723 Dr. Ingrid Murra:

We all read the headlines of all the startups getting venture capital and to someone who’s never raised investment, it can seem much easier than it is. In fact, most startups never succeed at getting investment, and only 2% of women founders get funded, a number that hasn’t moved in two decades. My guest today – Dr. Ingrid Murra – found a way, in fact she is the 48th Latin woman to secure over $5,000,000 Venture Capital funding in the history of the United States, so today we dig deep into what it takes to get investment and grow a scalable company.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur who has lived and breathed the ups and downs of starting and growing businesses, currently the game changing social podcast app Podopolo. Wherever you are listening to this, take a moment and join the Wings community over on Podopolo, where we can take the conversation further with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice for other female founders at whatever stage of the journey you’re at! Because together we’re stronger, and we soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who is building an orthodontic startup called My Two Front, having raised $5 million to provide orthodontists with the tools to run modern, clear aligner practices from unused office space at dental offices, while empowering dentists to delegate orthodontics to increase their bottom line by 25% or more.

Dr. Ingrid Murra is one of a relative handful of female founders to succeed at landing VC investment, and the 48th Latin woman in US history. So today we’re going to talk about Ingrid’s journey and what it took for her to succeed.

Dr. Ingrid Murra is a dedicated leader of what she calls an

orthodontic revolution ready to blow up. And it’s personal: After 8 years of orthodontic treatment and the big toll it took on her, Ingrid decided to become an orthodontist, getting her degree from Harvard. Then, she made the leap into entrepreneurship because she experienced firsthand a lack of accessibility, safety, and efficiency when it comes to orthodontic treatment, especially the unknown dangers of off-the-shelf and even customized clear liners like Invisalign. She says, plastic or metal, it’s still moving your teeth and done wrong, people can end up damaging their jaws, developing headaches and bite problems.

She says she wants to give people the confidence straight teeth provide people person, while helping orthodontists, who graduate with mountains of student debt, forge a new path of dentistry where they can profit with her new systems for efficiency and safety.

Today we talk about Ingrid’s path raising money for her startup, My Two Front, how she’s struggled to find the right business model, her big vision, and what she’s had to overcome to build her dream.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Dr. Ingrid Murra and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo and follow Wings of Inspired Business there so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstock:

Ingrid, welcome to Wings.

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Thank you so much for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well first of all, congratulations on raising Venture capital for your business. You’re the 48th Latin woman ever to do that. It’s really hard for women. Only 2% of qualified female founded startups get Venture backing. Break down the story for me. How do you think that you succeeded where so many others struggle?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Yeah. Thank you. First of all, I appreciate that. I think my biggest thing that I tell people is to forget about the process, forget about the prep, forget about your sex, forget about what you look like, and just do like. Literally, just like aggressively knock. I mean, what I did at least, so it worked for me. I didn’t have any sort of network or person who’s… people that I could tap into for this. I always see Google’s my is the number one employee and my best friend. Literally, I was like, “Okay, where do I start?” I’m building a health tech company. Where can I meet investors? Health tech conferences, LinkedIn. How do I tap into this network? What’s going to work to get in front of people to start picking their brains, to start forming these relationships and figuring out who can fund me?

So, that’s where I started. I was an orthodontist by day, working six days a week, working 8:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. Then I was an entrepreneur by night. Basically, I would just go to these health tech conferences and just start literally meaning everyone and everyone. Finally, I found someone who believed in me and introduced me to the right investors. The rest is history. We raised our first round of pre-seed funding at the very end of 2019, failed 1001 times until I figured out our business model, and then we just raised our last round of funding from Craft Ventures at the end of 2021, and now we are boots in the ground building.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, well, congratulations on that. I think you nailed something that a lot of people forget. It really is about the relationship. A lot of women struggle with VC because we’re not, like you said, in those networks already, so we have to create those networks and be productive.

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Yep.

Melinda Wittstock:

Does the Axiom hold true for you that if you want funding, ask for advice?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Oh, 100%. I think my strategy… I have four younger sisters, and they’re kind of always asking me how to go about things. Instead of just being like, “Will you give me money?” Ask for advice. What do you think about my deck? What do you think about my business? What do you think about our growth plans? What do you think about our go-to market? That’s going to help you. I think being just insanely inquisitive, and really truly trying to learn from people, like genuinely trying to learn from people’s experiences. Only after you’ve then formed the relationship and proven that you have something, then at that point people will offer advice, or they will offer help, I mean. I’m 100% on that page with you.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s so true, because as women are building businesses, a continual theme that runs through this podcast is that we have this perfectionism tendency.

