Seven years ago in Boston, Tyler Burnett had a nagging toothache and almost wound up with a mouth full of dental fillings — when he only needed one.

That experience inspired the creation of his startup, Wally Health, which has raised $3 million in a seed round led by Bling Capital. Other participating investors include Myelin VC, GFR, and Jack Abraham, the founder of the venture studio Atomic, which built the digital-health company Hims & Hers.

Years before Wally, Burnett had launched businesses in media and fintech back in his native Canada. But his unfortunate dental experience sent him down a rabbit hole of research into the industry. Burnett also experienced dentistry from a personal vantage point — his wife is a dentist.

In 2020, Burnett cofounded Wally with Stipe Latkovic and Chelsea Patel, whom he met through professional circles in Boston. It's turned out to be fortuitous timing, as more startups and venture capitalists have sought to take on oral and dental care.

An early forerunner was SmileDirectClub, the teeth-alignment company that went public in 2019 with an $8.9 billion valuation. More recently, there have been startups such as the dental-office chain Tend, which has raised $198 million from investors including GV and Redpoint, and oral-care startup Quip, which has raised $162 million from Cowen and ACME Group.

Multiple VC firms now focus specifically on backing startups in dental care, including the recently launched Revere Partners, the impact investor Rise Health, and the early-stage firm Smile Health.

Wally seeks to set itself apart from other dental startups by focusing exclusively on preventative care. For $199 a year, Wally provides dental checkups, including X-rays, cleaning, and diagnostics, and it offers its patients free at-home teeth whitening. But for other procedures, such as fillings for cavities or root canals, it refers them to other dentists.

"Most dentists don't want to invest in the preventative side of their business because that, in effect, would eat away at their ability to do treatment," Burnett, Wally's CEO, told Insider. "We've focused and invested fully on the prevention side."

After raising a pre-seed round, Burnett and his cofounders started building Wally's proof of concept about a year ago in an office in New York's Upper East Side. The startup now has more than 3,000 members paying its yearly fee. That traction helped with fundraising the second time around, Burnett said, as investors raised the bar for backing startups. Wally, which has ambitions of expanding nationally, recently opened a new flagship location in New York's Tribeca neighborhood.