Austin Hunter
I built Ascend because dental practice owners deserved better than the status quo
The Moment Everything Broke
Austin spent years inside a large DSO leading M&A and evaluating dental practices across the country. And in deal after deal, he saw the same painful pattern: brilliant dentists walking into selling their practice completely unprepared and entirely alone.
- Brokers didn’t provide real preparation.
- Non-represented practices left millions on the table.
- Owners had no idea how buyers thought — or what truly drove value.
He saw practices with strong clinical performance but weak documentation. Owners with decades of success but no margin of negotiation. Deals that should have been legacy-defining turn into stressful, disappointing experiences.
That’s when the truth became impossible to ignore: The dental industry had plenty of buyers. It didn’t have enough advocates for sellers.
I was tired of watching practice owners spend their lives building something meaningful, only to be outmatched in the moment that mattered most.”
The “Enough Is Enough” Moment
It happened after a long week reviewing a series of deals where owners had either no representation or the wrong representation. Financials were incomplete. EBITDA was miscalculated. Opportunities to increase value were missed entirely. And the brokers involved didn’t understand the buy-side well enough to fix it.
On the plane ride home, it hit him: sellers weren’t losing deals because their practices were weak — they were losing because the process was weak.
Owners didn’t need just a broker. They needed a translator — someone who understood how buyers actually evaluate deals, where value is created, and how risk is priced.
“That was the night I decided to build an advisory firm designed around one mission: prepare owners the way buyers wish they were prepared — and then protect them through the entire process.”
Building the Fix
Austin founded Ascend Strategic Partners to elevate outcomes for practice owners and reshape what seller-side representation should look like.
He developed a pre-sale advisory process built on one simple idea:
when owners are educated, prepared, and positioned correctly, their outcomes skyrocket.
Today, Ascend helps practice owners:
- Understand their true market value
- Strengthen operational and financial readiness
- Present clean, buyer-ready data
- Navigate offers with clarity
- Maximize proceeds from a DSO, PE group, or private buyer
But the mission didn’t stop there. During his DSO years, Austin also witnessed another widespread problem:
emerging DSOs desperately needed M&A infrastructure — but couldn’t afford full-time staff.
So he expanded Ascend’s services to support groups with:
- Part-time or fractional diligence staffing
- Deal evaluation and underwriting
- Data room creation and management
- Systems for scalable M&A
- Operational insights that accelerate growth
M&A staff is expensive — but bad deals are even more expensive. Ascend became the cost-effective, high-skill partner DSOs needed to grow smarter and avoid costly mistakes.
Where We’re Headed Next
Austin’s vision is to elevate dental M&A into a new standard of transparency, preparation, and advocacy. Ascend is building a future where:
- Practice owners feel empowered, not overwhelmed
- Emerging DSOs access institutional-quality diligence without institutional cost
- The M&A process becomes fairer, clearer, and more value-driven for everyone involved
Through national advisory work, pre-sale education, and partnerships with founders and DSOs, Ascend is helping build the one thing every successful organization needs: clarity that compounds — for owners, for buyers, and for the future of dentistry.
