The Journey of a Dental Industry Entrepreneur – Episode #357

Starting a business may be easier than ever before. Not much stands in the way of a dentist who believes they have the golden solution to a unique problem. But while startup obstacles are few, numerous roadblocks remain. On this episode of the Dentist Money™ Show, Ryan talks with Vivik Kinra about hurdles he has faced as he builds two new dental software companies.

 

Show notes:
https://www.verrific.biz

 

 

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Podcast Transcript

Ryan Isaac:
Hello everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Dentist Money Show, brought to you by Dentist Advisors, a no commission fiduciary, comprehensive financial advisor just for dentists all over the country. Check us out at dentistadvisors.com. Today on the show, Long-time Friend Returns, Vivek Kinra. Him and I, were at the Dental Whale Business Immersion Summit 2022 in Las Vegas. It’s Super fun time. Many thanks to Dental Whale for having us out there as the official podcast. And today Vivek is… He runs two companies PPO Profits and Verrific.

Ryan Isaac:
And we talk about these two companies, but we actually kind of dive into the world of building a business and in his case, specifically a tech business and raising money and sales and putting in the hard work and the long hours and the pros and the cons, the mistakes along the way, some of the wins. It was a really cool conversation to just listen to a founder of a company tell a story about his journey. And it was just really fun to sit down with Vivek again. It’s been a little while, so my thanks to him. I think it was a really enlightening conversation that just goes to show what it takes to build a company.

Ryan Isaac:
So thanks for the time, Vivek. We appreciate it. Thanks for being with us. If any of you have any questions specifically any money questions, and you would like to talk to a dental specific financial advisor about your money questions, get on the internet, dentistadvisors.com. Click the book free consultation button. We can chat for five minutes. We can chat for an hour. Ask us your money questions. We will point you in the right direction. It’s our passion. We love doing that. We love helping. So if you have any questions, go there, dentistadvisors.com. Thanks again, Vivek. Thanks again to all of you for being here. And enjoy the show.

Announcer:
Consult an Advisor, or conduct your own due diligence when making financial decisions. General principles discussed during this program do not constitute personal advice. This program is furnished by Dentist Advisors a registered investment advisor. This is DENTIST MONEY. Now here’s your host, Ryan Isaac.

Ryan Isaac:
Welcome to the Dennis Money Show, where we help Dentists make smart financial decisions. I’m your host Ryan, and I’m coming to you live from the Dental Whale Business Immersion Summit 2022 in Las Vegas at the Aria. I’m here with a friend of the show. He has been here a few times actually. Vivek welcome back man. How are you doing?

Vivek Kinra:
I am doing well, thank you so much.

Ryan Isaac:
Vivek is representing two companies and they’ve been both been growing like crazy and we’ve talked [laughter] Knock on the wood [laughter] It’s happening. There is no superstition. It’s happening. We’ve talked about this before, but we’re both wandering around the convention center here in the ARIA. If you guys could hear the background noise. Real really cool event this weekend. First of all, tell me what are you doing here? What do you like, what’s going on?

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah you know, I’d never been to a Dental Whale event before.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh yeah, cool. Our first time too.

Vivek Kinra:
Oh, really?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, we’re excited.

Vivek Kinra:
So, Mark Costes is here. And a couple of other folks that I follow are here. I’m like, “You know what, let me just make a quick trip.”

Ryan Isaac:
The gurus of dental.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. That’s right, that’s right. So it’s good to just connect with people, et cetera and get out there.

Ryan Isaac:
Totally man, yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
: And so I got in really late. I’m leaving today, so I’m like, “All right. You know what? I’m gonna make it a very good power session.”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Well, Plus is it cold? What’s the weather like back home? You live where?

Vivek Kinra:
Chicago.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Okay. No, it’s nice there still.

Vivek Kinra:
The day that I was leaving, It was getting chilly. So I’m pretty sure when I get back…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, it might be colder.

Vivek Kinra:
But I’m actually leaving for Poland tomorrow for three weeks, so I think it’s cold there. [laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
It’s gonna be cold there.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
So it’s like 102 here. So [laughter] Yeah. You made a little bit of a change. Tell us the companies that you run that you started, that you’re working on right now, your babies, your 25 hour a day projects probably.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. The two companies. PPO profits. It’s more on the services side, but even though we just recently launched a software as well for in-office membership plans.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
Right. And then the second company is called Verrific. That’s basically it was largely services, but now more software, AI driven insurance verification that we built. And we’ve got a beta product that we’ve released for a very, very small internal beta group. And then we’re basically releasing it to a little bigger beta group, in the next two, three weeks while I’m in Poland and my software development team is in Poland.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s why you’re heading out there.

