From the British Army to Building a £24M Dental Group
A former British Army officer on building a £24m dental group by making dentists owners, not employees, with real autonomy and skin in the game.
Mark Aichroth
Show notes
Mark Aichroth traces a career built on one conviction: that clinicians behave differently when they own part of what they run. He carried it from British Army officer to hospital administration with HCA, to an early seat at Circle Health with Ali Parsa, and finally to the business plan he wrote on a flight home from the United States.
That plan became DeNovo Dental Partners, a UK dental group that in fifteen months has grown to sixteen practices, around £24m in revenue and more than three hundred staff. Mark walks Jared through the model: buy at a lower fixed multiple, pay partly in the same stock the founders hold, and turn selling dentists into genuine partners.
The payoff is autonomy in exchange for a guaranteed EBITDA, opt-in shared services rather than a top-down playbook, and a fix for the succession problem that sank earlier dental roll-ups. Staff turnover sits near 4% against an industry average of 20%.
Key takeaways
- Mark's throughline is ownership: roughly 85% of healthcare cost is influenced by the clinician, so aligning their incentives changes how they engage, a thesis he carried from Circle Health to DeNovo.
- DeNovo buys practices at a lower fixed multiple of EBITDA, cash-free and debt-free, paying 70% in cash and 30% in the same parent-company stock the founders hold, so sellers become real partners.
- Dentists keep complete autonomy, not just clinical control, in return for guaranteeing their EBITDA for five years (up to eight), with growth earn-outs paid on EBITDA growth in years one, two and three.
- Because the shared services are opt-in rather than imposed, dentists pull on group buying, playbooks and peer knowledge, and staff turnover runs near 4% against an industry average of 20%.
- The model targets what sank US dental roll-ups, succession: extending shares to practice staff and incentivising associates to carry the EBITDA guarantee builds continuity and, in Mark's words, profits in perpetuity.
- Acquisition fit: around £200k EBITDA on an associate-led basis, a minimum of three chairs, under 30% NHS, and an entrepreneurial owner; DeNovo closes in three to four months, about half the time of its competitors.
“We want to create the John Lewis or Waitrose of dentistry.”— Mark Aichroth
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