The following interview is a conversation we had with Alfred Griffin, CEO of LightForce, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $150 Million Raised to Power the Future of Orthodontics

Alfred Griffin
Thanks for bringing over. Right. Excited to be here. 

Brett
Not a problem at all. So, to kick things off, can we just start with a quick summary of who you are and a bit more about your background? 

Alfred Griffin
Yeah, my name is. Yeah, Alfred Griffin, CEO, Co-Founder of LightForce Orthodontics. I’m actually an orthodontist. Grew up in a family of dentists. My parents met a dental school, somewhat of an inbred dentite, if you will, and ended up in Boston and became very passionate about 3d printing. And that led to us founding LightForce Orthodontics to solve the big problem in this field. 

Brett
Now, in the back of your head, when you were going through school, did you always plan on starting a technology company at some point? 

Alfred Griffin
No, not at all, actually did not even found this company to start a company, but really founded it to start or solve a problem. Actually was a failed scientist before founding this company. It turns out the science project I was working on to move teeth faster was not fundable because people didn’t die from orthodontic problems. So I had to pivot into solving this problem, which, if you’re an orthodontist, is not a brilliant idea. It’s an obvious problem that is solved uniquely by applying modern software and 3d printing technology. So it felt like low hanging fruit. And also being in the Boston area, which is home to some of the best 3d printing companies, robotics companies, hard tech, and CAD software, it felt like a natural home to recruit the talent to solve this big problem in orthodontics. 

Brett
When it comes to inspiration for you, are there any specific founders that come to mind that just really have inspired you in your journey? 

Alfred Griffin
Yeah, look, like I said, what we’re doing is not a brilliant idea. It’s brilliant execution by a very talented team and one of the founders that I’ve met who I think is a unique expert on the human condition and well being, which is, I think, important to create a culture where talent wants to reside is Ariana Huffington. I actually got to meet her recently and had a very interesting conversation on the human condition. And she derives excerpts from meditations by Marcus Aurelius and then in the same tone, shares how that influences her decisions to keep her phone away from her ignite. I mean, just brilliant person. That’s, I would say, an expert on the human condition and creating a positive culture where very talented people want to spend their time. 

Alfred Griffin
And that’s critical to solving big problems like this, is creating a culture where the world’s greatest talent wants to spend their time. 

Brett
She’s done such a good job of being a leading voice for kind of anti hustle culture. So I feel like that became big a couple of years ago. Everyone just talking about grinding away your life. And she came out, no, let’s take care of ourselves. I remember that one tweet she sent to Elon Musk where he was like, what happened? It was him leaving the factory at, like, 04:00 a.m. And she was like, please, Elon, stop. I think his response, like, you don’t understand. Sleep is not an option. Exactly. 

Alfred Griffin
There’s a balance. There’s a balance, and you only have so many life minutes to give. And a big part of a lot of people’s currency in life is solving big problems and intellectual curiosity. But you can’t forget that people have families and other lives as well, and only when those things are in balance. I think you get people operating at top of their level, top of their abilities. 

Brett
How do you manage it all with your personal life, with business, with family? What do you do to try to balance things out? 

Alfred Griffin
Well, to some extent, I don’t think I’ve been perfect at it, but to some extent, I try to combine them. For example, coming up, we have a Lake Forest rise event in Miami later in November. We have a lot of our doctors coming, and November is a great time to be in November if you live in Boston. So I’m bringing my wife care and daughter Tilly to Miami with me. So other than that, I think there are things that are very important to me that are sacred that I just won’t give up. And that includes my daughter. Bath time and story time and brushed teeth especially. Those are dad duties, and those from seven to 830 at night are sacred, and everybody knows that. I think being religious about those things and obeying some of those rules is critical. 

Brett
What about books and the way we like to frame this? It comes from Ryan Holiday. He calls them quickbooks. So a quickbook is a book that rocks you to your core, really influences how you think about the world and how you approach life. Do any quickbooks come to mind? 