Vivek Kinra:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
Let’s start with the second one then. First question is, what made you start Verrific? Do you remember the time? Were you sitting in your living room one night? Were you in an office somewhere? What made what made you have the idea?

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah, honestly, it’s a lot of times when I think people think that the way businesses start is the way where people like figure out what they want to do and they have time. In reality, most of the times it’s just like, you take a small…

Ryan Isaac:
You’re in the shower. [chuckle] You’re like, “Wait, I should do that.”

Vivek Kinra:
You take a small step, someone else basically pitches in someone else and all of a sudden before, you know it, it’s like, “Hey, you’ve got a business and a company and for insurance verifications,” there was a time that I was doing everything at our dental practice. My wife’s a dentist and over time you just are like, “Hey, this is a problem.”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. There’s gotta be a better way.

Vivek Kinra:
Right. You solve it for yourself first.

Ryan Isaac:
And you were working on it, you were doing this stuff, you were doing insurance verifications.

Vivek Kinra:
I was the person picking up phone calls. I was the person doing treatment presentations, which is a bit of a shock because the month prior to that I was a VP of mobile application development for a phone [chuckle] Right like So…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
I was living the high life a little bit [laughter] And then I, but my heart and my brain was all in the dental practice. I ended up asking my company for a three month sabbatical, which I got and I was supposed to go back and I just…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah it just turned into a See you later.

Vivek Kinra:
Right. Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, okay.

Vivek Kinra:
And so I was doing everything and I got super immersed into it and I’m like, “Wait, I can’t believe that insurances are still stuck in the 80s.” Like Everything has moved on.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Like, “Why are we still doing these things? Just because we’ve always done them. No one’s thought of a better way so far?” Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. People are still picking up phone calls and waiting on hold for 40 minutes and this is today’s reality. It’s not like…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. At today’s like staff prices too. Right? Employee costs.

Vivek Kinra:
Yep. Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Very, very expensive. So you’re in the trenches of doing insurance verification, a decades old process that severely needs updating.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. So we basically just came up with what we want. And then eventually started to offer it to additional people. And then over time, little things happen where one of our clients… The husband’s kind of like me, software guy. Wife’s a dentist. And he basically is like, “Hey, you know what? I can just write a quick plug-in to make this a little bit more automated.”

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Vivek Kinra:
And so we ended up, brought him in as the CTO on some equity and then eventually we’re like… And the best thing that happened to us was COVID. Because we died a quick death, because insurance verifications went to near zero during that period.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
And so we were just contemplating, we were like, before that we were about 30 something people got down to three.

Ryan Isaac:
Wow.

Vivek Kinra:
Because…

Ryan Isaac:
Oh geez.

Vivek Kinra:
Well if you, if there’s no off… There’s no patient, there’s nothing to verify.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Totally.

Vivek Kinra:
And so, and one of the thought process was, is like, “Hey, you know what? We’ve got some time right now. Why don’t we just like turn it more into a software based product.” And that’s where it kicked it off. And so we’re like, “You know what? Absolutely.” So we raised some money last year. And then we started converting everything from our services more to, more automated software based product. In… Yeah, that’s where we are. And this is where we are releasing our next thing. And so that’s why like, it wasn’t like, “Hey, I should solve this problem.”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
It’s just gradually you take one step and yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
You take one step and you sometimes take some imperfect steps, and then you gotta step backwards a few times too.

Vivek Kinra:
All, the time.

Ryan Isaac:
Let’s talk about just that road to entrepreneurship. And I think it’s really, interesting to a lot of our audience, because although most of our audience are working practicing dentists. A lot of people do stuff on the side. They have side projects, they have ideas, they work on other things. Walk us through some of that process. App development, raising money is not easy. Takes a little, [laughter] might have taken some years off your life doing that, walk us through the raising money part.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
When did that start? How did that work?

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. To be perfectly candid, it was easier than I thought for us.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh really?

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Vivek Kinra:
‘Cause I was told all the time. Right? I would go to these like talks by other entrepreneurs and they’ll be like, “Raising money is the hardest thing you’ll ever do.” Now we didn’t raise a lot of money and that was a mistake on our part.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Vivek Kinra:
We should have raised more.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Vivek Kinra:
And we’ve got a second round that we’re gonna kick off…

Ryan Isaac:
Cool.

Vivek Kinra:
To raise more.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
That we should have raised at the up front. [chuckle]

Ryan Isaac:
So that’s a thing you learned right in the beginning?

