Micro-SaaS reminder tool for independent dental clinics
A single-purpose SMS reminder tool sold directly to dentists. No sales team, no enterprise pricing — just $49/month and a working product.
How it works
Independent dentists lose money on no-shows. Existing PMS systems have reminders but they're clunky. A tiny, focused tool that plugs into their calendar sells itself if you can get in front of them.
Step by step
- 1Interview 8-10 independent dentists (not chains) about their no-show workflow. Ask specifically: 'How do you send reminders today? What breaks?' Record answers.
- 2Choose one PMS to integrate with first — Dentrix, Eaglesoft or Open Dental cover 70% of the market. Read their integration docs before writing any code.
- 3Build the MVP in 4-6 weekends: calendar sync, 2-way SMS via Twilio, confirm/cancel links, and a simple weekly no-show report. Skip everything else.
- 4Address HIPAA from day one: sign a Twilio BAA, encrypt at rest, and never store the full appointment reason in SMS — just date/time and clinic name.
- 5Pick one metro area (e.g. Austin) and build a list of 200 independent clinics from Google Maps + state dental board directories.
- 6Cold-email in batches of 25/day with a 3-line pitch and one screenshot. Follow up twice, 4 days apart. Expect ~3% reply rate.
- 7Offer the first month free, then $49/month billed annually ($588). Charge card upfront on a Stripe checkout link so cancellation friction is symmetric.
- 8Onboard each new clinic yourself for the first 20 customers. Sit on a 30-min Zoom, watch them use it, fix what confuses them the same week.
- 9Once you cross $2k MRR, hire a part-time customer-success contractor at 10 hrs/week to handle onboarding and support tickets.
- 10Track a single north-star metric: 'no-show rate reduction per clinic'. Publish anonymized case studies quarterly — they close deals faster than any ad.
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Discussion
How are you handling HIPAA? That's usually where these die.
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