Sanjana Kavula and her three co-founders set out to sell an AI receptionist to hospitals. Eighteen month sales cycles, layers of bureaucracy, and a trust problem no amount of funding could shortcut pushed Kairos Health out of medical entirely and into a market they hadn't planned on: independent dental clinics.

In this episode of The Pitch Room, recorded at Rice University's Lilie Entrepreneurship Lab in Houston, Sanjana traces how a failed hospital sales strategy became a working wedge inside dental offices, why some of her own early "traction" turned out to be exactly the wrong customers, and the moment her team realized they'd spent months chasing a solution instead of a problem. In this episode:

• How an 18 month hospital sales cycle pushed Kairos Health out of medical and into dental
• The discovery process that turned patient intake into their wedge into the market
• Going from a first pilot in the Rio Grande Valley to 11 clinics and growing
• The mindset shift from free pilots to "getting payment is the most validating part of a company"
• Why not all traction is good traction, and how the wrong customers can look like progress
• How Kairos Health handles HIPAA compliance, PMS integrations, and building trust in an industry where one bad reference travels fast

This is part of our Houston mini-series recorded at Rice's Lilie Lab, alongside conversations with Tony Cordova and other founders building out of the same space.

🔗 https://kairoshealthai.com/