Vivek Kinra:
100%.

Ryan Isaac:
What made you not raise more in the beginning? Was it confidence in the valuation or the product or just not even knowing how much you needed?

0:08:52.9 VK: No, believe it or not it was, I would say greed. Like not wanting to give the company away.

Ryan Isaac:
Totally. Okay. Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
So it was like, okay. So in fact, even before we started raising money, we basically just said, all right, you know what? We’re gonna put away 20%, 10% will go to investors, 10% will go to key employees.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
And it was literally, I’d written it down that this is what we want to do.

Ryan Isaac:
Got it.

Vivek Kinra:
And so that’s the…

Ryan Isaac:
That was your cap table?

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. I’m Sorry.

Ryan Isaac:
That was your cap table basically. Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah Initially and we just had to fill in the names [laughter] later on.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
And so, and so it was more like, “Hey, you know what? We had a certain valuation, so if we wanted to raise more money, which means we have to give out more equity.” And we’re like, “I don’t know if we need to.” And, that was a mistake in hindsight, we should have raised a lot more.

Ryan Isaac:
Given more away.

Vivek Kinra:
Given more away.

Ryan Isaac:
Sold more. Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
No, problem whatsoever. Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
And, so now we’re doing that.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
We’re like, “Okay, you know what? I’m not gonna make the same mistake again.” And it’s funny because now that I’m going to some, venture cap firms, and again, we’re raising a million, right? And they’re like, “It’s too little,” right?

Ryan Isaac:
Like, do you want five? Can we give you 10? And you’re like, “Wait, I don’t know what to do with five,” [laughter]

Vivek Kinra:
No, seriously. A lot of them are like, that’s too little. And I spoke with some actual insurance companies…

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Vivek Kinra:
And some insurance companies have venture arms, I won’t name them, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, totally.

Vivek Kinra:
But their thing was, “Hey, we can put in, but you are asking for 500K,” because for the 1 million we were thinking we’re gonna get, two big partners of 500k close it out.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
They’re like, our minimum is 2 million.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
And so, even like right now, in fact, Mark is one of our investors and board member.

Ryan Isaac:
Cool.

Vivek Kinra:
I was just downstairs with him chatting and I’m like, “You know what? I’m almost about to make the same mistake again to say, let’s raise a million.” And Mark said [0:10:42.7] ____ raise two. And I’m like, “Yeah, I think that’s what I am gonna do.”

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. You probably learned pretty quickly how fast you can spend that money in a new company, right?

Vivek Kinra:
100%.

Ryan Isaac:
And software development. I think people have a lot of pie-in-the-sky ideas about software because you just hear the stories about the 30 year old who sold a billion dollar company. And you’re like that seems easy. But how many software companies, how many thousands like never, even the ones who raise money, still don’t even… Some of them don’t even go to market.

Vivek Kinra:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
I mean it’s kind of a beast. Okay. So that’s fundraising. What’s development been like? Finding a team and are you designing the experience? And are you a developer? Are you an engineer?

Vivek Kinra:
I am.

Ryan Isaac:
You know that side.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Like back end, front end stuff. Or what’s your experience? All of it.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. Yeah. All of it, right? And so in a… Maybe to the detriment of software developers, right? Because I’m so deep into It, [laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. So you’re like annoying to them? A little bit.

Vivek Kinra:
: Super annoying.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. [laughter], they’re like, dude, hands off. Like, we know what we’re doing. We know what to build. So, okay. You’re conceptualizing this, but you also know the how it needs to work too. What’s that been like? Finding a team?

Vivek Kinra:
Challenging, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
Like it’s, especially like when we started last year, right? It was, people were throwing money at software developers etcetera. So it was just a very, very hard…

Ryan Isaac:
To find people.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
To keep them.

Vivek Kinra:
Which is why we ended up going to Poland. Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Vivek Kinra:
And so we have six developers and one Scrum Master out in Poland. So we’ve got a team of seven full-time people there.

Ryan Isaac:
Cool.

Vivek Kinra:
And so the… And it’s different, right? Different cultures, etcetera. Different time zones. And so part of it is, I mean, the guys are really good. The software development team is very good, right? They’re very, very…

Ryan Isaac:
They’re skilled people.

Vivek Kinra:
Very skilled people. At definitely better rates than, than over here. Right? So your money goes by a little bit further there.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
But at the same time, right? Like the…

Ryan Isaac:
If you have a company where you’ve got four employees on equity working, I almost feel there’s a certainly… There’s a different drive there. Because everyone has some skin in the game. And it’s their product. Everyone is like co-located.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. It’s kind of their baby too. Okay.