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

And just this desire to prove competence. Our heads are down, and we’re working hard, and we’re driving all these results, and doing all these amazing things, often with nothing, but not really focusing on that relationship build. Whereas men tend to be earlier to delegate, doesn’t have to be perfect, but they’re all in the relationship stuff. It’s ironic, because women are kind of naturally good at relationship.

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Totally. Perfectionism, it has this good implication I want things to be perfect, but it’s actually an impediment. I think that if you can think of perfectionism not as a good thing, but as an impediment, then you start to internalize like the way that I take action in life is the opposite of perfectionism.

Melinda Wittstock:

Bias towards imperfect action is the way I like to say it because perfectionism implies that you’re almost continually in planning.

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

You miss an entire market while you’re planning.

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

I could not agree with you more.

Melinda Wittstock:

So what was the inspiration to move from being an orthodontist, full-time orthodontist to entrepreneurship and building a company?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

It started in 2015 when I was in residency. Basically what happened is I had just spent the past 20 years of my life becoming an orthodontist, and that was the first year that I saw two major problems. Number one is that half the world was looking to straighten their teeth because now there is this alternative to braces, which is clear liners. Number two, orthodontists, the people who are specialized and trained, and frankly the only people that should be actually moving teeth are the most in-debt professional in the country. On top of that, the world, because of these mail order liner companies and companies like Invisalign, I say it’s a little bit like the financial crisis because they don’t really understand the fact that this is actually a medical procedure, and you really truly need a specialist, A, to actually move teeth into the right place and get results, and move your teeth accurately, efficiently without damaging your jaw, your TMJ, or developing headaches or developing bite problems.

It’s a massive supply and demand issue that I learned my very first year in residency, as my friends were racking up debt. Then my friends who were not orthodontists were straightening their teeth in the mail, because direct to consumer marketing is just so good, and being tricked and harmed. I realized at that point, orthodontists are going to need a new way to practice, to reach more patients with this kind of end to end, seamless experience that they’re looking for with mail order liner companies.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, how interesting. So I confess, I am nowhere near an expert in any of this. I’ve never had braces, never gone to an orthodontist, so just in full ignorance, I see these ads all over the place for Invisalign, and there’s a whole bunch of them, and you mentioned there’s a lot of problems with these companies. It looks pretty convincing, “Oh, you just put this thing in your mouth, and presto, after X number of weeks, your teeth are perfectly straight.” So that’s not true?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

It’s not true.

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

It doesn’t work that way.

Melinda Wittstock:

You mentioned there’s a whole bunch of problems that happen. Those people end up with headaches, and jaw problems, and whatnot?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Exactly. Yeah. It’s this kind of crazy thing. I’ll give you an analogy. I have a friend who’s an anesthesiologist. He’s awesome. I would trust him with my life, but he’s been told by this tech company that using their technology, he can now do neurosurgery. I’m talking to him and I’m like, “Mark, do you really think that you should be doing neurosurgery as an anesthesiologist because this tech company tells you that they can? They’re registered as a marketing agency, so they have no liability. If you screw up someone’s back, that’s on you.” That’s a really obvious way to kind of understand doctors who are being told by tech companies that they can do alternative procedures.

The same thing is happening in dentistry. Basically, tech companies are telling non-specialists, “Hey, you can take a four hour course instead of a three year specialty training to actually do this procedure.” Because it seems cosmetic, and sexy, and easy, and tech enabled, and plastic, people think it’s not a medical procedure. The reality is the fundamentals of what’s happening in your mouth are still happening. It’s just a different tool. It’s plastic versus metal. People don’t realize that you still need to move your teeth healthily, efficiently into a position that isn’t going to break a tooth. If you move your tooth into a way that opposes your opposite jaw, you’re going to get a bad bite. Yeah, that’s me and my soapbox.

