FLOSSING USED TO BE A DREADED CHORE, BUT FOR COCOLAB lovers, IT'S NOW A lifestyle AND ONE OF THE BEST PARTS OF OUR DAY.
Dr. Chrystle Cu launched COCOLAB after realizing traditional floss simply wasn’t cutting it for her patients. She wanted to make floss softer, grippier, and more effective.
Between viral Target pop-ups, a growing fanbase of loyal flossers, and dreams of building the “Nike of oral care,” Dr. Cu is proving that even the most routine habits can become something people genuinely look forward to. And with her sister by her side and a decade of bootstrapped hustle behind the business, she’s building far more than a product—she’s creating a movement around better smiles and better self-care. Read about Dr. Chrystle Cu’s journey in her C&C 100 interview below.
When did you decide you wanted to branch out and build your own dental brand from the ground up? Were there voids in the market that you saw going unfulfilled?
It really came from my experience as a practicing dentist. My goal has always been to help people achieve strong, beautiful smiles for life. But what often stood in the way was my patients' inability to maintain proper oral hygiene at home — namely, flossing. The flosses available at the time were primarily thin, slippery, and flat. They were hard to use, and frankly, they weren't doing the job well enough. I realized my patients needed something that both worked better and actually inspired them to take care of their smiles in the first place. Floss itself needed to be softer, grippier, and scrubbier. And beyond the product, I saw a deeper gap — oral care had never really been designed with the consumer experience in mind. It was purely clinical, cold, and forgettable. I wanted to change that. I wanted to create a brand that made people want to show up for their oral health every single day.
We see you as a rising star and entrepreneur who has accomplished so much in a short time—what hard work and sacrifices have you made over the last year that really paid off?
One of the biggest sacrifices has been stepping back from active practice. Dentistry is deeply personal — you invest years in training, in building relationships with patients, in pursuing clinical excellence. Walking away from the chair to go all-in on building this brand was not a decision I took lightly. But I carry that clinician brain into everything we do, and honestly, it's one of our greatest advantages.
A lot of the behind-the-scenes work isn't glamorous. It's long hours, constant problem-solving, and making decisions with imperfect information while knowing that real people (my team, customers, and patients) are counting on you to get it right. But because I'm thinking like a dentist at every step, the product and the mission never drift from what actually matters: does this make people's oral health meaningfully better?
The other thing that's really paid off is investing in our team and in my own growth as a leader. Scaling a brand means you can't do it all yourself. Learning to build trust, delegate thoughtfully, and create space for talented people to do their best work has been one of the most humbling and rewarding parts of this journey. The team we've built is something I'm genuinely proud of.
“Oral health is universal. Everyone has a mouth. Everyone deserves to feel great about their smile. We're just getting started.”
Did you raise capital for your business—and if so, what surprised you most about the process?
We've been very intentional about how we've approached growth. We bootstrapped the first ten years of the business, which taught us an enormous amount about discipline, resourcefulness, and what it truly means to build something sustainable.
When we did decide to raise, what surprised me most was just how rigorous and all-consuming the process really is. “Due diligence” is extremely diligent — on both sides. We were evaluating investors just as much as they were evaluating us, and I think that mutual scrutiny is exactly how it should be. You're entering a real partnership, and everyone deserves to go in with eyes wide open.
It was intense and there's no other word for it. But that intensity was worth it. After ten years of doing it on our own, we knew our business inside and out, and we weren't afraid to show all of it, the good and the hard. That honesty is what made the process feel right.
Going after what you deserve in life takes confidence and guts. What has helped you build trust in your own instincts as more opportunities come your way?
A lot of it comes back to my clinical training. In dentistry, you're constantly making decisions that directly impact someone's health — there's no room to second-guess yourself into paralysis. You learn to trust your judgment, act decisively, and then stay humble enough to keep learning and adjusting. That combination of confidence and curiosity is something I've carried with me into every room I've walked into as a founder.
I try to apply that same mindset in business. Stay close to the problem you're solving, listen to the data and the feedback, but also honor the intuition that comes from deep experience. When those things are in alignment, that's usually the signal to move.