Vivek Kinra:
So that’s been a little bit of challenge.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Okay. For sure. So when you go to… What will you do in Poland when you go meet with the team? What are you guys working on?

Vivek Kinra:
Just a hackathon style three week…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Really?

Vivek Kinra:
Oh, yeah, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Fun, that’s really cool.

Vivek Kinra:
They’re all in different cities. So we’re all getting them to really a city called Szczecin which is six hours from the two main cities, which are Warsaw and Krakow. And so we rented a local office there, more like an open area, and we’re all just gonna go there.

Ryan Isaac:
You go after it.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
What’s the next big step in the development?

Vivek Kinra:
Well, the…

Ryan Isaac:
‘Cause it’s a running functional product right now, right?

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
There’s customers, there’s revenue, it’s running.

Vivek Kinra:
Absolutely.

Ryan Isaac:
So what’s the… Yeah, cool. What’s the next step? What’s coming?

Vivek Kinra:
The product that we are releasing now is called Verrific Plus. It’s a bit of a self-serve product where you can do a lot of these verifications by yourself and you don’t have to outsource it. And we probably should come up with a better name than Verrific Plus.

[laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
I like it. I get it. Yeah. Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
So the problem is in fact, just a side note that we have a Verrific product and we have a Verrific Plus product. We have the same logo and all that stuff. And I sometimes have to look at the URL myself. I’m like, Okay, this is Verrific… [laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
Which one am I… Yeah, yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
So I’m like, if I’m getting confused, I don’t want the team to say…

Ryan Isaac:
Totally.

Vivek Kinra:
Hey, I sent it to Verrific.” “No, you sent…

Ryan Isaac:
“I wanted to Plus.” “No, you didn’t.” Yeah. Yeah.

[laughter]

Vivek Kinra:
And so we’ll probably come up with a better name before it goes out and all that stuff. So it’s a self-serve platform that we’re releasing to the offices where they can use it themselves. So the idea is that while I am in Poland, we release it and then as soon as we release it I’m sure there’s gonna be issues.

Ryan Isaac:
Totally. Bugs you mean, right?

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Like it’s just not working.

Vivek Kinra:
Right, right, some problems that happen.

Ryan Isaac:
Of course. Yeah, you don’t even see it coming, yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
And then we’ll have to crack ’em the same day and, and release a new iteration to them the following day.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, yeah, for sure.

Vivek Kinra:
Because we released it to an internal small group, just 10 offices.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Vivek Kinra:
And we just realized there was a ridiculously major bug that… [laughter] It’s not funny. And to anybody that got an impact. It’s a small group, and super apologies. We’re working on to make it right. But when we look at it we’re like, these are the types of software issues that happen where we were actually taking in, and this is a little technical but…

Ryan Isaac:
I like it.

Vivek Kinra:
The group number of the insurance verification policy we were updating, the practices, payer id which means who the claim goes to. And so all the claims were getting rejected because of this stuff. I’m like, “Oh my God.” And it took us three, four days to resolve it. And so I’m like, “If something like this happens while I’m in Poland, we have a support manager here.” And her idea is that she’s gonna be up at 11:00 PM.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Vivek Kinra:
In California time, which is actually 8:00 AM our time. So the idea is that she’s gonna go through this local beta group, figure out what’s not going right…

Ryan Isaac:
Just get on it, use it, start trying to process everything.

Vivek Kinra:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
Wow, that’s so cool. Isn’t that funny with software? You guys are building it, you know how it’s supposed to be built, but until the end user gets it in their hands and starts pushing buttons, you don’t know what’s broken.

Vivek Kinra:
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. It’s weird. There’s a quote yesterday that I forgot… One of the speakers was totally resonated with me so much because I remember going down this… It was something like, “One of the worst things you can do it is do something amazingly efficiently, something that never needed to be done.” And I face… There’s something that came into my head, and it’s kind of proprietary, and I’m like, “Oh my God, this is… That’s what became my baby that I’m like driving the entire company towards.” And we have probably spent a month on building this. And it’s not as… It’s not needed right now.

Ryan Isaac:
Totally.