Alfred Griffin
Yeah. I love history, and I think one of the things that I loved about Ariana’s is know she referenced the classics to guide a lot of her leadership principles. A book I read recently was called Lincoln on leadership, and it was about Abraham Lincoln and what he did throughout his presidency. And just some of the tenets that he led by, I think are timeless. Just like you can look at the classics and see a lot of the leadership principles back there are timeless. Some of the ones that Lincoln mentioned were things like get out of the office and circulate amongst the troops. I think that’s a pretty relevant thing today when this big work from home culture. One of the great things about working at a startup is being surrounded by top talent and being able to sharpen your axe against other top talent. 

Alfred Griffin
And that’s hard to do when you’re behind a computer screen. Other things, such as being honest and transparent, it sounds basic, but when you do that, you build trust. And trust is a core principle of LightForce , which sounds cliche, but once you have it and once you earn it enables you to make quicker decisions in an organization and move faster, minimizing bureaucracy and things like that. So lots of timeless principles, I think, from that book that hold true. 

Brett
My fiance likes to call me a history nerd, so it sounds like they fit into a similar bucket. One question a friend asked me recently, which I thought was just a really fun question, is that if you could be born in any other time period in history, what would that period be? So what would it be for you? If you could be born any other time, what would be that ideal time to be born? 

Alfred Griffin
It feels like a pedal fee. I kind of like the time we’re in right now. 

Brett
Yeah. Outside of where we are currently. If you had to go back, where would it be? 

Alfred Griffin
Oh, man. I think I would be born as close as possible to the time we’re in now. Just because I don’t know if people really understand how technology has actually made life so much easier. Modern medicine, modern technology, the conveniences, things that bring us closer together. I guess I do have a bit of nostalgia for a time when I wasn’t around, when neighborhood kids would just get on their bike and go visit their friends, and life sounds like it was a lot simpler back in the. But again, I would be a time traveling visitor, not a permanent resident. I really like the time that we’re in right now. 

Brett
Yeah, I studied like John D. Rockefeller a lot. And when I read through his books and just about his life, he had all this money and all this stuff, and you couldn’t really do anything. There was nothing even fun to do with all of that money. So it doesn’t sound like it was that fun to even be at that level of success back then. So I agree, the courage is much better than back then. Yeah. 

Alfred Griffin
If you are a multimultimillionaire in the early 19 hundreds, that equates to being actually less than someone with roughly middle class means or lower class means today, given what the value of modern medicine brings, modern technology, things like that. So, yeah, it is wild. 

Brett
Yeah. Rockefeller may have been like a multi billionaire, but he couldn’t push a button and have food show up at his house 20 minutes later. So big wins, right? 

Alfred Griffin
Exactly. He also couldn’t drive a Tesla. 

Brett
True. Let’s switch gears now and let’s dive a little bit deeper into the company. I know you touched on it in the intro there, but let’s just expand on it. So, focusing on the problem, how do you summarize the problem that you solve? 

Alfred Griffin
The problem is that a lot of 3d data is required to do a really good job in orthodontics. And the only digital solution that gives you that power today is through clear aligners, which only work for roughly 20% of the population. 80% of people in the US and 92% of people globally use braces today. And today that’s still. You take stock brackets out of a box, they all look the same. It looks like a bunch of nuts, bolts and screws. And you stick it on a tooth where you think it goes. And then you do a lot of tightening. You bend wire by line of sight to account for a one size fits no one bracket, and a very unique patient specific tooth, and patient specific bite and patient specific smile. So it’s very hard to do a good job with that. 

