benefit is you have access to a large number of people, a very diverse group of people, and generally people who aren’t afraid to give you very clear feedback on what you’re doing. And this is incredible, right. Starting a company in Canada. And I’ve started a couple before I founded Wally. One of the challenges about dealing with Canadians is you’re not always getting the direct feedback and that’s a big challenge. So starting something in New York has just been incredible because the feedback there and also us, you know, finding kind of that slice of the market, that really is gravitated towards what we’re offering is there and in much, much larger numbers, right? Because although we’re very focused and we only appeal to a certain group of people, there’s a lot of those people in New York City.
NY Launch Pod: Well, that is a great note to end things on, Tyler Burnett. Thank you very much for stepping onto the New York Launch Pod and sharing your time with us. How do people find out more about you and Wally?
Tyler Burnett: Yeah. Feel free to send me a message directly, always happy to get an email Tyler@hiwally.co. So that’s hi, wally.co, check us out at www.carebywally.com. You can join our waitlist there. So we are sending out invitations to people who kind of, you know, tell us a little bit about themselves and wanna skip, you know, our 35,000 person waitlist can sign up@carebywally.com and follow a couple steps to hopefully skip the waitlist and get an invite and look to us growing throughout New York City. I think we’re really excited about the next 12 months. We’re gonna be opening up more and more locations really ramping up the number of members we’re able to take in from our waitlist. And then maybe we’ll, we’ll start exploring other cities in the near future as well. But for now super excited about what we’re doing here in New York,
NY Launch Pod: That is wonderful. And if you wanna learn more about the New York Launch Pod, you can follow us on social media @nylaunchpod or visit nylaunchpod.com for transcripts of every episode, including this one. And if you are a super fan of the podcast, Tyler, you’re a super-fan of the New York Launch Pod. If you’re a super fan like Tyler, please leave a review on Apple podcast. It is greatly appreciated and does help people discover the show.
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