Vivek Kinra:
And so what we are doing is, we’re still doing it, but now to the user, we’re hiding the thing because A, what I’d realized is, it’s complex right now and we wanna keep it simple. And they’re gonna have so many questions. It’s gonna basically make us support that, explain it. And I’m like, “Why spend so much time perfecting something that we should not have even… ”

Ryan Isaac:
Shouldn’t have done. In our… It’s now a totally separate business, but the platform we built called Elements, I hear that from Reese and the stuff he works on all the time where they’ll go months working on something and then they’re like, “We didn’t need to build that right now.” And you don’t know until you put it in customers’ hands and they’re like, “No, we wanted something else. We didn’t even want this thing.” And you’re like, “But we’re doing it so well. We built this really cool thing.” What’s marketing been like for it? ‘Cause it’s a whole… Marketing and sales is just… It’s a whole… You can build the most amazing product out there but… And raise the money but…

Vivek Kinra:
This might sound a little arrogant or something like that, but I’m confident in the marketing. My general deep down belief today is the best product will win because the world is so small and connected. And there’s no loyalties anymore. There’s no such thing as, especially in software… It’s no longer like, “Patterson, hey, that’s my rap, so I’m gonna buy from him.” You’re gonna get…

Ryan Isaac:
What’s the best stuff at the best price?

Vivek Kinra:
At the best price. And so our goal is, I’m less worried about marketing and maybe it’ll come back to bite us later on, who knows. But my core is telling me that hey, we should just focus on building the best possible product. And it’ll catch on wildfire by default with the user community. And I’m pretty active on Facebook. I’ll do some Facebook Lives and all that stuff to promote the product. But it’s a double-edged sword. Because if you are marketing and the product isn’t amazing, then all of this promotion that you’ve done is gonna come back and bite you.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. It hurts in the end. Going back to where this began, your wife’s office is using it?

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah, Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Cool. So how, since you were doing the verifications yourself manually and now there’s this software, what have you seen… What’s different in her practice?

Vivek Kinra:
Well, the…

Vivek Kinra:
A lot of it still has to be done manually. Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
We just have a algorithm which can do it really, really well.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay. Great.

Vivek Kinra:
Like, so it’s… I mean, it’s like there’s challenges and defects that happen, right?

Ryan Isaac::
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
The problem is my office sees it first. Because our offices, me and my partner and CTO are also like our labs. Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Totally.

Vivek Kinra:
And so we’re almost kind of hurting it a little bit more to… So, to test it out. So like sometimes my own… Our office Dental Front Office team says, “Well, this isn’t how it is.” Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
This is an issue. Right? And I’m like, “Yeah, We’re gonna… We’re fixing it.” And so I’m kind of using them also like this Beta group. Which… So… Which my wife might not be happy about.

[laughter]

Ryan Isaac:
What’s the future of the technology? Is it an eventual acquisition by somebody? You think you’ll run this for a long time? Or it’s hard to say at this stage where you want things to go?

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. I think… You know, and I’m like a super, super open, candid person. Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Cool.

Vivek Kinra:
To my detriment and all that stuff.

[chuckle]

Vivek Kinra:
And I think about all these things.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
Right. It’s weird but… And I’m not saying it because I want someone to acquire us or anything like that. I’m saying it because I believe for the industry that makes the most sense to have a full integrated suite. Because right now what’s happening is you’ve got… So if you think about it, you’ve got like 10, 15 different software companies that are trying to become this patient engagement platform.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
Right. Like all-in-one connected suite. And it’s just that they’re coming to it from a different angle. Someone first did the new patient forms.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
Right. Somebody first did the analytics.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
But what’s happening is over time they’re all adding the same features. So you’ve got online scheduling that pretty much everyone’s building now.

Ryan Isaac:
Totally.

Vivek Kinra:
New patient forms. So if you think about the patient against, right? Like you market, the patient says, “All right, I’m gonna book an appointment that goes into the practice management software,” they get a link to fill out their new patient forms.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
Right? They start getting reminders about their appointments. Right? And then you can run analytics, et cetera. All that stuff is built by maybe 15 different companies. The one missing piece for all of them is just insurance verifications.

Ryan Isaac:
Wow.

Vivek Kinra:
Right?

Ryan Isaac:
No, no, it doesn’t… It’s not in any of them.

Vivek Kinra:
Right. Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
Wow. Okay.

Vivek Kinra:
And so what… One of the good things that we’ve done is like… And that’s probably where I think my software background has helped a lot, and even to the annoyance of all of the software developers…

[laughter]

Vivek Kinra:
I was extremely picky about how we built this software.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, cool.

Vivek Kinra:
And sometimes we had to… Sometimes what happened was, we built it not right and it burnt a month and we’re like, “you know what? I’m really sorry, we’re gonna have to go back.”

Ryan Isaac:
: Back UP.

Vivek Kinra:
‘Cause one thing that we really wanted to build is a third party API that anybody can use that is a purely standardized API. And that’s what we’ve built.

