Floss Like You Mean It: Two Sisters Made Oral Care Obsessable | Dr. Chrystle Cu & Cat Cu, COCOLAB

Dr. Chrystle Cu went from running a fully booked Bay Area dental practice (patients waiting four to six months for an appointment) to co-founding COCOLAB, the oral care brand that's making flossing something people actually want to do. Her co-founder and little sister Cat Cu pivoted from a failed San Francisco art marketplace (one painting sold, and her dad bought it) to becoming the creative force behind a brand that's turned floss, toothbrushes, and toothpaste into objects people genuinely want on their counters. A decade in, COCOLAB is in Target, CVS, Credo, Anthropologie, and Goop, with 177% growth over the past three years and a spot on the Fortune 500 fast growth list.

In this episode, the sisters break down how they bootstrapped for nearly a decade before raising their Series A, why they started as Coco Box before narrowing to floss (the problem was just too big to share a wrapper), and how a cold email to Gwyneth Paltrow's assistant in 2016 became their first real inflection point. Chrystle gets into the science of why most people are brushing wrong (you're skipping your gum line, which is where all the plaque actually lives), why coconut oil ended up in the floss (lauric acid, Ayurvedic tradition, and yes, a little bit of Goop strategy), and how her dream toothbrush became one that a dental hygienist liked enough to tattoo on herself. Cat talks about the unlikely mashup of finance brain and art brain, the brute force of bootstrapped fulfillment (she spent five years personally wrapping packages), and why she still loses sleep every time they launch a new SKU.

Whether you're building in a category nobody thinks is sexy, bootstrapping through the height of the VC era and wondering if you made the right call, or just looking for the reason your gums bleed at the dentist, this one's for you.

🎁 A Gift for the Womansplain Community

Use code WOMANSPLAIN15 at checkout on cocolab.com for 15% off your entire order. Start with the original CocoFloss (the textured, coconut-oil-infused one that lab-tested four times more effective at plaque removal than the leading brand) or the CocoBrush designed to actually clean your gum line. If you have not flossed since your last dental appointment, this is your sign.

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