{"id":272854,"date":"2026-04-30T12:05:33","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T12:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/272854\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T12:05:33","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T12:05:33","slug":"ceo-behind-blackstone-backed-dental-venture-has-a-message-for-founders-dallas-innovates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/272854\/","title":{"rendered":"CEO Behind Blackstone-Backed Dental Venture Has a Message for Founders \u00bb Dallas Innovates"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Dr. Sulman Ahmed. founder, chairman and CEO of DECA Dental Group [Image sources: DECA Dental, istockphoto, DI Studio]<\/p>\n

Sulman Ahmed\u00a0
Founder, Chairman & CEO
DECA Dental Group
\u2026 on perseverance and entrepreneurship in a keynote address at the UT Dallas Draper Pitch Competition.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Sulman Ahmed opened his first dental office in 2008. By 2024, his Dallas-based DECA Dental Group had grown to 200 locations across nine states, with backing from Blackstone<\/a>. So when the UT Dallas alum delivered the keynote at the university\u2019s Draper Pitch Competition on April 14\u2014where student and alumni founders competed for a record $330,000 in prizes<\/a>\u2014he spoke from experience.<\/p>\n

\u201cLife never goes as planned; embrace when those bad things happen or things don\u2019t go as planned,\u201d Ahmed said<\/a>. The path to a successful venture is rarely straightforward, he told them\u2014but perseverance is what separates the founders who make it.<\/p>\n

Ahmed knows something about launching new ventures. Dallas Innovates recently covered his launch of ToothScience, a clinician-founded oral wellness company he\u2019s called \u201cthe first shot across the bow of a dentist-led revolution in whole mouth health.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the Draper Pitch Competition, Subah Zaeem, head of global community and partnerships at Draper University Ventures and also a judge, said the quality of the business ideas stood out: \u201cWe were not expecting them to be this good. They were supersharp. They delivered.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other judges included Suzy Batiz, CEO and founder of Poo-Pourri and Supernatural; George Brody, chairman of Turbostart; and James Dowd, partner at Waxahachie Village Equity Partners.<\/p>\n

Nine teams made the finals across undergraduate, graduate, and alumni tracks\u2014with ideas ranging from AI-powered sales coaching to 3D mapping of radioactive contamination to a noninvasive method for delivering drugs into the brain.<\/p>\n

Read who won and what they\u2019re building<\/a> in our story.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss what\u2019s next. Subscribe\u00a0to\u00a0Dallas\u00a0Innovates.<\/p>\n

Track Dallas-Fort Worth\u2019s business and innovation landscape with our curated news in your inbox Tuesday-Thursday.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr. Sulman Ahmed. founder, chairman and CEO of DECA Dental Group [Image sources: DECA Dental, istockphoto, DI Studio]…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[160,162,161],"class_list":["post-272854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-plano","tag-plano","tag-plano-headlines","tag-plano-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272854\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}