Beam Dental

After selecting Columbus as the location for their new headquarters, Beam Dental experienced intense growth, causing this next-generation dental insurance provider to consider next steps, including where to expand. Ultimately, Beam Dental found that the talent, community, and insurtech ecosystem in the central Ohio region as the perfect place to further grow their business.

In 2012, CEO and co-founder of Beam Dental Alex Frommeyer began the search for the ideal place to move his Louisville, KY insurtech business, Beam Dental. The new headquarters would have to have access to talent, capital investment, and more to facilitate the next stage of growth for this fledgling startup. “Our choices were San Francisco, Seattle, New York, or a place like Columbus. And so why are we here today? We’re from the Midwest. We love the people, the culture, the lifestyle, the opportunity to build something close to home, and in our region,” explains Frommeyer.

An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure

Beam Dental offers best-in-class insurance products for small-to-medium-sized companies. With several family members in the dental industry, CEO and founder Alex Frommeyer had an inside look at legacy dental insurance structures and found an opportunity to shake things up with a modern, tech-driven approach. With the industry’s only wellness and prevention program of its kind, Beam Dental offers Beam Perks to its members, featuring a connected toothbrush and semi-annual delivery of toothpaste, floss, and refill heads. The data collected by the toothbrush and app is used to incentivize prevention while lowering costs for employers.

Room to Grow

In offering industry-disrupting innovations, Beam Dental has grown, eventually reaching the point where they needed to expand. When first moving their business to Columbus, Beam Dental partnered with JobsOhio to speed up the process of settling into their new home.

“What we’ve experienced at Beam and what I think others have as well, is that in partnering with JobsOhio, you’re getting a partner who’s helping do creative problem solving because the problems might also be quite different depending on the size, stage, and scale of the business,” explains Frommeyer.

Revisiting that early partnership, Beam Dental and JobsOhio worked together to facilitate the necessary expansion for Beam’s continued growth and success.

“JobsOhio has done a great job of becoming a part of the community and actually participating in these topic areas to listen, to learn, to get involved. And that makes it feel like it’s a much more inclusive approach to how do we build this together, which I think is really great,” says Frommeyer.

Home Sweet Columbus

With the help of JobsOhio, as well as One Columbus, Beam Dental made the choice to continue their growth in Ohio by expanding their manufacturing capabilities in Montgomery County, adding 150 new jobs, and investing $1.5 million.

“What we found from day one at Beam in moving the company to Columbus is that not only did the community welcome us with open arms, but it ended up being the perfect market for growing a startup company that’s still trying to carve out its own story wherever it’s based,” explains Frommeyer.

Citing the state’s burgeoning talent pipeline, robust capital investment opportunities, and insurtech business friendliness, Frommeyer has found everything his business needed to get started, and now to expand, in Ohio.

“To see the growth and development of not just Beam, but Columbus: the startup ecosystem, the tech community, the venture capital access that’s now available, and how it’s now compounding upon itself — that flywheel is now officially turning in central Ohio. And to be a small piece of that story, we think is so much fun and so exciting. It’s exactly what we hoped would be true when we came to Columbus in 2014.”

—Alex Frommeyer
CEO and Co-Founder, Beam Dental