Melinda Wittstock:

So tell me about the, My Two Front solution then. How does it solve the problem?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Yep. So what we’ve done is we’ve basically built a business in a box for orthodontists to build a new way of running a practice, which means that we allow them to build a hybrid practice through our platform by basically leveraging our end to end patient experience technology, to run their practice from local dental offices. So what this means is one orthodontist can actually go into 20 local dental offices near them to serve those patients and have the operating framework to both market to those patients and treat those patients, and deliver a great patient experience that they’re looking for.

This means everything from awareness, to treatment plan presentation, to payment plans and insurance verification, all the way to scheduling and managing their patients once they start their Invisalign treatment, and being able to coordinate with the back office to kind of handle all the back office stuff like rescheduling and insurance management. We also give that orthodontist a team. We actually pair them… One of the hardest things in dentistry is to actually hire an incredible qualified team, especially after the pandemic. It’s really, really difficult. We help them actually hire a trained, an incredible and motivated treatment coordinator and dental assistant. One team to go in with them to all of their offices, and we help them manage inventory at each of their offices to make sure that they have enough of everything that they need to actually deliver their Invisalign treatment in conducting exams.

Dentists benefit because they get to open up their chair once a month to this orthodontist and their team, and treat all their patients with the highest quality care and the best patient experience, and actually get to keep their patients in-house instead of referring out revenue, or doing their own Invisalign treatment, delivering subpar care, and frankly not making money because making money with Invisalign, since there’s such high costs and there’s so many appointments, it’s actually not a good business for them.

Melinda Wittstock:

So you’re helping the dentist, and you’re helping the orthodontist who like you said, are graduating with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt, so all of a sudden, now all those systems are in place for them. What does it actually mean for their bottom line and getting to profitability, and getting all those personal debts cleared away?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Yeah. So, I mean, that half my mission. I think it’s such an atrocity that in the United States, living this kind of American dream life, that someone can work their way up the America ladder of basically becoming a specialist, and you can graduate with $1 million of student debt. That’s no joke. It’s probably very hard for the average person to internalize what that actually means. That means you’re dying in debt. There’s actually no way to get out of a million dollars of student debt, making the kind of money that an orthodontist makes, especially when patients don’t know why they need an orthodontist. These orthodontists are now paying somewhere between $5000 to $8,000 a month in student loans. They’re not ever… When you have this sort of student loans, you can’t really take a month long vacation because the next month, if you take a vacation, you still have that student loan check coming in the mail.

Part of my passion is really helping orthodontists build these practices for free, so that they don’t have to invest in marketing, or operations, or hiring, because the demand is there. The office spaces are there. The patients are there. The chairs are there. Why don’t we help them leverage a space and run a business, and actually make private practice money so that they can get out of debt. Our goal, really is to help them run the most efficient Invisalign practice in the world, so that they can actually make that typical private practice money and get out of debt.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, that’s fantastic. So tell me, I mean, it seems like a no brainer that you would easily have a lot of customers, the way you’ve described it. How is the growth going? How many orthodontists and dentists now use your system?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Oh, we are not in growth stage yet. I say there’s a lot that we have to build to actually deliver such an incredible customer experience for a three-sided marketplace. We’re actually… We just fundraised, like I said. The stage that we’re at is I just finished hiring an incredible team. That was honestly one of the hardest things I’ve done, and one of the things that I’m most proud of is hiring a team of just absolute killers who are passionate about solving problems and helping people.

We’re now in the stage that we’re actually building the operating infrastructure to be able to scale. We’re basically transitioning from our… We have 10 offices here in Southern California, seven orthodontists running their practice from our platform, a couple of them in multiple practices. Basically what we’re doing is we’re transitioning from helping them operate their practice from a spreadsheet, to a real operating system where we can deliver a better customer service, a better experience, and help them manage their practice. It’s a transition from our spreadsheet, and a million different spreadsheets, to Salesforce and real technology to help them communicate with their patients and operate efficiently.

In the next couple of months, we’re really trying… Our goal is to grow from 10 to a 100 offices while building out this infrastructure. So right now, we’re basically partnering with dentists in orthodontists, putting them in our wait list for the fall here in Southern California. Then once we actually built up this infrastructure over the next few months, hit the ground running in the fall to prove out that we actually have the infrastructure to support these offices and these patients.

