Dental on Top

A couple of years ago I had the honor to meet the well-known Stanley Bergman, long time CEO and Chairman of the Board of the Fortune 500 and NASDAQ listed Henry Schein, one of the leading dental companies in the world. 

Surely a man of charisma and of an outstanding business intelligence, Stan truly is one of the most powerful men in this business. 

If you want to learn how to run your own company and to keep it perfectly on track throughout the years in a competitive market, you have to ask Stan. But obviously, Stan is a big player, much bigger than most of us. If you are just a normal human being, there are a few take-home-lessons thriving your own success.

In the last few weeks I was in contact with some dental entrepreneurs. Young at heart and with a fresh approach, it seems to me that dental is coming strong. As Partner at Lehel, in charge of the sectors Healthcare, Digital, Life Science and Media, I see a lot of activities in exciting markets. Look at oncology, where companies are finding the pathways to a new kind of therapies. A real powerful industry with the opportunity to give hope to patients and improve their quality of life. Far from being that vital, dentistry is providing its own share in the improvement of patient’s life. In the center of it all is digitization, establishing a continuous workflow from diagnosis to prosthetic solutions, from chairside to the lab and back. It is the powerplay that the big ones, such as Dentsply Sirona, KavoKerr, Henry Schein and Straumann, play. But between these heavyweights there is room for a few innovative startups to get on stage with components that improve the whole workflow. They are in search for capital now to put into practice their ideas, get into the market and be successful in wait for the big deal at the end. If you put them all together in a buy and build strategy, they are no sole fighters in between the reigning few anymore. Along comes a private equity fund, or maybe it isa venture capitalist searching for a new opportunity in a disruptive, digital-driven market. Put them all together, piece by piece, and their impact, their visibilitiy as well as their value will increase significantly.

Finally let’s get back to Stan. Surely Stan will stay the big one in the end. But there is another way, so it seems to me, to cover the market with a new strategy and be the winner in the end. Maybe sitting in the meeting room with Stan and his staff in the middle of a negotiation and looking back as it all started. With an idea, a vision and a few capital rounds.