Phase 1 Equity: Inside the Doctor-Owned Ortho Platform

Most dental consolidation stories follow the same script: a private equity sponsor buys a majority stake, the selling doctor takes chips off the table, and the platform recapitalizes every few years while the sponsor keeps the bulk of the upside. Phase 1 Equity is running a different play. The Chicago-based orthodontics and pediatric dentistry platform is structured so that the doctors themselves own the platform, hold the board majority, and — by design — capture most of the proceeds when the group eventually sells. It is one of the clearest tests yet of whether a "doctor equity" model can compete for practices against conventional DSO checkbooks, and its growth since 2022 suggests the pitch is landing.

Overview

Phase 1 Equity formally launched on September 1, 2022, announced by DuneGlass Capital — a Chicago-based, growth-oriented healthcare investment firm — alongside two Colorado orthodontic practices, Williams Orthodontics and Kohrs Orthodontics.¹ The platform describes itself as a doctor-owned, doctor-led, and doctor-governed partnership organization for orthodontists and pediatric dentists, built on DuneGlass's trademarked Doctor Equity™ management model.²

The founding group blended clinical and financial expertise: Dr. Bryan Williams, an orthodontist at Williams Orthodontics, and Ryan Graham, managing partner at DuneGlass Capital, are both identified as co-founders, with Dr. Keith Kohrs described as a founding partner and board member.¹ The company is currently led by CEO Mike Rice; trade coverage indicates an earlier chief executive, suggesting at least one leadership transition since launch, though the timing has not been publicly detailed.³

Unlike a traditional DSO acquisition — the route taken by scaled orthodontic consolidators such as Smile Doctors — partner doctors at Phase 1 Equity do not sell their practices for cash up front. Instead, they roll into a collectively owned platform, work on improving practice EBITDA during a hold period, and plan to monetize together in a single future sale to private equity. The company states that its goal is to direct approximately 90% of the proceeds from that future platform sale to its doctors, which it characterizes as roughly twice what a doctor would receive in a traditional DSO transaction — a company-stated target, not an audited outcome.²

Phase 1 Equity is part of a broader family of DuneGlass-architected, specialty-specific platforms using the same Doctor Equity™ structure, alongside Allied OMS (oral surgery), BGS Alliance (bariatric and general surgery), and LifeFlow Partners (vascular specialties).¹

Company Snapshot

• Company: Phase 1 Equity
• Headquarters: Chicago, Illinois
• Founded: Formally launched September 2022
• Founders: Dr. Bryan Williams (Williams Orthodontics), Dr. Keith Kohrs (Kohrs Orthodontics), and Ryan Graham (DuneGlass Capital), with a broader founding team of clinicians and healthcare executives
• CEO: Mike Rice (as of April 2026)
• Model: Doctor Equity™ partnership platform — doctors own the platform, hold a board majority, and chair its management committees
• Specialty focus: Orthodontics and pediatric dentistry
• Footprint: 31 locations and 21 partner doctors (company-reported, May 2026)
• Geography: Partner practices publicly identified in Colorado, Texas, Tennessee, California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Ohio
• Backing: Affiliated with DuneGlass Capital, architect of the Doctor Equity™ MSO model; no institutional platform recapitalization has been publicly announced
• Technology: Ortho2 Edge Cloud named the platform's exclusive practice management software⁴

Footprint Analysis

Phase 1 Equity's own press releases are unusually disciplined about distinguishing practices, doctors, and locations — three numbers that are often conflated in DSO reporting. As of its May 28, 2026 practice announcement, the platform reported 31 total locations and 21 partner doctors, with its third Texas practice joining that month.⁵

The trail of company-reported snapshots shows steady compounding:

• July 2025: 22 locations, 14 doctors, fifth practice added that year⁵
• September 2025: 25 locations, 18 doctors, seventh practice added that year⁵
• May 2026: 31 locations, 21 doctors, third practice added that year⁵

In an April 2026 Becker's Dental + DSO Review interview, CEO Mike Rice cited nine practices and 20 locations added over the trailing year, alongside entry into several new states.³

A few characteristics of the footprint stand out. First, the platform recruits established multi-site, multi-doctor groups rather than solo offices — most 2025–2026 additions are described as multi-site or multi-doctor practices, so a single partnership can add several locations at once.⁵ Second, the geography is deliberately national rather than clustered: publicly identified partner practices span Colorado (the founding market), Texas (three practices), Tennessee, California, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, and Ohio.⁵ That breadth signals a strategy of recruiting the strongest available practices wherever they are, rather than building regional density — a trade-off that maximizes selectivity but limits shared local infrastructure. Third, at an estimated 21 doctors across 31 locations, this is still a boutique platform; directory data suggests roughly 50 employees at the platform level, which we treat as an unverified third-party estimate.⁴

Growth History

2022 — Launch. DuneGlass Capital, Williams Orthodontics, and Kohrs Orthodontics announced the formal launch of Phase 1 Equity in September 2022, pitching "anticipated higher valuation (2-3x) at exit as part of a larger entity," full clinical autonomy, and a management team credited with more than $1 billion of healthcare platform exits.¹

2023 — Early proof points. By mid-2023, the platform was providing financial and operational support to Hart Orthodontics, an early partner practice, according to industry legal coverage.⁴

2025 — Acceleration. The platform added at least seven practices during 2025 — including multi-site groups in Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Ohio, California, and New Jersey — growing from roughly 14 to 18 doctors and reaching 25 locations by September.⁵

2026 — Continued momentum and infrastructure build-out. Three more practices joined by late May 2026 (Ohio and Texas among them), bringing the platform to 31 locations and 21 doctors.⁵ In the same period, Ortho2 was named the platform's exclusive practice management software provider, standardizing partner practices on the Edge Cloud enterprise platform — a signal that Phase 1 Equity is investing in the centralized data layer a future institutional buyer would expect to see.⁴

Notably absent from the public record: any platform-level recapitalization, outside funding round, or sale. That is consistent with the model — the whole thesis is to defer the liquidity event until the platform reaches its target size — but it also means the model's central promise remains unproven until a sale actually happens.

