Toothaches are one of the top reasons people end up in the emergency room, where there’s no dentist to treat them.
In this entrepreneur interview, Dr. Maria Kunstadter, dentist and founder of The TeleDentists, shares how a national conference on the opioid crisis sparked the idea for virtual dentists. She also explains how COVID drove 1,200% growth in a single year, and why she’s now taking teledentistry into emergency rooms, rural communities, and countries with only a few hundred dentists. Whether you’re a startup founder in health tech or a healthcare leader working on access to care, this founder story shows what it takes to build in a space that’s been slow to change.
What you’ll learn:
- How teledentistry consultations work
- Why toothaches cost ERs nearly $3 billion
- The link between oral health and chronic disease
- Scaling a telehealth startup across states and countries
- Why dentists gain patients, not lose them
⏱️ Chapters:
0:00 “You saved my life that day”
0:48 How teledentistry works
2:11 Why toothaches end up in the ER
4:11 COVID and 1,200% growth
5:29 The $3 billion ER toothache problem
6:41 Why dental is separate from medical
7:58 Oral health and chronic disease
9:32 Teledentistry in rural communities
14:08 Health care is cultural: going global
15:48 Why dentistry is slow to innovate
17:45 Scaling telehealth across borders
18:36 When a dental emergency isn’t an emergency
19:30 Why dentists should welcome teledentistry
21:11 Fuel, Northwest Arkansas, and how to connect
About Dr. Maria Kunstadter: Dr. Kunstadter is the CEO and founder of The TeleDentists, a teledentistry platform offering virtual dental consultations, e-prescriptions, and next-step appointment scheduling. She is a member of the Fuel health tech accelerator cohort.
🔗https://www.theteledentists.com/
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🔗https://startupjunkie.org/
What is The Startup Junkies Podcast?
Candid conversations with the founders, operators, and investors building companies in Northwest Arkansas and beyond.
The Startup Junkies Podcast is hosted by Jeff Amerine, founder of Startup Junkie, a Northwest Arkansas organization that has provided no-cost consulting, programs, and events to entrepreneurs for more than 15 years. Each week Jeff and the Startup Junkie team sit down with people who have actually done it: first-time and serial founders, small business owners, investors, accelerator alumni, and the ecosystem builders working alongside them.
Expect real stories, not lectures. How they got started, how they found their first customers, how they raised money or chose not to, what nearly broke them, and what they would do differently. Topics range from validating an idea and finding capital to hiring, marketing, leadership, scaling, and selling the business.
With more than 450 episodes since 2015, the back catalog covers nearly every stage of building a company in Arkansas and the Mid-South. If you are starting something, growing something, or helping founders do either, this show is for you.
This feed also carries Querido Emprendedor, our Spanish-language founder series, and the Fuel Podcast, featuring companies from Startup Junkie's Fuel Accelerator.
New episodes weekly. Show notes, transcripts, and the full archive at startupjunkie.org/podcast.
Startup Junkie's mission: improving lives through innovation and entrepreneurship, from Northwest Arkansas around the globe.