Would you pay $400 to brush your teeth?
Feno, a Culver City-based oral health startup, announced on Wednesday it raised $6 million in seed funding. The round was led by Santa Monica-based Bold Capital Partners, with additional participation from True Ventures, Santa Monica-based Upfront Ventures and Playa Vista-based Share Ventures.
Feno spun out of Share Ventures, a venture studio founded by Hamet Watts, that incubates startups.
Feno is reinventing a child’s most dreaded chore: brushing their teeth. While dentists recommend two daily two minute rituals for preventative health, the practice is littered with human error – few people are consciously thinking about the angle, the pressure and the motion of bristles against teeth for two full minutes first thing in the morning.
Feno says its toothbrush can clean your teeth in 20 seconds, thanks to its U-shaped full mouth brush that tackles the front, top, back and sides of each tooth at the same time. The toothbrush is fitted to accommodate however wide or narrow the mouth is when prospective users send in a selfie – Feno uses an algorithm fed on 20,000 three-dimensional patient scans to create the molds. Users can still control the intensity and movement of the brush depending on whether or not they have sensitive gums or a slightly misaligned tooth that’s hard to reach.
The dental-medical divide
Historically, dentistry has long been divorced from medicine in every conceivable way – they take separate forms of insurance, require different education tracts and keep records in different electronic health systems that prevent each side from easily accessing a patient’s holistic record.
But the body doesn’t separate the two. Tooth decay, periodontal disease and other oral ailments are linked to diabetes, sepsis and heart disease. Those with late night dental emergencies meander to emergency hospitals, which cost the national health care system $17 billion in 2017.
Kenny Brown, the cofounder and chief executive of Feno, is an oral and maxillofacial surgeon who often saw how oral problems traveled through the body.
“I see when teeth issues become a life-threatening issue,” Brown said. “I was working at the intersection between dental and medicine in the hospital. One of my earliest memories of residency was when I got paged to the medical (intensive care unit) because they had a person with a brain abscess, and they thought it was from the tooth.”
The company is developing a scanner that aims to track potential long-term issues and alert users if they may need to see a doctor. The toothbrush is connected to an app that tracks brushing habits and health coaching. Users can elect to buy a monthly subscription which bundles other accouterments like toothpaste, a replacement head and a tongue scraper in a $299 package. In the long term, Brown sees Feno expanding into employer benefit plans.
“I think there is this sentiment that oral health or dental health is about having white and straight teeth. Great, yeah, it’s very nice to have that,” Brown said. “But really, oral health is your overall health.”