Melinda Wittstock:

What’s your go-to market? How will you get the word out?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Yep. Direct sales. We have someone who is just directly calling dentists, and I should say partnerships, because it’s free to dentists and orthodontists. Our platform is free. We just take a take rate per patient that actually starts treatment. So just calling dentists and saying, “Hey, are you interested in an additional service to your practice to help treat all of your patients with Invisalign, no Invisalign lab costs, no iTero scanner, no having to pay an orthodontist or managing inventory. We handle absolutely everything.” And, really kind of partnering with dentists who are a good cultural fit for us. I think right now, we’re so early on that we know things are going to break, and finding people who are really aligned with our mission and our vision, and understanding that if something breaks, they’re not going to hold us accountable as if we’re a big company, and really kind of understand that our best interests are in minds, is kind of a number one priority, so we’re really vetting top dentist in our area.

Melinda Wittstock:

I like the emphasis on co-creating with your customers, because you’re going to learn more. Then it’s the advantage of they feel invested in it, because they’re sort of helping you build it.

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Yeah, exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s a really good strategy, and it’s one that a lot of people don’t do. You learn so much through that sales and marketing process of actually working with those potential customers, right from the get go. I’m curious though, how you got Venture funding at your stage because it is so difficult to get startups funded that are pre-revenue or pre-traction. So what was your secret sauce there?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

You know, at our stage early on, it’s really on selling early stage investors who are used to precede, pre-revenue, pre-team companies are willing to take a bet and selling them on the mission, the vision, showing them that we have an operating plan, a go-to market, a very basic financial model, really showing that like can do the work. I think a lot of these funds, they know that your go-to, market’s going to change. They know that your financial projections are going to change. I think they’re really just taking a bet on founder market fit, product market fit, and that you’re going to do the work to actually figure out whatever it takes.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. So they’re actually investing in your character, as much as anything else. I mean, your vision, obviously mission, all the things that you talked about, but are you, and is your team… Do you possess the resilience, the expertise, the kind of like, you’re going to stick with it no matter what happens to you, kind of thing.

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

Do you have any advice for founders, in terms of how to really exhibit that? You’re talking to folks who don’t necessarily know you. They haven’t seen your track record. They haven’t worked with you before, and you’ve got to get all of that across to an investor. What would be advice of how you did that yourself?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

I think the biggest thing is really being married to the problem that you’re solving, and being just so passionate about the fact that you are going to solve this problem and you’re going to do to the work, whatever it takes. The work to fundraise is like really hard. I had no backgrounds, before being an orthodontist, on how to build a financial model, how to build a deck, even what a go-to market is, how to hire. But I think showing that you’re going to do whatever it takes… If you can prep for fundraising, you can probably prep to figure out what it’s going to take to hire. I think it’s showing them that you’re going to do whatever it takes is really the key, in my opinion.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, 100%. I know in my own experience, After a while, you develop a track record where you said something was going to happen, like say a market trend, and it does. You’ve said you’re going to do something, and you do it, and just being in continual communication as you hit these milestones and as the things that you predicted, especially as a visionary founder, that you’ve spotted. Did you have to do that, really just kind of stay in touch for like a long time and continually update. I presume you still do that now, because you’re probably always going to be fundraising, to some degree.

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Yeah, yeah. 100%. It’s always kind of a fine balance of getting in the weeds and solving the most minutia seeming problems like, how do we get insurance verification at a mass scale? How do we manage inventory? All the kind of little things, to zooming back out to the vision piece of where we’re going, and actually being able to sell the dream to investors.

Melinda Wittstock:

So Ingrid, what have been the most, I don’t know, kind of painful or scary moments along the way, because we all have them as entrepreneurs. We don’t talk about them very often. One of the missions of this podcast is to destigmatize failure, or those moments where you’re like, “Oh my God, how am I going to make it?” What were some for you?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Yeah. Okay. So there’s a lot, and they happen every single day, but I would say that probably two of the scariest things… Okay, three. One is realizing that the solution that you’re solving toward isn’t going to work. Like I said earlier, we are on our third iteration of a business model. Our very first iteration was a DSO, or basically a conglomerate of clinics. We are going to open up all over the country. Tom Lee, the founder of One Medical, was our very first angel investor. At that point, at the very end of 2019, I kind of thought, I want to do what he’s done. We’re going to build up beautiful brick and mortar clinics for orthodontists, deliver the best seamless digital experience. Basically long story short, I realized that this business model wasn’t going to work. Orthodontist wanted to be independent business owners. Customer acquisition costs were too high. CapEx was too high, and the pandemic had just hit. Iterating on a business model and pivoting is terrifying because at that point, you just know that it’s not working, and you don’t really know when to pull the plug. There’s no real moment that’s defined where you’re like, “Okay, now is the time.” You just have to go with your gut and kind of do it. That’s number one.

