Most people give little thought to their toothbrush. Giovanni Tuccari, co-founder and CEO of Milan-based CleanOS, has devoted the past few years to completely redesigning one—using an intraoral scan tailored to each customer's mouth.

The Smartbrush is an electric toothbrush whose head is custom-built from a 3D scan of the user's teeth, engineered to clean a full arch in under 30 seconds. Launched in 2024 by three childhood friends—Tuccari (CEO), Pietro Pastore (CMO, a trained dentist), and Francesco Anzalone (CTO, a robotics engineer)—the company has completed Techstars, raised approximately €1.8M, and run an equity crowdfunding campaign. According to Tuccari, it ranks among Italy's most heavily funded hardware startups, a distinction that underscores how scarce domestic investment in hardware and consumer electronics actually is.

From Toothbrush Maker to Oral Health Company

When asked to describe CleanOS, Tuccari draws a deliberate distinction that has shifted considerably since the company's early days. "We make two distinctions, and honestly, this has evolved a lot since we first met at B4i. Our flagship product is the CleanOS Smartbrush, the first electric toothbrush personalised to your mouth, built to deliver medical-grade cleaning in under 30 seconds per arch. That part is simple and clear. But what we've come to realise, through the process of building the Smartbrush and understanding what both professionals (dentists, hygienists) and consumers actually need, is that we're not a toothbrush company. We're an oral health company. Our mission is to innovate by making oral care simple and effective, until better oral health is within everyone's reach."

The pricing model itself reflects this broader vision. Beginning in November, CleanOS is shifting away from a single upfront purchase toward a subscription-based structure: customers pay between €109.99 and €139.99 initially, then €12.99 to €19.99 monthly depending on their tier. The subscription covers head refills, brush re-personalisation, toothpaste refills, and sanitising tablets. Tuccari acknowledges the difficulty of this transition for a hardware company. "It's a much harder call to make with hardware, because you carry all the upfront production costs yourself, and moving to recurring payments is a real cash flow risk — people can just cancel a card and disappear. But the goal is to remove any friction from ownership. Depending on the tier, we handle head refills, brush re-personalisation, toothpaste refills, and the cleaning tablets that sanitise your device. We're trying to reach a competitive price not because we can absorb it in our margins like Oral-B or Philips can, but because we want people to actually use a better product — and to simplify either the ownership of the device or the routine itself."

The Roadmap Beyond the Brush

CleanOS's plans extend significantly past the current Smartbrush. Tuccari outlined three areas the company is actively developing, each discovered through conversations with users and dental professionals rather than predetermined from inception.

Home Scanning and Remote Diagnostics

Currently, obtaining a custom brush head requires either an in-clinic intraoral scan or an impression kit delivered to the home—a significant constraint on scaling. By the end of 2027, CleanOS intends to release a small hardware attachment that attaches to a smartphone, allowing users to scan their own mouths and transmit the data for personalisation. This same scanning technology could enable remote monitoring for patients with chronic conditions like periodontitis, who typically visit a dentist every two to four weeks solely for examination. "If I can give them a tool that replaces that visit, the dentist frees up chair time for patients who actually need active care, and can price accordingly," Tuccari explained. Regulatory requirements mean a dentist will review scans rather than fully automating the process—at least initially.

Electric Flossing

Across Europe, only two in ten people floss regularly, largely because maintaining the habit is perceived as difficult. Yet no toothbrush, including Dyson's latest model, can effectively clean interdental spaces the way traditional floss does. Since consumer electronics is CleanOS's core strength, the team can advance hardware development more rapidly and with fewer errors. Products have already launched in the US and China, but Europe lacks a comparable offering. "We have dentists backing us after testing some of our prototypes," Tuccari said.

Oral Probiotics

CleanOS is also investigating oral probiotics, an area Tuccari describes as a genuine shift from the team's consumer electronics background. "We've seen a lot of brands grow fast around gut health probiotics. We think the next big trend is mouth health."

Three Childhood Friends Building One Company

The three founders bring vastly different expertise to the table. They have known each other since middle school, at age ten. "That's always a good story for investors, too. It coalesced organically: Pietro, being a dentist, was frustrated with his patients' hygiene levels and imagined an automatic toothbrush. I got excited about the market opportunity. We brought in Francesco, who was a robotics engineer, and that was that," Tuccari recounted.

Beyond their complementary skill sets, the founders possess complementary temperaments. Tuccari describes himself as high-energy and sales-oriented. Pastore maintains a high integrity bar—Tuccari jokes he could have been a priest—yet grasps commercial opportunities clearly and excels with people. Anzalone is more cautious and grounded, with sharp focus on the present and realism. "We balance each other out. It keeps us focused on today while still aiming high," Tuccari said.

Managing this dynamic with new team members has presented challenges. "What's harder is bringing new hires into that closeness. We talk to each other very informally, if I say something stupid, someone will just say 'that's a shit idea,' and it doesn't land as an insult because we trust each other. But that same tone doesn't always work with a wider team or a new hire who doesn't have the same context or elasticity for that kind of feedback. It's something we're actively working on."