Competitive Landscape

Phase 1 Equity competes in the orthodontic and pediatric dental consolidation market on two fronts: for patients in its local markets, and — more importantly for its growth model — for the loyalty of high-performing practice owners weighing their exit options.

The scaled incumbents set the terms of that competition. Smile Doctors is the largest ortho-focused DSO in the country, with a conventional sponsor-backed structure and hundreds of locations. In pediatric dentistry, Lone Peak Dental Group has built a multi-state pedo-focused platform, while Hero Practice Services runs an integrated pediatric dental, orthodontic, and vision model aimed at Medicaid populations. Multi-specialty and regional consolidators such as Motor City Dental Partners round out the buyer universe a selling orthodontist might canvass.

Against these, Phase 1 Equity is not competing on check size — it is competing on deal structure. The nearest strategic comparison in our coverage is Imagen Dental Partners, which similarly leads with doctor equity and technology rather than maximum upfront cash. Phase 1 Equity pushes the concept further than most: doctors do not merely hold shares alongside a controlling sponsor — the company states that doctors own the platform, hold a majority of board seats, and chair all management committees.²

The structural trade-offs cut both ways. A doctor selling to a traditional DSO gets certainty: cash at close, at multiples that have remained healthy for quality orthodontic groups. A doctor joining Phase 1 Equity accepts deferred, uncertain liquidity in exchange for a potentially larger payday and continued control. That self-selects for younger and mid-career owners with time horizon and risk tolerance — and screens out sellers seeking immediate retirement liquidity, which narrows the recruitable universe relative to conventional acquirers.

Market Position

Phase 1 Equity occupies a distinctive position: it is simultaneously a small platform by location count and one of the most structurally differentiated players in specialty dental consolidation. Its "we're not a DSO" positioning is more than marketing — the governance mechanics (doctor board majority, doctor-chaired committees, collective buyer selection) are concrete and publicly described, which distinguishes it from platforms that offer minority equity participation as a sweetener on an otherwise conventional deal.²

The platform's economics depend on a three-part thesis: that aggregated, EBITDA-optimized specialty practices will command a premium multiple at exit; that the spread between individual practice multiples and platform multiples (the company cites 2 to 3 times) will persist; and that doctors will accept deferred liquidity to capture it.² The first two assumptions are well-supported by a decade of dental consolidation history. The third is the live experiment — and the platform's recruiting velocity through 2025 and 2026 is the best available evidence that a meaningful segment of orthodontists finds the trade attractive.

The open questions are the ones the public record cannot yet answer. The platform has not disclosed revenue or EBITDA. The timing and terms of the eventual platform sale — the event the entire model is built around — remain undefined, and doctors who joined in 2022 are now several years into the hold. And the apparent CEO transition, from earlier trade-press references to a prior chief executive through Mike Rice's tenure today, has not been publicly explained.³ None of these is unusual for a private company at this stage, but they are worth noting for anyone underwriting the platform's trajectory.

For the broader market, Phase 1 Equity is a bellwether. If its eventual exit delivers the promised economics, expect doctor-owned platform structures to proliferate rapidly across dental specialties — DuneGlass has already templated the model in three other verticals. If the exit disappoints or stalls, conventional DSOs will point to it as proof that certainty beats structure.

TMR Take: For practice owners, Phase 1 Equity is one of the most owner-favorable structures publicly available in orthodontics — but the value is back-loaded and contingent on an exit that hasn't happened yet, so diligence the hold-period economics, not just the headline split. For vendors, this is a growing enterprise account with centralized purchasing intent — the exclusive Ortho2 agreement shows the platform standardizes aggressively, so the window to become embedded infrastructure is before category decisions get made. For investors, Phase 1 Equity is effectively a pre-assembled specialty platform being groomed for a single competitive sale process; the doctor-majority governance means any future buyer will need to win over clinicians as sellers and continuing partners — and the ~90%-to-doctors proceeds target tells you how the sponsor economics will be negotiated.

The orthodontic and pediatric consolidation market is evolving quickly, and platform structures like this one are reshaping what practice owners expect from a partner. For a data-grounded view of how specialty platforms, DSOs, and emerging models stack up across the industry, explore the rest of our company profiles or take our quiz to see how these trends intersect with your own market.

Sources

1. DuneGlass Capital — Phase 1 Equity launch announcement and Doctor Equity™ model publications.

2. Phase 1 Equity — company website, Doctor Equity™ model materials, and public disclosures.

3. Becker's Dental + DSO Review — CEO interview and podcast coverage of Phase 1 Equity leadership.

4. Trade and industry coverage — Orthodontic Products, National Law Review, Benesch DSO industry newsletter, and business directories.

5. Phase 1 Equity practice-addition press releases via Access Newswire.