Wellplaece is a new and smarter way for dental service organizations (DSOs), groups, and single practices to procure and purchase supplies. Wellplaece drives impactful cost savings and requires little or no change management to use. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Wellplaece COO Garrett Goldberg to learn more about the company.
Garrett Goldberg’s Background
Goldberg has been a VC for over ten years in San Francisco, helping to co-build Bee Partners from the ground up. He and his firm led:
I led the seed round investment into Wellplaece at the end of 2022 and served on the board until I joined the team full-time in October. His track record includes several successful B2B vertical marketplaces across different domains, and he still serves on many of those boards. I’m bringing my knowledge of what internal operational excellence looks like to the opportunity here.”
What are Goldberg’s primary responsibilities/goals for Wellplaece? Goldberg shared:
“I’m here to bring my knowledge of what internal operational excellence looks like to an exciting company. I’m here to implement our systems to scale. Marketplaces can be complex businesses that need to adapt their product, processes, and often business models quickly.”
“My goal is to take the internal operational burden off those in our company that can execute to these areas most effectively. Wellplace’s team is showing to be outstanding and highly competent in each domain, so putting the systems, software, processes, and metrics in place is important to have each domain augment the other. In any startup, there is a risk that as orders scale, service drops, and processes that got us here won’t work anymore. We have to automate to survive.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Goldberg explained:
“We deliver an embedded purchasing experience (i.e., user-friendly software) to buyers inside of dental offices. We deliver a 10x better experience that allows them to shop across many different suppliers and distributors, saving them almost 25% on average.”
Favorite Memory
What has been Goldberg’s favorite memory working for the company so far? Goldberg shared:
“As part of Caen’s (Founder and CEO) recruiting efforts (sort of unbeknownst to myself), I joined the team at a dental conference in San Diego as a Board Member. Seeing them work the room, the prospective customers’ response to their offerings, and how the team worked together made me think there was something here and that I could make a difference to this company and industry. Yet it would not be easy and certainly not possible from the board seat.”
Challenges Faced
Has Goldberg faced any specific bottlenecks in his work sector recently? Goldberg acknowledged:
“We all hear about the carnage in the venture capital and tech startup ecosystems. But the best companies will always continue to get funded. We are one of those companies.”
Evolution Of Wellplaece’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Goldberg noted:
“We continue to automate several domains of our product and business with each product release. This includes supplier catalog ingestion, new customer onboarding (including ingesting their historical formularies), and order processing. Our front-end product also has vastly improved, offering customers ordering insights and historical modeling.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Goldberg cited:
“We’ve cracked the market network problem – come for the tool and stay for the network. We have shown customers that we provide enough value, both financially and from a product and workflow experience, to become their primary ordering tool, capturing an increasing level of their purchase spend. To do this in a marketplace setting, there must be a certain level of product maturity that is often difficult for startups to achieve.”
Customer Success Story
After asking Goldberg about a customer success stories, he highlighted:
“Check out this case study and partner testimonial (Case Study) and Partner Program testimonial”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Goldberg assessed:
“Worldwide dental supply is in the hundreds of billions annually. The U.S. alone is in the tens of billions, and that’s just consumable supply procurement. Needless to say, there is a big opportunity here.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Goldberg affirmed:
“We must be better, faster, and cheaper than the alternatives, whether that be entrenched incumbents or new entrants. We allow customers to search across different sources in one interface, compare pricing, and discover alternative brands. And then we fulfill the order on their behalf using our technology and processes. This saves them time and money.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Goldberg pointed out:
“Short term is to continue to automate the processes in place. The medium term is to release a practice insights software product/functionality to our users. The longer term will be to expand up and down the dental software stack and possibly into tangential verticals with similar characteristics.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics to discuss? Goldberg concluded:
“Market networks, or SaaS-enabled marketplaces, have an interesting dynamic. A user comes for our tool (an embedded purchasing piece of software) and stays for the network (a growing number of suppliers or even other customers that can add data to our platform that then benefits them in the form of insights). It’s a very powerful business model and dynamic we have tapped here. So now speed and execution are everything. I also think data digitization is a very interesting concept in this vertical that will afford us tangential growth opportunities.”