What Hardware CEOs Learn the Hard Way

When asked what surprised him most about leading a hardware company, Tuccari pointed to lessons that went beyond technical or industrial knowledge. "What I didn't expect was learning how to help a team make decisions, rather than making decisions myself. The idea that 'I'm the CEO, so I have the final word' is nonsense, especially in a very American startup narrative. If the team doesn't have real buy-in, especially under pressure, nothing moves."

Budget discipline emerged as another critical skill. "We've raised about €1.8 million total, which, for a hardware product, is genuinely tight. The sweet spot would have been closer to €2.5 million; there's research showing it takes somewhere between €6 and €8 million in Europe to take a medical device from idea to certification. Understanding exactly where every euro goes isn't optional, it's what lets you make decisions without fear, and it's what stops you from burning money on things that don't matter, like oversized team-building events or benefits a pre-seed/seed startup doesn't need."

Perhaps most striking is a reality rarely discussed in business education: personal liability. "That as CEO, you're personally liable. Not the company, you, personally. Nobody teaches you that. People think, 'oh, it's a Limited Liability Company, who cares', but that only protects you up to a point. Investors would have to prove mismanagement, but the risk is real, and I think it's important to go in with your eyes open."

Learning from Rejection

CleanOS has faced an unusually high volume of investor rejections. "I think we're one of the startups in Italy that's received the most 'no's, full stop. There's just no investment culture here for hardware, let alone consumer electronics — a genuinely brutal industry. You're dealing with R&D and production headaches, and instead of closing one €2 million contract, you're selling units €100 at a time," Tuccari explained.

Most rejections came during an intermediate stage when the company lacked clear visibility into production costs. This experience transformed Tuccari's approach. "It's also why the next key hire I want to make is a strong supply chain/production lead: someone excellent at managing production costs, planning, and inventory to minimise waste. That's exactly what scares investors most."

Pricing also shifted in response to feedback. "Our first price at B4i was €350. Enough 'no's later, we understood we had to come down — which ties directly back to getting our cost structure right."

Mentors and Formation

Before founding CleanOS, Tuccari worked under several managers who shaped his leadership style. "The first was my very first boss, at Intesa Sanpaolo's London branch — his name was Giovanni Fiorendi, and I think he was the best boss an intern could ask for. He'd meet me at 7 am, before anyone else arrived, just to teach me banking and finance basics. That dedication to other people's learning stuck with me — it's part of why I've put so much effort into Pietro and Francesco."

Pastore's transition from dentistry to startup co-founder required particular attention. "When we started, Pietro barely knew how to send a proper email, he's a dentist; that wasn't his world. Sitting with him for hours, iterating on presentations, giving him real feedback after calls, 'you said X, Y, Z, but it would have landed better as Z, Y, X' — that's how you spread know-how to technical people so they can raise their own contribution to the team. It's also why I pushed hard for us to go through B4i: neither Pietro nor Francesco knew anything about the startup world, and the program at least gave us a shared vocabulary. When you say 'let's do a round ', and your co-founder doesn't know what a round is, you can't even have a strategic discussion eye to eye."

Hardware in Italy: A Founder's Honest Assessment

When asked what advice he would offer an Italian founder considering a hardware startup, Tuccari offered both warnings and opportunities.

  • Ensure every critical skill your product requires is actually housed within the company—this sounds obvious but represents the most frequent mistake.

On Italy specifically, the picture is mixed. When Techstars encouraged relocation to the United States, CleanOS declined, choosing to remain an Italian company. This decision has paid dividends on manufacturing: the Smartbrush is 90% produced in Italy and 10% in Portugal. The company originally planned Chinese manufacturing but reconsidered due to geopolitical uncertainty and the fact that its plastic-heavy components require proprietary moulds. Italian and European suppliers proved genuinely competitive on unit cost, particularly because many Northern Italian small and medium enterprises have lacked new projects for the past 10–15 years. "When a good project shows up, they'll quote you aggressively. Northern Italy is also well connected, two hours from almost anywhere in Europe."

Government support exists as well. CleanOS won €650K from Smart&Start, but grants alone cannot sustain a startup. "That money only unlocks as invoice reimbursements, so it helps startups that already have some financial traction, not ones just starting out."

The investor landscape presents the real obstacle. "Early-stage VCs almost always invest regionally, by statute, not preference. A German early-stage fund invests in Germany, Austria, Switzerland; French funds stay in France. Unless you're a truly exceptional outlier, you won't get early-stage capital from abroad. And the Italian early-stage investor pool is tiny; you could count the serious ones in fifteen minutes and they're heavily SaaS-oriented. It's a small network, so when one fund says no, the others tend to follow."

Italian funds typically provide what Tuccari calls "acceleration capital," moving companies from zero to one, rather than "construction capital," the trust-based funding that supports ambitious, multi-million-euro builds. "So you raise your first €1–2 million, which is genuinely hard-won, but it lands you at a stage that isn't yet investable abroad and domestically; people ask, 'Where are the results?' benchmarked against B2B SaaS speed, which a hardware company just can't match on that budget. I know it's not a nice message. But if you're building hardware here: think twice."

A Final Word

Before concluding, Tuccari had one request for readers: purchase the product, test it, and share an honest review. "I buy a bunch of random startup products myself just to test and support them. €100 won't make anyone poor — try it and tell us how it goes."

Source: Startup Reporter