Wardah Inam says she quit her job and shadowed dentists, finding through data that underdiagnosis is more common than overdiagnosis, because dentists lack tools rather than will.
Overjet funded its first year from Inam's savings, a parental house down payment check, and a dentist's check, while an angel told her only 2 percent of female founders get funded and suggested a male CEO.
Inam says product market fit began when insurers Guardian and Delta Dental signed on, after Overjet automated claims checks and won every RFP it entered.
Overjet turned a dental X-ray dispute into measurable AI
Overjet is building objective measurement into dentistry, starting with X-ray analysis. Dentists disagree because nothing quantifies disease, and insurers reviewing claims by hand need the same measures. Selling to insurers first paid for development while FDA clearance for dentists was pending.
Takeaways
Dentistry lacked objective measures of disease. Wardah Inam got very different treatment plans and opinions from dentists, so it felt like art over science. Private equity consolidation, which began 10 to 15 years earlier, left no clinical quality measure. Overjet quantifies disease on X-rays, such as a cavity at 25 percent of crown area.
Underdiagnosis is more common than overdiagnosis. After shadowing dentists, Inam analyzed data and found significantly more underdiagnosis than overdiagnosis. She argues dentists want to do the right thing but lack the tools. Shared measures let dentists agree on a diagnosis.
Insurers were the right first customers. Insurers had the most urgent need, with teams of dentists reviewing claims by hand. Overjet first automated administrative checks, such as whether the X-ray was the right one, then moved to medical necessity. Dentist customers needed FDA clearance, so insurers came first.
Insurer wins marked the start of product market fit. Guardian and Delta Dental signed by the seed round. About one in three demo viewers reacted with a wow, and Overjet won every RFP it entered. Insurers saw more consistent decisions and some fully automated review. Revenue came later.
Fundraising was hard for an outsider. Inam had no investor network, and AI was not a hot topic. A pre-seed angel wanted far more traction than usual. Another said only 2 percent of female founders get funded and suggested a male CEO. Pablo Srugo notes pattern recognition creates blind spots.
Speed matters most, and hard work gives an edge. Advising her 2018 self, Inam says speed is probably the most important thing in a startup. Her impatience, once seen as a flaw, should be built into company culture. She says hard work is real and has no shortcuts.
How Overjet got started
Inam left clean energy after her PhD because policy, not technology, held it back. She moved into biomedical sensing and imaging, then joined Q bio for its mission and a founder with a successful company.
A move led her to a new dentist whose treatment plan differed sharply from her old one. Other dentists gave other opinions on the same X-rays. She quit without a startup idea and began shadowing dentists.
An Uber Pool conversation led to a dentist introduction. Alex, a dentist with MIT experience and an interest in entrepreneurship, became her co-founder. She hired Deepak, whom she knew from Q bio and Amazon.
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Her savings and two checks, one from her parents meant for a house down payment and one from a dentist, funded about a year. Srugo puts early money at roughly $100,000.
E14 Fund, MIT's fund, wrote the first institutional check. Overjet also received space at Harvard Innovation Labs.