Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Florian, thanks so much for joining us.
Florian Hillen, VideaHealth
Thank you for having me.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
I'm excited to talk to you because we're going to talk about VideaHealth, which there are so many interesting use cases for AI and healthcare. And this is one that affects all of us. That's exciting, massive opportunity. So what is VideaHealth?
Florian Hillen, VideaHealth
Well, VideaHealth, we are developing top notch algorithms to automatically diagnose treatment plan and automate workflows, workflows, have dental offices, right. And every one of us goes to a dentist, there are over 300 million dental visits each year. And you all probably had a bad experience and we try to eradicate these bad experiences.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Okay, so something that I picked up along the way through your website, dentists miss an extraordinary amount of dental diseases. So what number is that? And how does VideaHealth help solve that problem?
Florian Hillen, VideaHealth
Yeah, look, as a dentist, you are ready for jobs at the same time you are diagnostician right you diagnose you, surgeons, your primary care physician and above all, you're also a business owner. So it's extremely difficult to be really good in for instance, diagnosing and rerun radiographs to identify cavities, or gum disease, right. And so dentistry is one of the highest error rates across the entire healthcare spectrum by missing over 50% of cavities and over 30% of the other diseases, right. And so with AI, we can help them to miss 46% Less cavities, which obviously is a huge benefit of the dentist, we then can make the actual treatments, right, as well as have the patient because they get the treatment early on. And they don't have to wait until the small cavity may become so big that you need a root canal or even extract your teeth.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
So what led you down the path of starting this company?
Florian Hillen, VideaHealth
Yeah, so my background is weird in terms of that I have a medical background, business and engineering background. And so I'm always motivated to have the biggest impact I can have in my life, right. And you can define this by having a large impact on few people, or have a significant impact on millions, if not billions of people. And so I was actually trained to become a doctor, and then dropped out of med school short before becoming an MD, because I wanted to build a first venture. And when I was at MIT as graduate students to work in AI and chest X rays and mammography is I was going through different verticals of healthcare, radiology, dermatology, biology, and I ended up with dentistry. And one of the reasons why I found so interesting is that we can have a significant impact on every single patient goes to the dentist, because we can reduce the misdiagnosis and enable every patient and every dentist to provide a better diagnosis. And then number two is everyone goes to the dentist, you have billions of dental images in US alone, you have millions and 10s of millions of visits. So the scale of the dental industry is extremely fascinating. And by this also the impact everyone in my team and us together as a collective can have.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
So how does it actually work is does the dentist purchase the software and it's integrated into their x ray imaging systems? Or how does it all work?
Florian Hillen, VideaHealth
Yeah, that's a great question. Um, so dentists are taking the X rays, and then they show them to you right? Let me let me answer this differently. Um, So Keith, if you go to dentists, right, the first thing they do is they probably look at your the hygienist is taking x rays and looking at your mouth as an oral examination, then a dentist coming in, looks at the X rays, makes a diagnosis and explains what's going on and what treatments you need. So the experience will be exactly the same, except this time, when they take the x rays, these images get automatically sent to our cloud based AI platform, a diagnose and at the point when you see the X rays, the hygienist and the dentist are looking over your X rays, they actually have a AI diagnosis on them. So that means cavities, periodontal disease, you name them. And with that we can on the one side guarantee that the clinicians are not missing anything or wrongly diagnosing anything. And also on the second aspect, you as a patient, get an ad hoc second opinion, right. So instead of not trusting the dentist or like going to another dentist to get it validated, you can be sure that the diagnosis and the treatment plan is the correct one because it has been validated by the AI, which is unbiased. It always works the same way.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Now there is a tremendous amount of momentum at VideaHealth. So you announced your Series A round of funding earlier this year. So talk about the current stage of the company and plans for hiring ahead.