Alfred Griffin
And as a result, patients typically have to be seen for braces about 17 times. And there are a lot of tightenings which in reality mean unnecessary tooth movements. We solve that by essentially taking apply 3d printing in modern software technology, so that every tooth, instead of taking an indirect flight to the ideal end position, takes a direct flight to the ideal end position. And like I said, this is not a brilliant idea. It depends if you’re an orthodontist, it’s just were waiting for modern technology to catch up. It’s funny, a lot of people create the analogy to what we’re doing to clear aligners, and people assume that clear aligners were invented around 1998, when invisalign came around. But the reality is they were actually invented in 1946. 

Alfred Griffin
What they would do is they would take the goopy impressions you’ve probably had, and they would pour up a stone model and they would cut the teeth and move them by millimeters and superglue them back in the right place and vacuum form them and make aligners that way. But that is not scalable and way too expensive. And that’s what invisalign really solved in 1998, is they applied modern CAD software and 3d printing technology to operationalize aligner manufacturing. And it was a wonderful thing for patients. It created a market for adult orthodontic treatment that didn’t exist before. There were many adults who did not get orthodontic treatment because they did not want braces, and aligners were a great thing for them, for orthodontists, enabled them to grow their business and provided great value to the world. 

Alfred Griffin
I would argue what we’re doing at life force is the same thing. Applying modern software technology, moderate 3d printing technology, to what is actually a bigger market that serves more specifically the teen market, whereby teens are going to be not as compliant with clear liners. They’re going to have more complex tooth movements. They’ve never had treatment before. So all the things that the tooth movements that aligners are not great at, like pulling upper teeth down, rotating premolars, tipping molars, things like that, braces are really good at. And guess what? You can’t take them off. So that’s why we came in and said, hey, let’s apply the same principles to make braces treatment more efficient and have a better user experience for patients and doctors. 

Alfred Griffin
And we actually just had a clinical trial, a peer reviewed clinical trial come out last couple of months ago, actually showing that we had a greater than 40% reduction in the number of treatment appointments and a greater than 40% reduction in the total treatment time. And on top of that, better results when you compare it to stock braces. So if you’re a parent bringing your child in, that’s roughly seven fewer visits. That means seven fewer times taking your kid out of school, seven fewer times taking off work, 14 less trips to the orthodontist, you’re burning less fossil fuel. Whatever you care about, there’s a clear value to the parents. For patients, this is a very mission driven company where every all hands. We start with patients first. We have a doctor present. How did they help somebody? 

Alfred Griffin
And that’s the magic of what we’re doing, is we’re really serving a patient population that needed most the teen and adolescent market. Do you have any kids? 

Brett
Not yet. 

Alfred Griffin
Not yet. Okay, well, teens, that’s when you’re really forming your sense of self in the world. It’s a very sensitive age, and so when you can get them to an ideal smile in a very efficient time, you just see it. They smile more. Their parents, if you’re the doctor, they give you hugs and say, you did all this for my child. They’re getting better grades. They’re more social. They having all kinds of fun and luggage. There’s a lot of feel good moments to helping improve somebody’s smile at that. 

Brett
Age in life makes sense from a parent perspective. When I was a teen, though, I would have viewed you as like the devil. That was like, the highlight of my life, was like getting to leave school for any reason possible. And you always had dentist appointments and doctors appointments and things like that. So if you’re telling me you would have taken those away, I would have been offended as a teenager. 

Alfred Griffin
Well, some people would trade that in for not having braces at prom, though. So there’s a balance. 

Brett
Yeah, that’s fair now. So that makes complete sense. We’re looking at the parent side and the consumer side, that it’s a better experience. Less trips on the business side, though, for the orthodontist, do they make less money then, and is there less revenue because there’s less appointments? 

Alfred Griffin
That’s one of the things that we’re figuring out with our customers, first of all. Yes, they should make more money. It comes with a higher lab fee. So they pay more for LightForce  than they would for stock braces, but they see the patient seven fewer times or around there. And so what that means is that they should make more money per visit, despite the higher lab. And that means they either need to grow or they need fewer days in clinic. Maybe they need less staff. Whatever it is, they should be more efficient, and they need to run their business that way. So we have many doctors out there where all they use is clear liners and LightForce , and that’s we refer to as a digital practice. 

