My name is Juha. I'm originally from Finland. Usko Dental is my third startup. 

We've recently pivoted to building a marketplace that connects Americans with high-quality dental providers abroad. 

Our goal is to help people save on health care costs because the costs in the U.S. are skyrocketing. 

We are starting by helping people connect with vetted dentists in Colombia, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Turkey.

I've now done the startup thing a few times, but when I first started I wasn't in tech. 

I built a bootstrapped sporting goods company in Toronto, Canada promoting a sport called floorball. 

Our sales propelled the company to grow. That was my first entrepreneurial experience. It was a very hard journey.

That sporting goods company ended up getting acquired in 2014. That gave me an opportunity to start something new. 

My wife and I decided to take a huge leap of faith and move to Miami to start a coding school called Wyncode. People thought that was nuts. 

At the time Miami had a very small tech scene but it was super supportive. 

We felt that it presented an opportunity — rather than joining a city that had an existing tech scene we could go someplace without much of a scene and help build it.

It turned out to be a good decision. Miami's tech scene has grown a lot in the 10 years since we started down here. That company was acquired 3 years ago by BrainStation.

That second acquisition gave me an opportunity to start yet again.

The name of my new company is Usko — which means ‘trust’ in Finnish. The original focus of the company was to allow people to monetize their personal data.

I had folks that believed in the idea really early on, which was amazing. We did 2 separate fundraising rounds. 

The first was a $400k pre-seed round. That amount helped us build a proof of concept. 

After that we did a $1.4M seed round, which was to build the product and get it to market. 

We had a vision of enabling personal data collection from many sources around the internet, and putting it into a “super” data set the user owned that would be better than the data anyone else had. 

We thought Web3 was the technology that would allow users to monetize that. We got it built and got some initial traction but unfortunately at the time we launched, Web3 started taking a dive. 

That struggle forced us to think about either closing the business or to try to pivot. We ended up pivoting. That's what led us down this path to medical dental tourism where we are today. 

Our cap table includes a mix of angels and a couple of local Miami funds with really amazing people who took a bet on me as a founder. They’ve been very supportive along the way.

Prior to the pivot we had a pretty clear idea of what we wanted to do. We wanted to raise enough funding to create an MVP and prove that there was product market fit.

Even though we had a clear vision of what we wanted to do, I wanted to make sure I was listening to what the market was telling us. 

When we weren't getting enough traction, we had to make the decision of either trying to do the same thing again or trying to pivot.

We ended up doing a huge pivot and so far it’s worked out as we closed a customer in the first month and have been building from there.

I initially focused on investors that were based in Miami. I was fortunate to have built a company here, and met a lot of great investors along the way. Many folks that I pitched had seen me in action. 

They had been a hiring partner of our coding school grads, a judge at one of our pitch days, or a member of the entrepreneur networks that I'm part of — Entrepreneurs Organization, Endeavor, and Local Leaders Collective.

Even though I ended up getting introductions to investors outside of Miami and Florida, all of my eventual investors were Florida-based.

I mostly used my network of peers, mentors, and some cold outreach.

I ended up leveraging an advisor and good friend of mine, Will Weinraub. He’s raised from all the big VCs and made great introductions.

Investors sometimes introduce you to other investors, even if they don't invest. I've used that as well, especially given the large pivot because we're in a totally different place than we were before. 

I’ll often ask if they can think of 2 investors that they could refer me to who might be interested in leading our round.

Another resource that people can use is local angel groups. I had pitched the largest Miami Angel group, fittingly called Miami Angels, which now I am on the board of.

If you have a local angel group, you can get in with local investors and get feedback as to what they're looking for.

The other thing that I would recommend is trying to get feedback from the people you pitch. It can be hard as these investors are busy, but I always try to follow up until I get an answer. 

It’s worth it to push because it’s almost like a free analysis of the business. It helps me identify blind spots and get feedback I wouldn’t usually get from those close to me. 

I have a CRM of investors from my round and I pitched over 125 people. 

There's definitely more than that because, towards the end of the round, I was sidetracked with starting to build the team and the product. 

We ended up getting around 30 investors on the cap table; but many of those are smaller angel investments that came through angel groups. 

I would say 10% to 15% of the meetings ended up with some type of investment. For the larger checks our hit rate was closer to 5%. 

We had a deck that we used in the fundraise for the data privacy company. 

I would use that deck for the pitches and then follow up with answers to any questions the investors raised on the call. It was early for the company as we didn’t have any revenue.

With what I'm doing now with dental tourism, it's different because we have revenue. 

We just had our best month which was awesome. When I speak with investors today, I focus on marketplace activity and how many dentists we have onboarded.

