I’ve always believed that some of the biggest battles are the ones you can’t see—the ones that happen beneath the surface, in places most people don’t think to look. That’s what drew me to oral health. Not because I was a dentist or a scientist, but because I partnered with someone who could see the invisible—and I knew how to get the world to notice it.
Emily Stein was that someone. A scientist with more degrees than I had houseplants—microbiology, immunology, rheumatology—you name it, she had it. We met in the Bay Area back in 2003. She was the brain; I was the business side. We were different in the best kind of way—complementary, like chemistry and charisma. And in 2017, we co-founded Primal Health.
Our focus was the oral microbiome. Not exactly cocktail party conversation back then. Most folks were still wrapping their heads around probiotics, let alone prebiotics and postbiotics. But Emily had this quiet conviction that wouldn’t let up. It wasn’t abstract for her. It was personal.
Her grandmother had just had a few teeth pulled when she suffered a massive stroke the next day. Most people would chalk that up to bad luck. Emily didn’t. She flew from California to Wisconsin, swabbed her grandmother’s mouth, and took those samples back to her lab. She wanted to know what went wrong—and what could be done differently.
What she found changed everything.
She created a novel combination of prebiotics and postbiotics— not to kill bacteria, but to persuade them. To nudge the bad actors toward better behavior. It was a new way of thinking, treating microbes more like a stubborn team than an enemy to be eradicated. It was brilliant. And it worked.
We launched our first human product, bright-eyed and ready to change the game. But as anyone who’s tried to introduce something new into a well-established industry knows, innovation isn’t always welcomed with open arms. Dentists were skeptical, confused. Some couldn’t even know what a “postbiotic,” was, let alone understand how it worked. We were early—maybe too early. But we kept at it.
Then something unexpected happened.
During our early market testing, we started getting questions— not about human use, but about pets. People wanted to know if our product could help their dogs and cats. At first, it felt like a distraction. But the questions kept coming, louder and more frequent. So we listened.
And that’s how TEEF was born.
We took the same core science, stripped out the flavors, and formulated a powder that could be added to a pet’s water or food. It was simple, effective, and unlike anything else on the market. From 2020 to 2023, we put most of our energy into pets—and the response was incredible.
We started winning awards. Most recently, it is the Pet Innovation's Pet Dental Care Company of the Year (2025). Our name was showing up on industry radars. Suddenly, people who wouldn’t take our calls a year ago were asking us to speak on panels or partner on studies. Emily became a go-to voice in the world of the oral microbiome, giving talks across the globe, and I watched her transform from quiet innovator to scientific rockstar.
By 2024, we started to circle back to humans on a small scale, launching new products like water additives and toothpaste tablets. Slowly, the world was catching up to what we already knew.
We’ve had some wild moments along the way—like getting the green light from space agencies to provide oral health solutions for astronauts on the International Space Station. Or partnering with the Como Zoo in St. Paul to study our dental technology in exotic animals. We even wrapped up a 600-patient study with Delta Dental of Minnesota and kicked off a collaboration on the dental health impacts on certain cancers with Baylor University.
It hasn’t always been easy. We’re still a small startup, stretching every dollar and learning as we go. But there’s something deeply satisfying about watching an idea born from love and loss grow legs in unexpected places.
We built this because we cared—about health, about families, about futures. And maybe that’s why it’s working. We didn’t just try to kill bad bacteria. We tried to understand them. To persuade the invisible.
And in doing so, we’re aiming to change more than just smiles.