#352 Lift the Shield — Adrian Dray & Kautham Haran

<p>Two CareStack men, one origin story that starts in a Covid ward. Adrian Dray talks Payman through the lead-management deal that nearly bankrupted him, and how that near-miss set him up to bring an American cloud practice management system into a UK market that, by his own admission, &quot;really dislikes change.&quot; </p><p>Kautham Haran, the ops brain to Adrian&#39;s front-of-house energy, explains how a fintech Start-Up background prepared him for the mess of onboarding whole dental groups onto new software. Between them they cover why CareStack bet big on a market the size of Oregon, what Rory Sutherland taught them about friction and the &quot;doorman fallacy,&quot; and why AI receptionists might be dentistry&#39;s answer to the hoverboard fire hazard. </p><p>It&#39;s a conversation about building a company from scratch inside an industry built on habit, and what happens to your ego when the whole thing goes a bit public and a bit personal.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>In This Episode</strong></p><p>00:01:00 - Introductions</p><p>00:01:35 - Covid and crisis</p><p>00:07:25 - Meeting Abby</p><p>00:11:25 - Kautham&#39;s fintech past</p><p>00:14:15 - The leadership trio</p><p>00:16:00 - Opportunity, defined</p><p>00:23:10 - Cracking the UK</p><p>00:31:55 - Straumann and strategy</p><p>00:36:35 - Built-in payment plans</p><p>00:39:55 - Onboarding challenges</p><p>00:44:55 - Surprises in dentistry</p><p>00:50:25 - Software&#39;s weak spot</p><p>00:54:50 - Regulation as moat</p><p>00:56:20 - Shaking up events</p><p>01:03:55 - Rory&#39;s insights</p><p>01:14:15 - Voice Stack AI</p><p>01:17:45 - AI receptionist risks</p><p>01:22:45 - Blackbox thinking</p><p>01:32:25 - Fantasy dinner party</p><p>01:40:55 - Closing thoughts</p><p><br></p><p><strong>About Adrian Dray and Kautham Haran</strong></p><p>Adrian Dray is director of demand generation at CareStack, a cloud-based dental practice management system, having previously worked as a data protection officer within dentistry. </p><p>Kautham Haran is CareStack&#39;s head of implementation, joining from a peer-to-peer invoice finance Start-Up he co-founded straight out of the University of Warwick. Together they lead CareStack&#39;s UK operation alongside Shamanth, their head of customer success.</p>