 

Alfred Griffin
If you look at the business profile of those practices, I would expect them to have lower or better operating margins. But the way you get there is a little nuanced. They should have higher lab fees and lower staff costs. Lower overall overhead, so their profit per visit should be much higher. And look, there’s pressive for this. You take something like clear aligners, which have been around for 20 plus years, that has roughly double the asp of LightForce . And for the right patient, you can still make more profit per visit on that model. So we know that it works. We’ve been a product for three and a half years, though. So I would say there’s still a lot of learning going on. 

Alfred Griffin
But things like this clinical trial that just got published, a lot of the case studies we’re doing, and profiles on the practices that have adopted LightForce, all in, we’re seeing some very positive results that would suggest what we have believed in theory all along is actually happening. In practicality, this is probably a dumb. 

Brett
Question, but I’ll ask it and pretend it’s just for the audience. Who regulates this? Is this regulated by the FDA or is this not regulated by anyone? 

 

Alfred Griffin
No, it’s absolutely regulated by the FDA. So we are a 510k class two device, both for the software and for the hardware. And I remember when we first got our FDA approval back in 2018, we had a very close relationship with the FDA because there really was not a whole world of 3d printed directly. 3d printed medical devices, clear aligners involve 3d printing, but the actual thing you put in your mouth is not 3d printed. To that point, a lot of the 3d printed medical devices were in the orthopedic world where they would 3d print knee replacements, hip replacements. But that market actually never really took off, Bret, because the value of customization wasn’t as high in the bones as it is in the mouth. You could actually be three to 5, like a hip implant, for example. 

Alfred Griffin
And it’s going to be totally fine because bone is a dynamic living tissue. It’s got bone cells, vasculature, and it’s going to remodel until it’s okay. So the cost of being wrong is as high. But I don’t know if you’ve ever had, like, a filling in your mouth where first thing after they place the filling, the dentist will ask you to bite on, like, blue paper and tap, tap, and then they might file it down half a millimeter. But that first bite, that feels really weird, right? So the dentist shaving down half a millimeter, making it feel good, changes your bite completely. And that’s only for one tooth. Now, imagine if you’re an orthodontist. You got to do that for every tooth in the mouth. 

Alfred Griffin
So essentially what LightForce and things like clear liners do is they eliminate that tinkering that the dentist needs to do or the orthodox needs to do so. The value of customization, I would argue, is higher in the mouth than it is anywhere else in the body. 

Brett
This show is brought to you by Front Lines Media, a podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage, and grow their own podcast. Now, if you’re a Founder, you may be thinking, I don’t have time to host a podcast. I’ve got a company to build. Well, that’s exactly what we’ve built our service to do. You show up and host, and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. Now back today’s episode. When it comes to competition, then, do you view the competition as the Clear liners, or is there still just a massive market of traditional bracket braces that you can disrupt before you even are trying to compete with the invisaligns of the world? 

Alfred Griffin
To be clear, I think clear liners are fantastic. Personally, I still see patients two days a month. That’s an important part of any venture capital we’ve taken, is I’m not giving that up for many reasons. I love seeing patients. We’re a patients first company. But I would say my practice today, something my parents always said growing up is always do what’s best for the patient first and the rest will follow. And I absolutely believe that. And so if the best thing for the patient is a clear liner, that’s what they’re going to get. And for me, that’s about 20%. Now, a lot of people will come see me specifically for LightForce, which is great, but no, I think it’s synergistic. 

Alfred Griffin
I mean, what we envision a future where everything that goes in the mouth is mass customized because of the value to that in terms of efficiency and patient outcomes. And clear liners are absolutely mass customized. They’re the first example of it, I think our main competition is stock braces. Stock metal braces. 

