Julian Artopé is the founder and CEO of Zenyum, a Singaporean startup that offers a range of dental products from Invisible Braces to award-winning toothbrushes.

The company has raised over $60M from investors like Sequoia Capital (now Peak XV Partners) and L Catterton Asia. They’re currently operating across nine countries in Asia.

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👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

Zenyum’s mission is to make Asia Smile More via a range of Smile Cosmetics such as invisible braces and power toothbrushes. With dozens of SKUs and thousands of partners, we are one of the fastest-growing consumer companies in the dental space.

I try to enable the team as much as possible—growth-stage companies like us mainly depend on correct ownership being given, and systems and processes being set up the right way. 

It’s a really amazing and capable team and I try as best as I can to support them in their ambition and growth mindset.

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🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

I'm not actually a dentist. My background is in tech, marketing, and startups—but I fell in love with the mission to help Asia Smile More and think that the current innovation in the dental industry is just awesome. 

When I first heard about 3D-printed invisible braces and researched the tech behind them, I was amazed. After all, you don't have it often there is a product innovation that stands out in all aspects for a consumer: Price, convenience, and aesthetics. 

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🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

Definitely Zenyum. You have hopes and dreams when you start a business, but the success over the last years in a very difficult operating environment has been beyond expectations. 

By now I believe we're the leading consumer dental start-up across Asia and I'm just very grateful for this journey and the people with me on it.

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🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?‍

It's been amazing how the hype cycles have been accelerated over the past years and the fads have just become shorter. 

From brand aggregators to quick commerce to Web3, to cybersecurity and AI—all of these are super interesting sectors, but I rather enjoy watching companies and founders, not trends. Hype is easy, but all that matters is product-market-fit and numbers don't lie about it. 

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💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry? 

If you're in medtech, the Silicon Valley mantra of "Move fast and break things" is terrible advice. Your focus needs to be NPS and product efficiency and quality. When we started in 2018, we had many competitors that promised everyone a better smile, without having the R&D or experience to back it up. 

At Zenyum we took a slower approach, only treating mild cases in the beginning until we had enough data and research to improve our solution. Today, we can compete with the best systems in the world, but it took time and discipline. 

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🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours? 

Operations and how good execution can be a moat. So many companies hope that they just need to get to the next product release or that a new version of their website will change everything. 

But there are no silver bullets, there are only lead bullets in startups. Your operations will get you there.

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🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show? 

I recently liked "The Bear". It's a show about a cook, entrepreneurship, and mastery—all while navigating the complexity of family and human relations.

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🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

Stracciatella—with chunky chocolate chips.

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FYI. We’ve edited this interview for clarity.