And honestly, the reps help. Every hard decision you make — whether it goes well or not — builds something. You start to recognize your own patterns, know where your blind spots are, and trust yourself a little more each time.
What’s currently on your vision board (literally or mentally)?
At the top of it is experience. I want COCOLAB to be something people genuinely want more of — not just a product they reach for out of habit, but a brand that makes them feel something. Oral care has never really been built around joy or community, and that's exactly the white space we're going after.
Which leads to the other thing I keep coming back to: connection. I want to build a brand that brings people together around a shared passion for their health and their smiles. Not just a loyal customer base, but a real community; people who feel like they're part of something. That's the kind of brand that endures.
And when I think about what that could look like at scale, I think about Nike. The way they built a movement around a universal human experience: movement, ambition, the drive to show up for yourself. They made people feel like they belonged to something bigger. That's the energy I'm reaching for. Oral health is universal. Everyone has a mouth. Everyone deserves to feel great about their smile. We're just getting started.
Where do you hope to see your brand five years from now?
I'd love for COCOLAB to be a household name in oral care, but honestly, that's the byproduct, not the goal. What I really want is to have shifted how people think and feel about it. Oral care has lived in the land of guilt and obligation for too long. You go to the dentist, you get lectured, you feel bad, and then... not much changes. We want to be the brand that breaks that cycle for good.
If five years from now people are reaching for their Cocofloss because it's genuinely a moment they look forward to — if oral care has become something they enjoy and stay consistent with rather than something they avoid — that's the win. That's what we're building toward.
The category is ready for that shift. We just want to be the ones who lead it.
What’s been your “I can’t believe this is my life” moment lately?
Earlier in my career, Saturdays meant being in the clinic by 8:30am and seeing back-to-back patients until 3pm — no lunch, no water, no breaks. Just go. Those days were grueling. I remember one Saturday in particular: my very last patient of the day, and her mother berated me, demanding additional treatment on the spot. I had nothing left. I broke down in tears right there. I did what I could with blurry eyes and kept moving.
But that moment stuck with me — because of what it represented. We work so hard as providers, but so much of oral health comes down to what happens at home: what people eat, whether they floss, the daily habits that are entirely out of our hands. When a mother screams at me about fixing her daughter's cavities at the end of a brutal day, there's a part of you that thinks, how is this my problem? But it is — because if people don't have the tools and motivation to care for themselves, the cycle never breaks. That frustration didn't make me bitter. It made me want to build something better.
A recent Saturday looked nothing like that. Our team pulled up to a local Target with a giant COCOLAB-branded box truck and our groovy vintage COCOLAB VW bus, gave out samples, and were completely swarmed by people who were excited — about our brand, about oral care, and even about flossing. When someone stops me to say they actually love to floss now because of Cocofloss, I still can't fully describe what that does to me. It brings a completely different kind of tears.
Same Saturday. Entirely different world. I have to pinch myself.
When you’re feeling insecure, afraid, or just not up to the task at hand, what gives you strength to push through anyway?
I go back to the why. Always. On the hardest days — when I'm doubting myself or feeling the weight of everything — I come back to the reason this company exists in the first place. We're not just selling a product. We're trying to genuinely change the way people relate to their oral health. That purpose is bigger than my fear on any given day.
And there's something else that grounds me: this is our vision. My sister and I built this together. When self-doubt creeps in, I remind myself that no one understands this mission more deeply than we do. No one has more reason to fight for it. That's not arrogance, it's a reminder that I belong in the room and at the table. We've earned the right to see this through.
Rapid fire POP QUIZ:
The first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is:
take a quiet moment to feel grateful — for my family, for this life we've built — and then brush my teeth.
If I had one more hour in the day, I would:
I would give it to my kids — fully present.
A song that describes the era I’m in right now is:
THANKFUL by Forrest Frank
My current obsession is:
Understanding behavior change — what actually helps people stick to healthy habits.
Three words to describe the legacy I want to leave behind:
Inspiring. Healing. Meaningful.