Ryan Isaac:
So you see the vision of this plugging into some of these big all in one systems. Multiple systems, maybe not just one, just being able to plug into a lot of them. ’cause that’s the missing piece.

Vivek Kinra:
Yep. That’s the missing piece.

Ryan Isaac:
Wow. That’s really cool. What’s the feedback? Does your wife give feedback on this? On how it’s running?

Vivek Kinra:
No…

Ryan Isaac:
Is she involved much in that?

Vivek Kinra:
No. No. I mean, she… I show it to her here and there. Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
But you Know…

Ryan Isaac:
She doesn’t have to deal with the insurance side of it. Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
There’s people on her team that’s working on that.

Vivek Kinra:
Right. So, Yeah. And you know the… She knows that I’m like focused on this. Right? Like, especially right now I’m leaving for Poland for three weeks. Right? Like when it’s a tough thing with two kids and I’m kind of…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
Two young kids. Right? That she has to. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Alone. Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
So it’s bit of a challenge, but at the same time, Right? Sometimes me and my wife get into it a little bit, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
Like it’s…

Ryan Isaac:
Shocking.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. [laughter]

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. Right. And that’s what I was saying. I’m fairly open about it.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
My wife’s gonna listen to this potentially. Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
But it’s… Hey, I work a lot. I also have another second company. Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
But I think that if we are successful in Verrific, of what we’re building. I genuinely deep down believe it’ll be the culmination of everything that I’ve learned. Right? And an application of that, which my software technical skills…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
Operational, sales, like I’ve done many, many things in my life and they’re all kind of coming together to solving a very, very big issue.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
: I’ll think it’d be great for the dental industry as well, because this is the missing piece that everyone hates. It’s expensive. So I think my wife somewhat understands that if we knock it out of the park here, right? A, it’ll be super satisfying from a personal level. Right? Every single thing that I’ve done in my life…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Worked. You built it. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
It worked out.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, for sure, since you have the perspective of your wife being a dentist, running a practice, you’ve worked in the practice, you’re a software person by background. You spent so much time in your… You’re building a company now with all this stuff. Team money, raising, marketing, sales, mistakes, all that kind of stuff. Do you have any advice for dentists who have a software idea and think, “Yeah, in my spare time after working four or five clinical days running a practice or multiple locations, I’m gonna go, build a software company.” [chuckle], Do you have any advice for… ’cause I hear that and I think, well, that’s really cool. But I think it’s probably more involved than you think it is to go build software and you don’t want to put your dental practice and this amazing career in jeopardy by trying to go and build this stuff. There’s just a lot… There’s a lot to… It’s very consuming.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. I mean, so… I know a couple of dentists that have been practicing dentists and building software.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, I know…

Vivek Kinra:
Right? Like, so…

Ryan Isaac:
And there’s a few in the industry who have built gigantic software companies as a practicing dentist. So it’s… Not like it doesn’t work.

Vivek Kinra:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
It’s possible… It’s there. Right? But at the same time, the… You know, it’s like most things, right? You just have to be very, very self-aware, right? The biggest problem is like… To me self-awareness is like the number one trade for a human being, that once they get that, things become clear, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
Because the problem is people go, even practicing dentists, they think I need to do something with software. That’s the ticket.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s where I’m… That’s what I’m gonna make my big money.

Vivek Kinra:
Right, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
And so what ends up happening is, they see someone else in similar picture and they want to be that person, right? Versus taking a very, very good like.

Vivek Kinra:
Almost a catalog or an inventory of what your true skills are.

Ryan Isaac:
Yes.

Vivek Kinra:
Right? And be very honest about that. And if you are not, then you just need to hire a really, really strong software developer and a CTO and a business partner who you’re working with on a daily basis. Now, the problem that people have is that A costs money.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
Right?

Ryan Isaac:
A lot. Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
And so, I mean, one thing is I’ll always say number one, find a really good co-founder as a practicing dentist, because you simply do not have the time.

Ryan Isaac:
No, no.

Vivek Kinra:
You may have the inclination.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
And then second thing is, and give the equity, do what’s needed. Right. And then…

Ryan Isaac:
Don’t hold onto too much equity and be stingy with it, because you just can’t grow if you’re gonna do that. Doesn’t work.

Vivek Kinra:
I have made this mistake. I’ve owned a company in the past as well. I’ve made this mistake before, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Okay, yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
I lost a very, very good software developer on equity. And I think back, he was the best software developer I’ve ever come across in my life.

Ryan Isaac:
Should’ve just given him a little bit more.

