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Grin - Oral Health Care Products

The Company: Oral care has not fundamentally evolved in 500+ years, yet good oral health is becoming increasingly harder to achieve. Grin is an industry-disrupting Eco-system using patent-pending technology to re-imagine the consumer's relationship with oral care.

Grin is simply a new and innovative re-design of the traditional toothbrush and a product designed to give consumers perfectly brushed and clean teeth in less than 2 minutes.

Meet the Founders

Hamet & Kenny

Hamet Watt is an entrepreneur, investor, and veteran in the venture capital community. In 2020, he announced the formation of Share Ventures, a venture studio that solves problems by creating and investing in innovative companies that unlock human potential. Watt was previously a venture partner at Upfront Ventures and remains a board partner. He is also a senior advisor to BCG Digital Ventures and was Entrepreneur-in-residence at True Ventures. He was the Executive Chairman and Co-founder of MoviePass and NextMedium, and serves on the corporate boards of NextPlus, Pathmatics, and Canary Health. 

Kenny Brown is responsible for providing the overall strategy and vision for Grin. His ability to connect and communicate is the foundation of his leadership effectiveness. Kenny's clinical expertise is rooted in his 15+ years of practice as an Oral & Maxillofacial Surgeon, serving as Founding Dental Director for community clinics, and laboratory research. A Stanford University alum, Kenny is no stranger to entrepreneurship, working in business development with a medical device incubator and University technology transfer office.

The Product: Utilizing patent-pending technology to simultaneously brush all your teeth in 10 seconds flat it also sanitizes your mouthpiece using UV light after every brush in the docking station. Thus, providing easy, fast, and hygienic oral care every time you brush your teeth.

By integrating an oral scanner into the Base Module, they will be able to utilize machine learning and computer vision software to analyze, monitor, and improve your oral health securely from the comfort of your home — or anywhere in the world.

They have assembled a Share team of diverse venture/ entrepreneur hybrids as well as engineers, designers, operators, scientists, and more. They work alongside their talented entrepreneurial teams (like the Grin team) as shared resources that collaborate on creating new business concepts, enable traction, provide seed funding, and drive acceleration. Essentially the studio model enables the Share team to act as force multipliers, letting the Grin team do more with less.

Pricing: They are currently optimizing the pricing to range between $129-$179. This price point is based on Consumer Market Tests, Market Price Analysis of electric toothbrushes, and Amazon Sales of electric toothbrushes. They will continue to optimize this price point through continued consumer market tests as they get closer to market.

THE PROS:  The founders, disruption opportunity, capital access, and tech.

The Founders: The founders have a great combination of experience, domain knowledge, product expertise, and fundraising ability.

Disruption Opportunity: There are 131 million electric toothbrush users in the US and this is expected to grow to 189 million in 2026 (45% growth).

Capital Access: This company is coming out of a well capitalized venture studio that the founder Hamet started. He was a partner at Upfront Ventures so is very experienced in the art of raising capital.

IP & Tech: They are working with Perkins Coie LLP on their IP roadmap and it is centered around the following categories: 1. Machine learning Algorithms/architecture taking advantage of dental scan data 2. Advanced mouthpiece curvature 3. Bristle and bristle plate innovations 4. Manufacturing and Hyper-agile manufacturing techniques. Perkins Coie believes they have 20 fileable patent applications within their current breakthrough innovations.

THE RISKS:  Hardware is capital intensive, competition, regulation.

Capital Intensive: Hardware companies can bring in a lot of revenue but products can also be very capital intensive because companies are dealing with manufacturing, supply chain logistics, shipping & returns, and etc.

Competition: 1.Oral-B of P&G, Philips Sonicare, and Colgate account for over 80% of the market. Exist under an umbrella together with many other brands. 2. Quip, Burst.*** Beautifully designed affordable toothbrushes and subscription-based Eco-system through e-commerce. 3. Y-brush, Autobrush, Symplbrush. Whole mouth toothbrush brands exist in the same sub-segment as Grin.

Regulatory: The Grin docking station is a Class I medical device that will register with the EPA and FDA because it utilizes UV light. Under the current classification they would be hindered from advertising medical claims when going to market. This wouldn't prevent them from going to market but would impact how they are able to advertise the product. They have already started the process to turn the product into a Class II medical device and this approval risk would greatly reduce this risk.

Investors: Share is re-imagining what early-stage venture and entrepreneurship look like and is backed with long-term capital from world-class limited partners. Share Ventures (“Share”) is a venture “studio”, – meaning they both invent and invest from the ground up. Investors include: Bold, True Ventures, Upfront Ventures, Jumpstart Nova, Founder of Byte, Neremia.

Celeb Investors: Issa Rae and Kerry Washington.

Terms:  The company has closed $5M fundraise with a $20M cap. We were able to get a $100k allocation and will be looking to close via an Access Club SPV by next week.

Final Takeaway:  As always, there are always risks associated with investing in startups but in this case you are making an investment in some proven and experienced professionals. Hamet is a seasoned venture capitalist in the eyes of many but is also a seasoned founder who previously built a massive company. Kenny's experience as an oral surgeon gives him the domain expertise needed to tackle to the tough problems related to creating better oral care products. They are already off to a strong start and hope to bring true disruption to an industry that hasn't seen much innovation.