Dentive: The Autonomy-First DSO Out of Utah

Most dental support organizations grow by acquiring practices and folding them into one standardized operating system. Dentive, a Provo, Utah-based DSO, built its pitch on the opposite promise: partner dentists hold equity in their own offices, keep full clinical control, and join the network by referral from a peer rather than a cold approach from a deal team. That model carried the company from a 2019 startup to a multi-state platform in only a few years. For investors weighing how the autonomy-first thesis performs at scale, Dentive is a useful case study.

Overview

Dentive is a founder-run dental services organization that provides management and back-office support to entrepreneurial, doctor-owned general and specialty practices, concentrated in the western United States.¹ Its defining feature is a joint-ownership structure: rather than buying a practice outright and converting the dentist into an employee, Dentive takes a stake while the partner dentist retains local ownership and full clinical autonomy.¹ The company frames this as a partnership rather than an acquisition, and reports that every partner practice to date has joined through referral from an existing member.¹

That positioning places Dentive in the same "dentist-friendly" lane as partnership-model peers such as MB2 Dental, and stands in deliberate contrast to the centralized, fully-integrated approach of the national giants like Heartland Dental. Dentive is considerably smaller and younger than those platforms, and far less documented. Much of what can be verified comes from a single 2023 private-equity announcement, the company's own website, and trade coverage, so several figures below should be read as company-reported or point-in-time rather than independently audited.

In January 2023, the middle-market private equity firm HGGC made a growth investment in Dentive; terms were not disclosed.¹ Based on available public reporting, HGGC remains the company's institutional backer, with no subsequent sale, recapitalization, or new sponsor disclosed as of mid-2026.² Founder Tom Clark led Dentive as CEO from launch, but per his own public professional profile he moved to a board-level founder role in early 2024; Dentive has not publicly named a successor CEO, so its current chief executive is not clearly documented.³

Company Snapshot

• Headquarters: Provo, Utah¹
• Founded: 2019¹
• Founders: Tom Clark and Austin McFee. Clark was Founder and CEO at the time of the 2023 HGGC investment but, per his public professional profile, moved to a board-level founder role in early 2024; no successor CEO is publicly named³
• Care model: General and specialty dentistry delivered through doctor-owned partner practices that retain clinical autonomy¹
• Business model: Joint-ownership DSO — partner dentists hold local equity and may also invest in the Dentive platform; non-clinical support provided on an on-demand basis¹
• Current institutional owner: HGGC (growth investment, January 2023); no later transaction publicly reported¹
• Prior sponsor: None identified — the HGGC round appears to be Dentive's first institutional capital¹
• Estimated footprint: Company-reported network of approximately 117 practices across 15 states per Dentive's careers page; sponsor HGGC's portfolio page cites a smaller "nearly 100 locations across 14 states." Either way, up from nearly 70 locations across 9 states at the time of the 2023 investment⁴
• Geography: Primarily the western U.S., with stated expansion into additional states¹
• Growth model: Referral-driven partner recruitment plus capital and support for partner-led expansion¹
• Recent recognition: Becker's Dental + DSO Review "DSOs to Know" (2026) and a Globee Disruptors Award (2025) for its DSO model⁴

Footprint Analysis

Dentive's size is best expressed as a range, because the available data points were captured roughly two years apart and use slightly different language. The January 2023 HGGC announcement described "nearly 70 locations across 9 states."¹ Dentive's own careers page currently states a "network of 117 practices across 15 states."⁴ Taken together, those figures suggest the platform has grown by roughly two-thirds and added several states since taking on institutional capital — a meaningful expansion, though one investors should treat as directional rather than precise.

A few cautions are warranted. First, "locations" and "practices" are not necessarily the same unit; a single practice can operate more than one location, and the shift in wording between the two sources means the growth rate could be slightly overstated or understated. Second, the 117-practice figure is company-reported and undated on the page, although the surrounding recognition (2025 and 2026 awards) indicates it is recent.⁴ Third, the company-side figures do not fully agree: sponsor HGGC's own portfolio page describes a smaller "nearly 100 locations across 14 states," which reinforces that the current count should be read as an approximate range, not a precise total.¹ Fourth, Dentive has not publicly disclosed a practice-by-practice location list, so the exact state mix is not independently verifiable from public sources.

Geographically, the company is anchored in the western U.S., consistent with its Utah headquarters and the original nine-state base described in 2023.¹ The expansion to a stated 14-to-15 states implies a wider, more geographically diverse network than at the time of the HGGC deal, but the western core almost certainly still accounts for the bulk of the practices.⁴ Revenue, patient volume, and per-practice production are not publicly disclosed, and any third-party revenue estimates that circulate for a private company of this size should be treated with caution.