Vivek Kinra:
Oh yeah. Like, I look back and I’m like, Come on, what was I thinking? Right. Like, just, you know, the so the kind of make sure that it’s fair. It’s our cry and you can have like these ways that people like earn into equity and all that stuff, right? And then of course, raise some money. Unless you have your own capital that you’re willing to like put away.

Ryan Isaac:
But most dentists are gonna have to go raise some money, even dentists with money. I mean, you’re gonna have to go raise.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. And just know that whatever thing, whatever amount you think it’s gonna take, it’s gonna take longer, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. It’s gonna cost more. It’s gonna take longer. It’s gonna require more people.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
And you’re gonna mess up more times than you think you’re going to.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. But it is cool. I mean, I respect the side hustle. I think it’s cool when people have a passion to go build something. I think what you said I like the most is self-awareness and kind of an acknowledgement that if you’re a dentist and you’ve already done a decade of school and you’re hundreds of thousands, if not seven figures in debt for your schooling and your business, and you’re in arguably maybe the highest paying industry in the country in dentistry.

Vivek Kinra:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
Where the cash flows are consistent and the work is sustainable for decades. I mean, you can amass so much wealth just being a dentist with a boring investment plan. Honestly. [laughter]

Vivek Kinra:
Oh, yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
You can really… You can become really wealthy by being a boring investor as a dentist. I mean…

Vivek Kinra:
For sure.

Ryan Isaac:
So I like the self-awareness to say, All right, I don’t have the time. I probably don’t have the skill. I don’t know how many dentists have any software development experience. It’s probably really rare, if any at all.

Vivek Kinra:
Right. Right.

Ryan Isaac:
I might have a little bit of money to put in, but I need more people around me. And I have to make sure that I’m self-aware enough to not put this stuff in jeopardy, because my dentistry will make me wealthy and retire early if I want to by being a boring dentist. [laughter]

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
And a boring investor. But if I wanna pursue this passion, I gotta be self-aware and not hurt this.

Vivek Kinra:
I mean, I would say they’ll have to put some of their own money…

Ryan Isaac:
For sure.

Vivek Kinra:
Right? Because if you are even trying to raise money, you’ve gotta say, Hey, I’ve put in…

Ryan Isaac:
I’ve put in my money. Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
You know, $200,000 of my money into this thing, right?

Ryan Isaac:
An investor wants to see that.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah investor wants to see that.

Ryan Isaac:
Private or VC or anything. They’re gonna want to see…

Vivek Kinra:
That’s right.

Ryan Isaac:
That kind of thing.

Vivek Kinra:
That’s right.

Ryan Isaac:
And then do you have to be prepared to say, like, we might put in my money and we might raise millions of dollars and we might not have any business at the end of the day.

Vivek Kinra:
You know, I think most mature investors into like something by default, recognize and understand that, Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
And so the… And then it’s not… There is a recognition now everybody make wants to make sure that you’re gonna make money and all that stuff. But at the end of the day, right, you have to give people this recognition, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
And don’t build pies in the sky and all this stuff.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, totally.

Vivek Kinra:
And and mature investors appreciate that.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Mature investors, which maturity usually just comes from experience.

Vivek Kinra:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
You’ve taken some wins, you’ve taken your fair share of losses. That’s what, that’s where maturity comes from. It’s experience, it’s wisdom.

Vivek Kinra:
The one thing I will say that what helps a lot is actual revenue and actual market.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Which means you gotta build something fast enough to go to market and produce sales.

Vivek Kinra:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
Which is a whole other… Sales is not marketing.

Vivek Kinra:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
Your developers aren’t doing sales.

Vivek Kinra:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
And the founder, I mean, this is just my limited experience watching Reece rebuild software. The founder, the visionary often has a really good ability to sell people, but you don’t… I don’t know if this is true for you. Oftentimes the founder doesn’t have the time or even the skill set to push hardcore all day full-time sales either.

Vivek Kinra:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
That’s a whole other like department head or executive that’s in charge of sales. That’s a big thing.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. I mean, I will say this, that you know, I’m thankful for these types of events and, you know, Facebook and all this community, right? Like my… Like one thing that I look back and I’m like, the two companies have done well, right? Like they’ve grown quite a bit both in revenue and number of clients, the number of employees, etcetera. Right? And when I looked back and I’m like, Well, how did this happen? Right? Like yesterday I was in Darren Hardy’s VIP thing, and I had asked a question because I have this like, major imposter syndrome.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay?

Vivek Kinra:
Right? Yeah. Like, I just feel that I’m one step away from losing everything, right? I’ve got this insecurity about me.

Ryan Isaac:
Totally.

