David Dorfman, founder of YAPI, discusses building and selling his dental software company in an eight-figure exit.
David Dorfman, founder of YAPI, discusses building and selling his dental software company in an eight-figure exit. He also shares insights on his new venture, Blue Navy Recovery, which helps recover unclaimed funds.
Honestly, probably stay humble and stay curious. When you stay curious, you get to hear people's vulnerable situations in their lives that allows you to have an opportunity to help them. Staying curious allows you to create solutions that you would have never thought you would have been able to create. >> [music] >> Alrighty, hello everyone and welcome to the Deal Maker Show. So, today we have a really awesome founder, you know, a founder that now he's on his second startup, you know, the last one, you know, quite the quite the successful outcome. You know, really fully bootstrapped is the way that he likes to do it. It involved a private equity. But again, you know, I think that he's really quite quite quite a founder when it comes to automating things and and figuring things out, you know, in order to streamline. I mean, we're going to be talking about how they thought
about building on the first one. It took them 3 years to ramp things up. Also, like some of the stories of the things that they are now covering with their current business, but most importantly what you guys like to hear, which is building, scaling, financing, and exiting. So, let's welcome our guest today. And without further ado, David Dorfman. Welcome to the show. >> How's it going, Alejandro? It's nice to be here. Thanks for having me. >> So, originally born in California, in Los Angeles. Give us a walk through memory lane. How was life growing up in Orange County for you? >> Yeah, born in Los Angeles, grew up in Orange County. It's always feels like a bubble, people say, but it's definitely great. Lot of, you know, interesting talent in the area. Lot of my friends started out to do different startups and businesses. So, it's a great area to grow up in, but I think
ultimately California is is the tech the tech, you know, capital of the world, so it's always nice to be there. >> How did you get that bug of wanting to automate things? I mean, where where did that come from? >> I guess early on as a child, I always wondered why things were the way that they are. It felt like things were outdated and you know, when the computer came around and internet came around and keyboards came around, it just felt like a lot of the things that we were doing day-to-day could be replaced or automated to, you know, bring back more of our time so that we could focus on what's important. So, everything from, you know, schoolwork to to note-taking to project management in my life, and ultimately, you know, how we started our first company with automating my sister's dental office. >> I mean, that was quite the year 2008. You know, your father loses
the job, your sister starts a dental office, and how do you find yourself in the middle of it, you know, pushing and and and and doing things with with them? >> Yeah, it's actually a funny story. It was a dinner dinner conversation where my dad told everyone in the family that he was getting laid off from Toshiba. At the same time, that same conversation, my sister was talking about her opening up her first dental practice after she finished her dental school and MBA at USC. And she kept telling us that there's this, you know, hole in the market that there's no solution to automate her patient intake, that currently half of the time spent for her patients are sitting in the front office filling out information that they've already provided us. And ultimately, at that same time, there was discussions about, you know, the iPad coming out, and we thought, well, since my dad has some
free time now, and I had just graduated high school and getting into college, we thought, well, what can we do as a fun side project to help my sister, you know, be able to take in more patients and have patients being in the actual operatory and not sitting in the front office. >> So, how does that go from like fun conversation at dinner and and a weekend project to all of a sudden building a business? >> Yeah, so it started off just, you know, my dad and I spending a few weeks building a simple prototype, understanding her, you know, requirements. And ultimately we had surprised her. She had no clue that we were building something and one day my dad calls her and says, "Hey, why don't you check this out? We sent you an iPad. You know, go ahead and take a look. What tell us what you think." And ultimately it was a very simple patient intake form that would ingest data that
already exist in their system and allows the patient to review and update any kind of changes and all those changes will be updated back into their system. Um it took us, you know, months to kind of perfect this full product from automating the intake forms to understanding what forms are required and going from, you know, just intake forms to consents and different types of treatment plans as well. Um she also was very vocal in the communities. She was a part of a community called the DentalTown, which is now on Facebook. Um and she was just talking about her struggles and sharing that this is the solution that she had, you know, us build for her. And it kind of garnered some interest from other fellow dental offices that wanted to try this out. And ultimately we found a few champion offices that provided us their feedback as much as possible so that we can really understand what works
not in just her office, but in all offices of all different sizes. >> How was it like working with a family, you know? How how how was that experience though? >> It's the best thing and the worst thing at the same time, right? So, um working with family, you know that they always have your back and your best interest in mind. Um but when it comes to discussions, you know, there's there's no limits in some some conversations, right? But, you know, through those conversations at the dinner table and what's nice is, you know, it's not really a work thing. It's something that we're passionate about. So, you know, figuring issues out and figuring problems out. Luckily we, you know, I was working at my sister's dental office in the summertime so I was seeing first hand how this actually helped and what were the gaps that were still existing just because we built an iPad product,
then the next question was, well, how do we know when a patient's arrived at the dental office? How do we know, you know, what documents they need to fill out? How do we know what payments they need to fill out? Um so, we started to build an entire suite of software solutions based on the the gaps of my sister's office along with all of our champion offices. >> And how do you go from 3 years of building where your mommy's like, guys, what are you doing? Right? I mean, even may- maybe you guys should get a job or something. From that to like all of a sudden, you know, you start you start to make money, you know, it starts to become a a business that is self-sustained. How How do you go from from building to actually making money? >> Yeah, so that's a great question. So, you know, when when my dad got laid off, he he they gave him uh you know, a package that he's able to access
certain funds at a sooner at a sooner point because of that layoff, and ultimately, my mom was working, you know, double time and overtime and holidays at the hospital, and it got to a point where my mom told us like, this isn't really working out after a year, and it it it kind of, you know, it hit our ego, for sure, but at the same time, we knew what we were doing was an actual necessity. It's not like we found an interesting opportunity to make money, like we want to sell some kind of courses or something. We knew that there was an actual gap in the in the dental office. So, we kept pushing, we kept getting feedback from our clients. We would go to dental trade shows, and we would have people pass our pass by our booths, and it took a few years for people to really recognize us that we're still around, that we're still providing value. And at the time, it was a one-time fee. We were
desperate for customers. We wanted people to sign up, so we offered them a small one-time fee, and ultimately, we just wanted their feedback on how we can provide more value in their practice. Um and it got to a point where we started to become a point of conversation on these online, you know, communities and Facebook groups, and people started to reach out to us and say, "Hey, you know, what is this that you guys offer for the intake forms?" Um and and slowly we were replacing the old Topaz signature pads in offices. We had a deal where we would come in and we would buy all your signature pads for the price that you would actually buy them for and we would replace those with iPads. And you know, over time with providing amazing customer experiences and providing hands-on, you know, support to all of our clients and really listening to their needs, we started to create a real good end
product.…