Local tech founder wins $25,000 for platform helping dental pros find work

In 2018, Jizal Seikali was working as an expanded functions dental auxiliary (EFDA) — a dental professional who is certified to do procedures such as placing fillings — across four dental offices owned by a company that shut down unexpectedly. She decided to drop off her resume with her availability and pay rate at different offices and was soon booked working five to six days a week – but she decided that finding the work she wanted didn’t need to be that complicated. Later that year, she created an online platform to help other dental professionals, including dentists, dental hygienists, dental assistants, EFDAs, lab technicians, receptionists, and office managers, streamline the process of finding permanent and temporary work on their own terms. 

The platform, called DenTemp LLC, is an alternative to temp agencies that often lack transparency about pay and terms of employment and job search engines like Indeed that are focused on long-term work, Seikali said. DenTemp allows dental professionals to set their own pay rate and availability, and it helps dental offices find workers for both short-term and long-term openings at a time when many offices are facing staff shortages.

Dental hygiene is a female-dominated industry. According to data from recruitment website Zippia, 93% of the country’s dental hygienists and 91% of dental assistants are women. Women  often have to juggle household work alongside these jobs, said Seikali, who describes herself as “passionate about helping women realize their full potential.” 

“This platform empowers women to set their own pay rate, create their own schedule, and have some sort of autonomy over their life,” she said. 

To start and grow her business, Seikali attended networking events whenever she had the chance, and she participated in classes and incubator programs that Northeast Ohio business support organizations like JumpStart, Bounce Innovation Hub, and Cleveland SCORE have offered. Camille Heard, the entrepreneur in residence at JumpStart and Seikali’s adviser there, said that what drew her to Seikali’s idea is the way her “lived experiences (are) reflected in the platform she’s building.”

At October’s FutureLAND conference highlighting diversity in Cleveland’s tech scene, Seikali participated in a pitch competition and won the grand prize of $25,000 for her startup.

Platform aims to connect in-demand workers and dental offices 

The dental hygiene workforce shrunk 8% in 2020 due to the pandemic, and less than half those of who left returned to work as of August 2021, according to research by the American Dental Association and American Dental Hygienists’ Association published in the Journal of Dental Hygiene. Now, the dental industry is facing staff shortages, and some offices are turning to dental temping as a potential solution. 

Offices and prospective employees create profiles on the platform, and the offices can reach out to professionals directly or post temporary or permanent job opportunities, including immediate needs for workers to fill in. The offices pay dental temps as 1099 contract workers after their shift or assignment, and they can also hire dental temps as permanent staff without having to pay an onboarding or “conversion” fee for transitioning from temporary to permanent work. (Such fees often hinder temp workers from obtaining permanent work, according to a February 2022 report from Temp Worker Justice, National Employment Law Project, and other workers’ rights organizations.)

To join the platform, dental offices pay $500 a month for a monthly subscription or $5,000 a year for an annual subscription. The platform is free for job-seeking dental professionals.  

“My main objective is to create the supply for the demand, so helping all these dental professionals get onboarded, set their own pay — create this relationship so that way (dental offices and professionals) can both find work and help as needed,” Seikali said. 

DenTemp had over 500 dental professionals on its platform before the pandemic but struggled to keep its numbers up post-Covid. After switching to a different platform that better accommodates its scheduling and billing needs, DenTemp currently has about 77 offices and more than 100 dental professionals on the platform, Seikali said. 

As Seikali’s adviser, Heard said she had the chance to be an observer with a more lateral, “grand-scheme-of-things” view of the business while Seikali handled the “nitty gritty” details. They had a conversation about pausing to understand what both the dental professionals and offices want and after slowing down, they gained a better understanding of the problem that needed to be solved. 

“When we dug into the details, we found that the offices … were the easy draw. But the dental professionals, they were the ones that we’re going through having difficulty wanting to come to the office, having difficulty with the offices that they were coming into and not having a good work experience,” Heard said. 

DenTemp, where workers set their own pay rate and availability, puts the dental professionals in the driver’s seat, says Seikali. 

Navigating the tech ecosystem – and scoring a big win at FutureLAND

Seikali has jumped at chances to grow her business network and expertise. In addition to working with JumpStart, Bounce Innovation Hub, and Cleveland SCORE, she participated in an I-Corps program through the University of Akron this year, where she learned about what her customers want and how her platform can deliver what they’re asking for. On top of her Pitch Cypher win at FutureLAND, she also won a $50,000 loan from a Great Lakes Innovation and Development Enterprise (GLIDE) Innovation Fund competition this fall.  

“When it comes to navigating the ecosystem, she figures it out, and she’s always up for the connection,” Heard said. 

Heard encouraged Seikali to step outside of her comfort zone and participate in the JumpStart’s Pitch Cypher series, where tech founders presented their startups to a panel of judges to win cash prizes of up to $500. The finalists from the four competitions went on to compete for up to $25,000 in additional funding at the Pitch Cypher finale at the inaugural FutureLAND conference. Seikali won the second Pitch Cypher competition in June, and then she won the grand prize at the October conference. 

“One of her greatest qualities is being able to communicate her vision and being able to share it with others and get other people excited,” Heard said. “So I really felt that this was a good forum for her to get her story out and her business out into the public so people can know about it and people can share about it.”. 

Seikali was also in a place where she had a clear vision but really needed funding to move forward, Heard said, and the pitch competition was an opportunity for Seikali to put herself in front of potential investors in the crowd and get a chance to compete at the finale — which she went on to win.

In the moments before the announcement of the finale winner, Seikali said she was mostly excited about having covered all the points about her business plan and financial projections in the allotted seven minutes, which she said was an accomplishment in itself. 

“When they called us back up to hear who won the funding, I just couldn’t believe I was the winner,” Seikali said. “I kept thinking I was gonna hear my name next, you know, soon, soon, soon. And then once they called out the runner-up, and it wasn’t me, I was just thrilled.”

Investing in DenTemp’s future

With her grand prize of $25,000 in hand, Seikal is investing a lot of that funding on a DenTemp website rebuild that will automate verification for dental professionals’ certifications and simplify the process of joining the platform. Users previously had to enter detailed data about their credentials and their expiration dates, which Seikal had to then manually verify, but the new system will allow users to just enter their first and last name. Some of the money will also go to marketing efforts, and she’s also working on building out a development team, including a project manager, web developer, and graphic designer.

Seikali is anticipating growth for DenTemp. The platform is currently available across Ohio – in Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Toledo, Columbus, and Cincinnati – but Seikali plans on expanding to other parts of Ohio and other states within the next year.

Reflecting on her entrepreneurship journey, Seikali said that mentorship and opportunities to learn from other entrepreneurs through networks like JumpStart and Cleveland SCORE have helped her grow her tech startup.

Being an entrepreneur sometimes feels like “running 100 miles an hour in the same place,” because balancing multiple responsibilities on your own can get lonely and overwhelming, Seikali said. For her, having a strong support network has been key. 

DenTemp is all about building connections, Seikali said, and she feels most proud of her work when someone tells her that they’re happy that they connected with her. 

“If you have other people to lean on — advisers, friends, mentors — that’s always really helpful,” Seikali said. “As a female, we tend to take on a lot by ourselves because we think, ‘We’re strong enough; we can do it. We shouldn’t ask for help because it shows weakness.’ But honestly, you don’t know what you don’t know, and asking for help is one of the biggest tools that any entrepreneur can have.”

JumpStart is a sponsor of The Land, supporting economic development coverage.