Number two is being very low on runway, and what’s associated… Very low on runway during a pandemic, when you have a team is very, very terrifying. It’s kept me up at night a lot of times over the past couple years. Number three, realize… This is probably the hardest. Realizing that you’ve made the wrong hire, and you’ve convinced someone, “Join this early stage company that no one’s ever heard of,” selling them on the dream, getting them to leave their job, and realizing a couple months in that they were either the wrong role or the wrong stage, or they’re not necessarily early stage people, they’re better for late stage, and telling them that it’s not going to work out is like literally, I would say one of the hardest things as an empath.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. I struggle to know, and when to abandon, because you’ve put so much effort that you get kind of invested in a particular solution, and you can think, and you read all about how just… all this advice for entrepreneurs, just keep going. You know what I mean?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Yep.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think in this, a lot of it’s our intuition. I think as women, and men, too, we have this kind of gut feeling, but sometimes our analytical minds or our inherent resilience as entrepreneurs can easily override it. So knowing when to let go is a particular skill of entrepreneurs, right?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

How long did it take you to kind of figure out, “Okay, so number one, isn’t going to work, so let’s try number two.” You mentioned you’re on a third. So what was that process? Was it easier to let go of number two to get to number three, having gone through that experience with number one, say?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

No, it doesn’t get easier. Every time, the hard is just so hard. I’m not going to lie. I would say firing gets easier. The first time, and the second are the worst. My voice was trembling. I was more nervous than they were. That definitely gets better with time, but it’s still… Yeah. I realize that people develop a hard shell because there’s so much trauma that goes into the process of building a business.

Melinda Wittstock:

Startups, no matter the stage, even as your revenue is growing, even as you have that product market fit, there’s always going to be things coming out of left field that you just don’t know. You can’t really foresee. How to deal psychologically, I guess, with all the things that are outside of your control, doubling down on what you can and figuring out what to do with the stuff you can’t. It’s really hard. I think a lot of people go into startups not knowing just how much of that they’re going to face, all the way through the trajectory, even coming close to exit. How do you deal with that, from a mindset standpoint, from a sort of psychological, or mindset sort of within you?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Yeah, I think my answer, and I’m sorry, this is not the best answer, is just staying so focused on the problem that you’re trying to solve, and every single day, prioritizing the two to three biggest things that are going to make the biggest impact in your business. Every single day I could be solving dozens of fires, but what can I delegate? What can I ignore? What fires can I let burn for the sake of prioritizing the most important things to drive a business forward, because you’re not running a Venture backed to business that be static. Every single day, it’s got to be big moves.

Melinda Wittstock:

So Ingrid, you’ve accomplished so much already, but there’s so much more to come. What are your biggest challenges, or kind of 3:00 in the morning kind of moments right now, as you continue to progress?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

The biggest moments are going to be building out the infrastructure for us to actually to be able to scale this business and deliver the best patient experience across two providers. Also, building up our wait list of dentists who fit the right criteria for us, both from a quantitative and a cultural perspective, so that we can fruit out, later this fall, our business model.

Melinda Wittstock:

Fantastic. Where do you think you’ll be in five years’ time, say?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

I don’t know. A global company.

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

In five years, we want to be at a place where we are truly… We’ve built out the technology to empower orthodontists to run practices from local dental offices, deliver the best patient experience, streamline their operations, and give everyone what they’re looking for, like be able to really truly serve the individual patient and the business owner.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, I have no doubt that you will get there. I want to make sure people know how to find you Ingrid, and support you in any way. What’s the best way? How could people help out, and what’s the best way to contact you?

Dr. Ingrid Murra:

Yeah. Our website is www.mytwofront.com. Always, please feel free to reach out on Instagram, @mytwofront, all spelled out like my two front teeth, and my personal Instagram is @DrIngridMurra.

Melinda Wittstock

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Dr. Ingrid Murra

Thank you so much for having me.