Brett
What types of orthodontists are you seeing? Embrace this. What’s that, like ICP? 

Alfred Griffin
Yeah. The early adopter for us is it’s somebody that understands the benefits of a digital workflow. It can be somebody that wants the best outcomes for their patient. It can be somebody that has had trouble retaining staff. That was actually a big driver of growth for LightForce after Covid is, a lot of the ortho staff didn’t come back, and so they needed to do more with less. And so one of the ways you scale the most expensive employee in a practice, which is the doctor, the orthodontist is you bring on technology that makes them more efficient, like life force. Another nuance to our technology is that the doctor does all the planning on a computer screen. And so, actually, in most states, a well trained orthodontic assistant can actually deliver the braces or install the hardware, as we say. 

Alfred Griffin
Another reason is because maybe some of the older orthodontists don’t want to retire and they don’t want to bending over placing brackets all day. Lightforce eliminates that they can do a better job by placing brackets virtually and then having their staff deliver them. A variety of different reasons. I wouldn’t say it’s age correlated, actually, which is interesting. We would have thought that a lot of our big users were younger orthodontists, recent grads, but that’s actually not the case. It’s a pretty consistent spectrum across the age group. 

Brett
That’s super interesting. 

Alfred Griffin
Yeah, I think we might skew a little bit more east coast right now because the company was founded in the east coast, but we’re seeing fast adoption on the west coast as well. 

Brett
What type of consumer education do you have to do? And how much effort and money and resources do you have to put into consumer education so that they know to ask their orthodontist for this or so that when their orthodontist recommends it, they feel comfortable understanding what this technology is and how it works? 

Alfred Griffin
It’s a really good question. We’ve actually spent very little effort to this point in consumer education, and that’s going to be a focus probably for 24. We’ll probably run some trials this quarter and look at how we do that, refine our playbook there. But we know it’s a lever to pull. I think it’s going to be a bit more of an expensive lever to pull to go direct to consumer. With consumer education, the number one reason a patient chooses an orthodontic appliance, whether it’s aligners or braces or anything like that, is because their orthodontist recommended it. So for that reason, we started with a focus effort towards the professional channel. We wanted to lock arms with providers orthodontists like me, like my dad, and really help them win and help them be the hero of the story. 

Alfred Griffin
And so it kind of created this b to c marketing effort where we arm the orthodontist to market on our behalf and end up with them being the hero of the story. So that’s been the focus, and we’ve won with that model, but we absolutely believe that with some more consumer education, we can win there as well. And that can be an important part of the flywheel, but there’s obviously more noise to cut through when you do direct to consumer marketing like that. 

Brett
Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, I’ve worked with a few companies, when they embark on that, and it’s such an expensive journey, and it’s much more difficult to measure the effectiveness. And it’s a long tail approach of, okay, you’re going to get a consumer to ask their doctor, orthodontist, or dentist about something, and then somehow that leads to a deal. That’s a very complex and long sales cycle. 

Alfred Griffin
Yes, exactly. The extra level of sophistication in the marketing playbook to capture the demand and get it to the right orthodontist. And it’s doable, certainly. I know we have the team today that is capable of executing on that. It’s a stage specific move. 

Brett
One thing I’ve learned from my conversations with founders is they can typically boil the success they’re having down to a few key turning points where this one thing happened and it really changed everything. Do any turning points like that come to mind for you? 

Alfred Griffin
Yes, absolutely. So I remember back in 2020, we had just closed a series B. It was during COVID and obviously during COVID nobody wanted to open their mouths in strange, foreign places. So all the dentists were shut down for about three to four months, which is pretty scary time for us because obviously all of our business went away and we had just launched. But when orthodontists came back, they had this problem where they didn’t want to see patients as often, patients didn’t want to come see them as often, and they had a big staff shortage. So what that did is that it created this impetus to change, and it catalyzed usage of digital technologies like remote monitoring, LightForce, and clear liners. 

Alfred Griffin
And what we observed after that was that patients that hadn’t been seen for five months in liners and LightForce came back to the orthodontist looking great, because the doctor started with the end in mind. All the appliances were designed for that specific patient with the end goal in mind, and they came back looking great, whereby all the. And then, in contrast, the patients that were in stock braces came back looking pretty rough. And so orthodontists were forced to use digital technologies for a short period of time. And what it did, it catalyzed their learning about LightForce , and a lot of people said, oh, my gosh, these cases are coming back looking great. And I didn’t have to see this patient as often, and they’re still coming back looking great. So how can I use this pool to be more efficient? 

Alfred Griffin
And that, at the time, wasn’t innately obvious to us, but we observed how orthodontists were using this and said, hey, what they’re doing is making a lot of sense. And actually, that was an interesting point because it was a moment for LightForce when the product became not ours anymore, but it felt like it belonged to our community of users at that point. They were teaching us how to use this, and that really, for us, created a flywheel of listening to our customers. That was a goal of being invested, listening to our customers, and reacting based on what they did. So our recommendations are really driven from customer feedback, and I think our entire company realized the value of that community at that moment. 

Brett
When it comes to the adoption you’re seeing today, are there any numbers that you can share? 

Alfred Griffin
I can share that. Last year, we grew roughly 300% year over year, and to date, we have roughly 10% of north american orthodontists who are actively submitting cases to LightForce . So after three and a half years in business, I think it’s fair to say we’re growing quite fast. And we are in roughly 23 orthodontic residencies right now as well, which I’m very proud of because those are kind of the thought centers of orthodontics. And the new waves of graduating orthodontists are going to know what digital Orthodontics will look like going forward. I don’t think there’s any doubt that this is what the future of orthodontics will look like. I think how fast it happens is up to our execution and our ability to educate the world of orthodox and patients. 

Brett
What keeps you up at night right now? 

Alfred Griffin
The things that keep me up at night in general are people, culture, and not running out of money. So we just raised a series D, an $80 million series D earlier this year, which was a tough one. So we’re pretty good there. The other things are finding the right people. Again, this is not a brilliant idea, but it requires very talented folks to execute. There’s no blueprint for this. So we need people that can have the ability to learn quickly. And the other thing is culture, and that’s a tough thing as the company grows. About four years ago, we had 20 people. Today we have 650 people. And so one of the natural laws of the startups, they say you should never violate is never double your headcount year over year. We’ve had to do that two years in a row to meet demand. 

Alfred Griffin
So culture is very important. It’s hard to scale culture as the company grows. And so scaling things like transparency are critical goal setting, making sure that everyone is very acutely aware of how what they do influences the company’s goals. And then making sure we can get bottoms up feedback, annual goal setting process, and then continuing to move fast. Making sure that people are all the time thinking about how they balance risk with moving quickly. If nothing changes in this industry, then our competitors will win. Our competitors are big ortho companies, and if nothing changes, they will win. They’ve got a lot of cash and they’ve done very well for many years. And I think there’s a world where everyone does really well together. 

Alfred Griffin
But our strength as a company is to move quickly, and if we fail to continue moving quickly, then the competition wins. And so that’s top of mind for us as well, is scaling that as part of our culture, bringing on the right processes that enable people to continue being creative and build. 

Brett
You mentioned funding there, so I’d love to ask a little bit about the fundraising journey. So you’ve raised over 150,000,000 so far. I’m sure you’ve learned a lot of different things from that journey. If we had to pick like one big lesson, one big takeaway, what would that be? 

Alfred Griffin
Oh, man. It changes at every stage. It changes at every stage. The biggest thing I would say is spend more time preparing for a fundraise than actually fundraising. Make sure you have your story right, make sure that it’s stage specific. So at every stage, people are going to want more data. The later you go, people are going to want more data and more proof. The value of a story is greater at earlier stages, but also it’s got to be in a big market with a big opportunity, where even if things fail, you can still win big. But I think the best advice I could give is spend more time preparing for your fundraise before you actually fundraise and give people access to your data room. 

Brett
What was the toughest round to raise? This most recent one, the series D. 

Alfred Griffin
This was not an easy one. We had a banner year in 22. We were very fortunate that was a year we did really well in. I think everyone’s round was probably overpriced in 2021 a little bit, or maybe appropriately priced for the market, but compared to the world we’re in, right now, it looks a little bit overpriced in retrospect. So were very fortunate to have a significant upround, but it required a banner year to get that done. I would say the hardest round that we raised was in 2020 during COVID I remember coming back from Silicon Valley, getting to SFO, and looking up at the television when the NBA shut down and they were canceling the march Madness, and all of our customers went away, people couldn’t open their mouth in orthodontic offices anymore, and so our revenue went to zero. 

Alfred Griffin
And we still had to fundraise because were a few months away from cash out. So that was probably the most stressful fundraise. 

Brett
It’s funny how everyone remembers that NBA moment. I remember that. And Tom Hanks. Tom Hanks that Covid. And then the NBA shut down, and I was like, all right, this is serious. This is. 

Alfred Griffin
Yeah, yeah. This most recent one was a bit stressful, as, were fortunate enough to have five term sheets in the last series D. And as were deliberating this, the SVV issue happened, and so weren’t sure what was going to happen there. So I remember having a pretty intense board call on Sunday, before markets were going to open on Monday, and saying, we need to get a term sheet signed in case we need to go to a big bank and get a term loan here to keep the business going, because we don’t know where our cash is. Fortunately, everything turned out well there. But every fundraise has its own stresses, and I think people that haven’t gone through it very directly, it always sounds easier than it actually was. 

Brett
Yeah, for sure. Now, outside of fundraising, let’s imagine that you were starting the company again today from scratch. Based on everything that you’ve learned so far, what would be the number one piece of advice that you’d give yourself? 

Alfred Griffin
Always make sure you surround yourself with great people. And that’s the advice I would give to any Founder, is that a company is nothing more than a collection of people. And your ability to execute and scale is going to depend on the level of talent that you can bring in. And it’s worth making that extra call to reference somebody. It’s worth meeting people and making the effort to meet people in person, even if it requires jumping on a plane. But the most important part of building a company is absolutely the people. I’ve heard people argue. You focus on the customers as well. I was a bit fortunate in that my dad is an orthodontist, and a lot of our customers early on were friends, and I’m a customer as well. 

Alfred Griffin
But, man, so much depends on who you hire and who you work with early, including investors. That’s your board. And you can learn so much from the right investors as well. Certainly I was lucky to have great investors, and I did as well. 

Brett
Final question for you. Let’s zoom out three to five years into the future. What’s the big picture vision that you’re building here? 

Alfred Griffin
I think in five years, not just about life force, but I think standard of care in medicine and dentistry will be personalized treatment. And you already see this happening with genome specific cancer therapies. That trend is going to continue into dentistry, into orthodontics, into so many areas where patient care is patient specific. And we certainly believe we’re pioneering this in the largest segment for orthodontics. I expect what we’re doing at LightForce to become standard of care. But across medicine and healthcare, I expect in five years that we have more of an emphasis on personalized medicine, personalized treatment. 

Brett
Amazing. I love the vision. We’re up on time, so we’ll have to wrap if there’s any founders that are listening in that want to follow along with your journey as you build and execute on this vision. Where should they go? 

Alfred Griffin
They should follow our instagram handle and TikTok. We are on both. We are lifehorse. 

Brett
Awesome. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat. This has been a lot of fun. 

Alfred Griffin
Thanks so much, Bret. 

Brett
This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B2B Founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io podcast. And for the latest episode, search for Category Visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening, and we’ll catch you on the next episode. 

Alfred Griffin
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