Growth History

Dentive was founded in 2019 by Tom Clark and Austin McFee with the stated goal of building a DSO that treats dentists as partners rather than profit centers.¹ Clark served as Founder and CEO through the company's early scaling; per his own public professional profile he stepped back to a board-level founder role in early 2024, and Dentive has not publicly named a successor CEO.³ McFee is consistently credited as co-founder, though his current title is not clearly documented in public sources.²

The company's early growth was organic and referral-led. By the time of its first disclosed institutional financing, Dentive had reached nearly 70 locations across nine states — and, notably, reported that every partner practice had joined through referral rather than outbound dealmaking.¹ That detail is unusual in a sector where most platforms run dedicated acquisition pipelines, and it speaks to the community-driven recruiting model the company markets to prospective partners.¹

The defining milestone came in January 2023, when HGGC announced a strategic growth investment in Dentive.¹ HGGC is a Palo Alto-based middle-market private equity firm with more than $6.8 billion of cumulative capital commitments at the time of the deal, known for an approach in which founders and management reinvest alongside the firm.¹ That structure fit Dentive's own ethos: partner doctors were offered the opportunity to invest in the Dentive platform alongside HGGC, extending the equity-alignment theme from individual practices up to the holding-company level.¹ Deal terms were not disclosed, and the round appears to be Dentive's first outside institutional capital.¹

Since 2023, the public record is thinner. The most recent verifiable signals are Dentive's own reporting of growth to roughly 100-to-117 practices across 14-to-15 states and industry recognition including Becker's "DSOs to Know" for 2026 and a 2025 Globee Disruptors Award.⁴ No follow-on funding round, sponsor change, or large headline acquisition has been publicly reported, which suggests continued partner-by-partner expansion under the existing HGGC backing rather than a step-change event.²

Competitive Landscape

Dentive competes in two overlapping arenas: for patients in its local western markets, and — more strategically — for the loyalty of independent dentists who are weighing whether to join a DSO at all.

On that second front, its closest philosophical peer is MB2 Dental, a much larger partnership-model organization built explicitly around shared ownership and dentist autonomy. Both companies pitch the same core promise — keep your equity, keep your clinical independence, gain shared services and capital — which makes MB2 the most direct comparator for how the autonomy-first model behaves as it scales. Other doctor-partnership and affiliation-oriented groups, including Dental Care Alliance, occupy adjacent territory.

Against the fully-integrated national platforms, Dentive is positioned as the deliberate alternative. Heartland Dental, the largest U.S. DSO, and PDS Health both operate highly standardized, centrally-run models that emphasize brand and operational consistency over local ownership. Dentive's marketing leans into that contrast, targeting dentists who want support without surrendering control. Founder-led, regionally-concentrated platforms such as DECA Dental Group show that a focused growth strategy can compound quickly, though DECA pursues a more centralized growth-equity playbook than Dentive's referral-driven partnership approach.

The practical competitive question for Dentive is whether a referral-only, autonomy-first model can keep growing at the same rate as platforms with dedicated acquisition machines and deeper capital — and whether the partner-equity structure remains attractive to dentists as the network gets larger and more institutional.

Market Position

Dentive sits in the emerging-to-mid tier of the DSO landscape: past the startup stage, institutionally backed, multi-state, but well short of the national scale of the largest consolidators. Its differentiation is the model itself. In a sector where private equity ownership has fueled rapid consolidation and, at times, dentist skepticism about lost autonomy, Dentive markets the inverse — a structure where the dentist stays an owner and clinical decisions stay local.¹

For HGGC, Dentive is a growth-stage platform whose thesis is the partnership culture, not a roll-up spreadsheet. The firm's reinvestment-alongside-management model and its public framing of the deal both lean on alignment of interests rather than aggressive integration.¹ That suggests the value-creation plan runs through partner satisfaction and referral momentum — softer, harder-to-measure levers than the cost synergies that drive more centralized DSO playbooks.

The honest read is that Dentive's public financial profile is thin. Revenue, EBITDA, same-practice growth, and retention are not disclosed, and the headline counts are company-reported. What is verifiable — a credible founding story, a coherent and differentiated model, real institutional backing, demonstrated multi-state growth, and recent industry recognition — points to a legitimate and growing platform, but not one whose scale or economics can yet be independently benchmarked against the disclosed leaders in the category.

TMR Take: Dentive is one of the more interesting tests of the "dentist-autonomy" DSO thesis, and its small public footprint means it rewards careful reading. For operators, especially independent dentists weighing a partner, Dentive's joint-ownership and referral-driven model is a genuine alternative to the employee-style integration of the national platforms — but the burden is on you to validate the support, economics, and exit terms directly, because little is disclosed publicly. For vendors, a referral-led, autonomy-first network means buying decisions may sit closer to the individual practice than at a centralized DSO; expect a more distributed sales motion and value placed on tools that respect local control. For investors, Dentive reads as a credible growth-stage platform with real PE backing (HGGC, since January 2023) and demonstrated multi-state expansion, but the absence of disclosed revenue, retention, and per-practice economics — plus a still-undocumented current CEO after the founder's 2024 move to the board — means any underwriting has to rely on private diligence rather than public benchmarks, and on conviction that a referral-only growth model can keep pace with acquisition-driven rivals.

Sources

1. HGGC — investor press release (BusinessWire) and HGGC portfolio page (hggc.com/portfolio/dentive)

2. Becker's Dental + DSO Review and available public reporting

3. Tom Clark — public professional profile (LinkedIn)

4. Dentive — company website and careers page