Since we couldn’t have any of that on the other deck, it was more about painting the picture and selling the big idea of what we were trying to build.

I am happy that we got some big commitments early. 

When we were pitching the original idea, web3 was super hot. Miami was finally on the map, everybody was super excited and a lot of new investors moved into town. 

It's been a little bit more challenging after pivoting because of the hard fundraising climate.

We have revenue, but we haven't yet proved out that it's a slam dunk for VCs. 

One of the things that I've been trying to do with some of the investors is giving as many positive reasons to jump into the round as possible.

We have commitments for hundreds of thousands from other investors that are ready to go, pending a lead investor jumping in.

So I've been trying to use that for anybody who's a potential lead to ask them if they can make a decision so they can jump on board. I tell them we had a great month and what’s been going on.

I always try to be super transparent. There are other tactics some founders use that may or may not work, but I always focus on telling the truth. 

I don't want to overstate things or make it seem like there’s something more than there actually is.

We're in a major pivot from what we were doing before and I wanted to protect the investors who invested in the Web3 idea because their commitment to invest in me matters a lot. 

I could have closed the company down and started another one, but I instead took a bit of a non-traditional approach.

I wanted to make sure that we have some type of connection to the investors who believed in me from the beginning.

But when I’m pitching to new investors; some understand and really appreciate this because they can probably put themselves in the shoes of the other investors. Others see it as messy and pass. 

The other challenge is the TAM. It’s a challenge to paint the picture that medical tourism is something that can be venture-backable, as opposed to a great cash flowing business. 

I can see an Uber-sized business here but not all investors agree. 

I mentioned the first company that I was doing in sporting goods. It was a completely different world and didn’t have much to do with tech.

We ran these huge events and tournaments for this sport called floorball — an indoor hockey game for which I was importing the equipment.

We ended up building tournaments that grew to 70 teams and over a thousand players from around the world.

One of the people who came to the tournament was the organizer of a team from New York, Micael Holmström.  

Later on he joined a big consulting company in Sweden. His team won our tournament a couple of times and we became friends. 

When we were raising money for our coding school Wyncode, I happened to reconnect with him after about 10 years. 

He remembered everything about the floorball world and what we had built and it turned out that the company he worked for was building a coding education arm in Sweden. They wanted to expand to the U.S.

What started as a random reconnection on LinkedIn, turned into the company he worked for buying a chunk of our business and becoming partners.

To me it was a lesson that every relationship from a past business can come back to help, even if it is a decade later, or in a new country. 

I always remind myself the person I’m talking to could end up being a co-founder, investor or partner in the future. 

I’m always working on bringing my best and putting my best foot forward. 

I would recommend trying to get connected to someone who has been through the venture capital fundraising journey before.

If they've managed to raise capital they will be a tremendous learning resource. 

They don't need to have been super successful because most startups fail at the end of the day. The fact they have gone through the process is what matters.

I’m lucky to have a lot of amazing investors on my cap table. If I have to single someone out, it would be Salo Sredni. He’s with Ocean Azul Partners. 

He’s done a call with me every single week for 3 years. We never miss it and he’s always so helpful. 

He’s also a Miami-based investor which I love and their fund is great.

For anybody that's looking for the type of investor who cares about you as a founder, Salo and Ocean Azul Partners are great.

I love in-person local founder groups. There's a lot of these virtual ones too. 

You can be part of a forum where you're with 8 other founders and you can all share the highs and lows that you can’t really tell anybody else about. 

It’s been a game-changer for me.

I don't know if a lot of founders pick up the phone when they are fundraising. A lot of people send email updates, but not much more than that.

We recently had a very critical moment in the company and I decided to call every single investor. 

I thanked them for the support and let them know where we were and explained the pros and cons of what we're doing.

It was surprising to hear that for many of the investors, it was the first time anybody had called them about something like this, and they really appreciated it

To me that’s the bare minimum. These people invested money in me and it just felt logical to connect directly. 

I would definitely recommend doing something like this to other founders. 

Knowing how to deal with those tough moments in the right way is important; even if it isn’t the easy thing to do.

Juha Mikkola is the founder of Usko Dental, making it as easy to book dental appointments abroad as it is here at home. He’s an active member of the Miami Tech community including serving on the board of directors for Miami Angels. Juha’s passionate about cars and is the co-founder of BOXBOX Car Club. 

Unexpected dental costs are a hassle, especially when you’re focused on building your startup. At Usko Dental, we help you save 50-70% on top-quality dental work abroad, making every dollar go further. Founding Journey subscribers can get a free consultation to see how we can support your smile—and your budget. Reach out to Juha at [email protected].