The J Curve Insider: Vertical SaaS Masterclass from Inside Brazil’s Most Overlooked Market

In Latin America’s most fragmented industries, the most powerful wedge isn’t software. It’s credit.

Capim, a vertical SaaS and fintech company born out of an MBA class project, is now doing $10M in ARR—serving 10,000+ dental clinics across Brazil.

What makes their story so compelling: they didn’t follow the rulebook. Instead of leading with SaaS, they built a tailored credit product to solve a real pain—and used it to wedge their way into an entire platform business.

📍 Today, Capim powers over 70,000 financed dental procedures.

📍 They’ve grown from 1,000 to 10,000 clinic clients in under two years.

📍 Their clients report 15–20% revenue uplift on average.

We sat down with Marcelo and Roberto to understand the playbook—and what they’ve learned building in the trenches of a $14B market most banks overlook.

A $14B MARKET HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

Olga Maslikhova: Why dentistry?
Roberto Biselli: Brazil has 450,000 dentists. More than the U.S. or China. Dental is a $14B out-of-pocket market, and most procedures aren’t covered by insurance. But banks and horizontal fintechs won’t serve these clinics—they’re small, messy, and hard to underwrite.
Marcelo Lutz: The average clinic makes about $70K/year. Not worth a bank’s time. But we saw an opportunity: become the first player to deeply understand their workflows, patients, and financial behavior—and serve them with credit, payments, and software.

THE STRONGEST COMPANIES ARE BUILT ON INEVITABLE TRENDS

OM: What macro tailwinds are working in your favor?
RB: Three major ones. First, COVID pushed even the most traditional clinics to start adopting digital tools. Before 2020, a huge chunk of our market was still using paper charts and appointment books. That shifted fast—and permanently.

Second, regulation in Brazil has become a major enabler. The Central Bank has taken a progressive stance—Pix, Open Finance, digital payments infrastructure—it’s made it dramatically easier and cheaper for startups like us to build and launch financial products.

Third, the demographic trend: Brazil is aging. Implants and other dental procedures aren’t optional—they’re inevitable. That means long-term, predictable demand.

ML: And we’re not just benefiting from those trends—we’re sitting right at the intersection of two of the most powerful ones: fintech and healthcare. That’s where Brazil’s structural inefficiencies are the greatest—and where digitizing infrastructure can create the most value.

WHY CREDIT CAME FIRST—AND SAAS CAME LATER

OM: Most vertical SaaS plays start with software and try to add fintech. You did the opposite. Why?
ML: Dentists don’t wake up thinking about buying software. They wake up thinking about patients.
RB: Capim offered what they really cared about: credit for treatments. That earned us permission to embed everything else—scheduling, patient records, finance—and eventually replace the pen and paper.

THE MORE ESSENTIAL THE PROCEDURE, THE LOWER THE RISK

OM: You’ve financed 70,000+ procedures. What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned?
RB: That patient underwriting alone doesn’t cut it. We quickly realized that to truly manage risk, we also had to underwrite the procedure and the clinic. Not all treatments are created equal—Botox and aesthetic procedures tend to default more often. Implants, which are more essential, are much safer bets. The nature of the procedure directly affects repayment behavior.
ML: And underwriting the clinic matters just as much. We look at how well they explain credit terms to patients, how they deliver care, and their overall treatment reliability. That’s why we brought in in-house dentists to evaluate the clinical side. This isn’t traditional lending. It’s verticalized credit infrastructure—deeply embedded in the workflows and realities of a very specific industry. Plug-and-play doesn’t work here.
OM: Let’s talk results. What happens when a clinic adopts Capim?
ML: They grow. Our clinics see 15–20% revenue uplift on average. That’s massive for a business that operates with low margins and no pricing power.

THE PLATFORM PLAY

OM: What’s your moat?
RB: Integration. Having credit, payments, and software in a single platform. It’s what makes the product sticky—and hard to replicate. Others offer SaaS. Or payments. Or credit. We offer all three. In a way that feeds back into itself.
ML: And scale compounds it. More clients → more data → better underwriting → higher ROI → faster acquisition.

THIS BUSINESS CAN GET TO $100M ARR—THEN KEEP GOING

OM: You went from 1,000 to 10,000 clinics in less than two years. What’s the secret?
RB: The product drives it. 60% of our new clinics now come from organic channels—referrals, word of mouth, content. We’re building a brand in a segment where nobody else shows up.
ML: Last year, we grew from 1,000 to 4,000 clinics. This year, we’ll close at 10,000. And as we scale, CAC goes down. That’s rare. That’s how you earn your way into IPO conversations.
OM: What’s the long-term vision? Where does this go?
ML: $100M ARR is doable in dental alone. With just credit, payments, and software, we’ll get there by hitting 40K clinics. But that’s just the beginning.
RB: From there, we expand:

– B2B marketplace for supplies

– Insurance, CapEx financing

– New verticals like beauty

– Eventually, new geographies

ML: This isn’t a short-term play. We’re building with IPO in mind. The kind of infrastructure that compounds over time. The kind of platform that can be the system of record—and revenue engine—for 150,000+ clinics across LatAm and beyond.

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THE RIGHT INVESTORS KNOW WHEN TO GET OUT OF THE WAY

OM: You have QED, Valor, NXTP, Canary—all strong names. What have you learned about managing a big cap table?
RB: We raised with intention at every stage. NXTP believed in us before we had a product—they came in right after we won the INSEAD startup competition. Canary supported us through the earliest operational hurdles. QED brought world-class expertise in credit and underwriting. And Valor is now helping us navigate and scale payments infrastructure. Every investor plays a specific role—they’re not just on the cap table, they’re in the trenches.
ML: Our biggest lesson is that backers need to trust you to operate. Not every pivot can be pre-approved on a pitch deck. When we shifted from a credit-only model into a full vertical SaaS platform, QED didn’t flinch. They understood the logic. They backed the judgment. That kind of trust is rare—and essential.
RB: And it works both ways. We lean on our investors for their superpowers—but we’ve built relationships that give us autonomy, not dependency. That’s what lets us move fast while building long.

THE TAKEAWAY

✓ Don’t be afraid to contradict the playbook. Most breakout companies didn’t follow best practices—they rewrote them based on firsthand learning.

✓ Lead with urgency, not features. Customers adopt what solves their most pressing problem—not what looks good in a demo. Startups that identify and solve for revenue loss win attention fast.

✓ Validate expansion with behavior, not belief. Before launching a new product or vertical, test demand in the wild. Fake doors and usage signals are more honest than surveys or gut feel.

✓ Boring markets can be billion-dollar ones. Opportunity often hides in fragmented, overlooked industries. The harder they are to serve, the more defensible your business becomes.

✓ Trust is the ultimate capital. Great investors don’t just fund you—they back your decisions when the roadmap changes. That’s the kind of alignment that builds category leaders.

This episode is part of a special AWS series spotlighting early-stage startups building foundational infrastructure across Latin America. We’re grateful to AWS for supporting Latin founders from idea to IPO.

 P.S. If this issue was valuable to you please share it with a founder who needs to hear it. Let’s build LATAM’s next tech leaders—together.

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