Vivek Kinra:
I don’t deserve it. Totally. And all that stuff, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. I think that’s really common, by the way.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. That’s what he said. He said, Dude everyone…

Ryan Isaac:
I think so many people feel…

Vivek Kinra:
Right. So the… And actually just lost my train of thought.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, okay. Darren Hardy, VIP, Sales, Facebook marketing, networking.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, with like this whole marketing and sales and growth, when I look back and I’m like, why did these companies become, you know fairly successful. Like I look back and I’m like, we picked a good industry, right. And we became the best, right? And so my mind goes like, Okay, two things are important. Pick an industry in need. Not a want.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. Not something you want to do. It’s gotta be needed.

Vivek Kinra:
Right. And if you find yourself in an industry where you’re solving a problem that’s in high demand, right? Sales and marketing are something that should automatically take care of it because there’s such a big demand…

Ryan Isaac:
To be natural.

Vivek Kinra:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
To Be natural. The demand will pick, it will pick up into it.

Vivek Kinra:
Right. Exactly.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. So networking, I mean, totally. Okay. That’s really, that’s really good insight.

Vivek Kinra:
Now people just need to know who you are. They need to like who you are. And they, and you need to produce and you need to be the best. Like my mind goes, these are two areas that I wanna focus on right now. Build the best product. Right. Like in a hot industry. And I think with that, right, like if we’re really sincere and do a really, really good job, I think sales and marketing will take care. Now it’s different when it’s a want. Right? Like if it’s a salesman trying to sell vacation package, that’s a different, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
You have to cold call and whatnot.

Ryan Isaac:
The first iPod or the first like iPhone, a glass phone, that was nuts. I don’t think anyone thought they needed a glass phone.

Vivek Kinra:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
But we sure wanted one right after Apple told us we wanted one.

Vivek Kinra:
Right. Right, right, right.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, that’s a really interesting distinction. Yeah. Between building it. Thanks for spending some time today.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
How long’s the flight to Poland?

Vivek Kinra:
It’s nine hours, but something good happened. It’s actually 10 hours, but something good happened this lot Polish Airlines have like this bidding system to get an upgrade.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh…

Vivek Kinra:
Right?

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Vivek Kinra:
So I put in a low bid and I just got an email…

Ryan Isaac:
No way you got it?

Vivek Kinra:
Yesterday that I got upgraded. I’m like, Oh thank God.

Ryan Isaac:
Oh, Perfect man. So anything over like five hours does me in.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah, I know.

Ryan Isaac:
Sitting in a chair. My longest flight I think was like 10 hours, 11 hours once it was overnight. But it was tough. I’m not a good plane sleeper. Are you a good plane sleeper? Can you sleep on a plane?

Vivek Kinra:
I mean, if it’s like, if it’s business with a live flat, I can make it happen, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. You can lay back a little bit.

Vivek Kinra:
In fact, actually enjoy that, right?

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah. It’s not too bad. Well safe travels. Okay. So Verrific coming soon. Verrific Plus.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Where do the people find it?

Vivek Kinra:
You know, I think the best right now it’s our website.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Vivek Kinra:
It’s Verrific because right now…

Ryan Isaac:
How do you spell it by the way?

Vivek Kinra:
It’s like the word terrific, but with a V.

Ryan Isaac: Really? Okay.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Verrific. Terrific.

Vivek Kinra:
Yeah. Yeah.

Ryan Isaac:
Okay.

Vivek Kinra:
So I think I would just go to the website verrrific.biz right now. We’re still gonna onboard you for the normal services Verrific platform.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
Because the Verrific Plus is for like some curated people who’ve been using this for a long time.

Ryan Isaac:
Cool.

Vivek Kinra:
Right? So it’s a controlled beta that we have to do, but…

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, Yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
Over time it’s gonna give over to them.

Ryan Isaac:
That’ll kind of integrate.

Vivek Kinra:
Right.

Ryan Isaac:
Well, safe travels. Best of luck with everything. It’s cool to catch up with this. I like this kind of a different take on not just what you do, but how have you done it? That’s, I think it’s really interesting to people. So thanks for sharing, thanks for being candid and vulnerable and I appreciate it, man.

Vivek Kinra:
Super appreciate it as well.

Ryan Isaac:
Yeah, yeah.

Vivek Kinra:
Thank you so much.

Ryan Isaac:
Good luck man. And thanks for everyone listening and if you have any questions for us, go to dennisadvisors.com. We’d love to chat with you and help you out any way we can. Vivek thanks again, man. And I will catch you next time in another episode of the Dennis Money Show. Take care.

Practice Management