Florian Hillen, VideaHealth
Yeah so, I think we tripled almost our size in the last four months or so. So we've been like you know, a seed stage company earliest Yes, then we raised 21 million from Spark capital. But most important, we unlock FDA clearance as well as we increased our, our clients by 300%. And that's what we really focus most on. And so we have increased our team size significantly and product engineering, but also customer success in marketing. Right? What comes next the next 12 months is that we want to double in size again. So we want to be around 7580 People also in the next 12 months, across the same functions, right? We are very customer focused, we want to be able the best services, increase the marketing, and always interested in tenants and engineers who want to be part of a mission driven company.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Now, this is a very difficult problem that you're solving. So if you're an engineer, this is like a great opportunity.
Florian Hillen, VideaHealth
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I myself, actually, I graduated from MIT with a degree in computer science. And I must say this is this is a phenomenal playground. Why? Well, first of all, we have the most modern tech stack. And we have a cloud based SaaS solution for dentists. But technically, also, we are doing everything we're doing is on the cutting edge. So we develop new AI algorithms, new software modules to deliver better care to patients. Literally, the FDA just came out with a new announcement and we early program to test our AI together with the FDA. So everything we do from our software engineering, our architecture, our AI is really at the cutting edge. And we've been fortunate that we were able to attract literally top a talent across all of it. And so that was what we believe in to have a high talent density and people also learning from each other as they join the the health.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Now, once someone does join the team, what's it like working there? What's the day to day culture like?
Florian Hillen, VideaHealth
That's a great question. So um, so we have like, we are really intentional about our culture, in particular, in the last four months when it when we hired much faster. And so we have actually like, three pillars of our culture. The first one is being mission driven. So this should be more than a job, we really want to diagnose a million patients next year, and we want to be the first company worldwide, which diagnosis a billion people globally. So this mission is really important to everyone he is in a company, and he wants to have an impact into that. So the best idea wins, and egos, you know, you know, they are not as important as the best idea. So that's mission driven. Number two is a championship team. And that is a lot. We are a team. And we want to win a championship together. So we're interested in ambitious people. But we'll also give and receive feedback, right as in the team, right? Who are drivers and passengers, right, and we win and lose together. We don't point fingers, we own things together as a team. It's not an individual who doesn't mistake, we keep them accountable on a one to one, but not as a group. And the third one is we constantly strive for excellence in terms of how fast and how good we think to, and to have a growth mindset. So we're really keen on everyone, always being able to level up, you know, we bring outside speakers and mentors. Let it be the CEO of papec of all these companies who come in and teach everyone here, how to be better at the job and to fulfill the mission.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
So to build a championship team, you need top tier talent, which always has options. So why is now the ideal time to join VideaHealth?
Florian Hillen, VideaHealth
Well, many reasons, I would say but the first one is we, with our FDA approval and all our clients success, we really unlocked a lot that we are on the way to diagnose over a million patients next year, and in the not-too-distant future billion people. So if you are interested in your work to actually have an impact on people's lives, then that's a perfect time to join. In fact, we know actually, every second patient we diagnose we identify something which otherwise would have been missed. So there's a real world impact that a patient who maybe would have gotten a root canal actually now just gets a small fillings. So it's very measurable. We actually have a dashboard in our office where we see a live ticker of all the patients we diagnose. That's number one. Number two is we had a really interesting growth stage we attract amazing talent, we just raised series you know, we have a great opportunity, you know, to come to two digit millions in ARR which is huge valuation and upside as well. Right. And the third aspect is, we have an amazing industry industry, which is changing all the time and everyone is touched by it. And also to be honest, we are not so concerned about recession because dentistry is extremely recession proof and we just need to build and focus on building the best products. We are not an economy A startup or a food startup which LiPos through the cycles, we are product first company which delivers clinical value, which is really awesome.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Well, as Florida mentioned, VideaHealth is growing aggressively. It's such an important mission that this company has. And there's a great foundation they have Series A, they have a great product, great team, great investors, and a massive market opportunity head. So you need to check out their job listings on venture Fizz, which has all their openings there, go to venturefizz.com/videahealth, and you'll see all their job listings. Florian, thanks so much for taking the time to walk us through all the great things happening at the company.
Florian Hillen, VideaHealth
Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai