Shiva Kumar is the Co-Founder & CTO of Dentulu, a health-tech platform unifying the fragmented world of dentistry into a single ecosystem for providers, offices, patients, and suppliers. In this conversation, Shiva shares how Dentulu evolved from mobile dentistry to a comprehensive telehealth platform—accelerated by COVID—and why meticulous, millimeter-level clinical workflows demand a very different approach than “move fast and break things.”
We discuss Dentulu’s core innovations, including virtual post-op care and remote diagnostics powered by MouthCam—an affordable, patient-use intraoral camera that streams images directly to the patient chart so dentists can decide whether an in-office visit is necessary. Shiva explains how the team standardized salivary diagnostics—linking oral health to systemic conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and certain cancers—through integrated lab partnerships. He also details Dentulu’s sleep apnea program: dentist-designed mandibular advancement devices that can be prescribed and managed largely through virtual workflows, with typical insurance reimbursements in the $4,000–$6,000 range.
On the tech side, Shiva opens the hood on Dentulu’s HIPAA-compliant, microservices-based architecture, emphasizing reliability, scenario testing, and patient safety over speed. He outlines Dentulu’s AI layer: domain-specific chat agents for dental Q&A, voice dictation to SOAP-note summaries, and an app marketplace where third-party AI tools can plug into the platform via middleware. He also shares lessons from raising $3.5–$4M, investing personal capital and sweat equity, and leading a 120-person engineering effort to ship and scale the product.
A major theme is global team building. Shiva breaks down how to maintain quality and culture across time zones (clear product ownership, rigorous evaluation, vertical expertise in health tech, and a shared vision), plus the practical rhythms—project managers spanning zones, a universal daily sync, and relentless documentation—to keep delivery predictable.
Shiva also reflects on co-founder dynamics with Dr. Raj, a third-generation dentist: pairing deep domain expertise with technical leadership. His advice for founders seeking a technical counterpart: look beyond coding skill to solution architecture, business judgment, cost discipline (e.g., cloud spend), and the ability to make hard trade-offs under investor pressure. Co-founding is “a marriage”—you won’t find perfect, but you must commit, communicate, and grow into 100% together.
About Shiva Kumar:
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/shivakumarc/
About Federico Ramallo ✨👨💻🌎
🚀 Software Engineering Manager | 🛠 Founder of DensityLabs.io & PreVetted.ai | 🤝 Connecting 🇺🇸 U.S. teams with top nearshore 🌎 LATAM engineers
- 💼 https://www.linkedin.com/in/framallo/
- 🌐 https://densitylabs.io
- ✅ https://prevetted.ai
🎙 PreVetted Podcast 🎧📡
- 🎯 https://prevetted.ai/podcast
- 🐦 https://x.com/PrevettedPod
- 🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/company/prevetted-podcast
00:00 Introduction to Denlulu and Its Vision
02:47 Building a Unified Dental Ecosystem
05:34 Challenges in Software Development for Dentistry
08:26 Telehealth Transformation in Dentistry
11:10 Innovative Solutions for Remote Dental Care
14:03 The Role of Co-Founders in Tech Startups
16:48 Finding the Right Technical Co-Founder
19:34 Trade-offs in Tech Development
22:10 Maintaining Quality Across Global Teams
25:14 Building Effective Global Teams
28:01 Navigating Time Zone Challenges
31:15 Implementing AI in Healthcare
34:36 Understanding Target Customers
36:54 Overcoming Challenges in Healthcare Innovation
38:25 Insights from Speaking at the UN
41:07 Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
43:25 Future Plans for DENTULU