Brighter is a Santa Monica-based internet and healthcare company that connects dentists, patients, and dental insurers. The company licenses a consumer-driven dental benefits experience to insurance carriers to help them administer dental plans more efficiently and offer patient-friendly services such as online and mobile provider directories, patient reviews, and a proprietary online appointment scheduling feature, Brighter Schedule. The company's founder and CEO is internet entrepreneur

Jake Winebaum Jake Winebaum (born 1959) is an American entrepreneur. Winebaum is the founder of FamilyFun magazine, Business.com, Brighter.com and co-founder of eCompanies and Applied Cognition. Early life Winebaum’s father, Sumner, was an advertising ...

. Brighter's technology powers member engagement tools used by major dental insurers including Cigna,

Aetna Aetna Inc. () is an American managed health care company that sells traditional and consumer directed health care insurance and related services, such as medical, pharmaceutical, dental, behavioral health, long-term care, and disability plans, ...

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Delta Dental The Delta Dental Plans Association is a network of dental insurance companies composed of 39 independent Delta Dental members operating in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. These member companies provide coverage to 85 mill ...

. In December 2017, Brighter was acquired by Cigna.

Early products

The company's first product was a dental savings plan geared toward uninsured patients. It was profiled in several national publications, including Good Morning America, ABC World News with Diane Sawyer,

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.Empson, Rip
Brighter Launches A New, Free Version Of Its Dental Service To Bring Affordable Care To The Uninsured.

. TechCrunch, 3 June 2013. Web. 27 Sept. 2013. In 2014, the company launched Brighter PRO, a dental benefit plan for self-funding companies. Companies use self-insured preferred-provider (PPO) dental plans, with access to an online platform to search for local providers, compare, and select a dentist.

Licensing

As of 2017, three of the largest dental insurers in the United States utilize Brighter products, through the company's licensing agreements with Cigna, Delta Dental, and Aetna. In 2015, Cigna began licensing Brighter's platform to power the myCigna website and mobile app. The licensing agreement includes profiles of in-network providers, estimated copays, and online appointment scheduling. Delta Dental added Brighter's appointment scheduling software, Brighter Schedule, to its mobile application in March 2017. Online scheduling was extended to DeltaDental.com in July 2017. In August 2017, Aetna announced that it would be launching an updated experience on its Aetna Navigator site in January 2018. The new experience will include all of its dental customers and feature Brighter's entire suite of member engagement tools.

Funding and acquisition

Brighter secured about $49 million in investments, with backing from

General Catalyst General Catalyst, formerly General Catalyst Partners (GCP), is an American venture capital firm focused on early stage and growth investments. The firm was founded in 2000 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and also has offices in San Francisco, Palo A ...

Mayfield Fund Mayfield, also known as Mayfield Fund, is a US-based venture capital firm that focuses on early-stage to growth-stage investments in enterprise and consumer technology companies. Founded in 1969 and based in Menlo Park, California Menlo Park ...

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DAG Ventures DAG Ventures is an American venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. DAG Ventures works with startups in providing early stage and growth stage funding. Since its founding in 2004, by Tom Goodrich and John Cadeddu, the firm has backed ...

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Tenaya Capital Tenaya Capital is a venture capital firm with offices in Portola Valley, California, and Wellesley, Massachusetts. Founded in 1995 as Lehman Brothers Venture Partners, Tenaya spun out to become an independent firm in 2009 following Lehman's bankr ...

. In December 2017, Cigna announced that it had acquired Brighter. In the announcement, Cigna said it planned to create new digital products for its members and for health care providers and to integrate Brighter's technology into existing products and services.Cigna Acquires Brighter, A Leader in Digital Engagement of Health Care Consumers
Cigna. Cigna, 14 December 2017. Web.

References

External links

*{{Official website, https://www.brighter.com Companies based in Santa Monica, California Online marketplaces of the United States Dental companies of the United States Health care companies based in California