The main reason for raising VC funding was to hire lots of talent quickly. People first, process second. Remember those days? Almost no founder thinks like that now.
The old practical wisdom is coming back: Figure it out first before you hire someone to do it.
Even more so now, with modern AI systems and agents that get things done but need a LOT more guidance.
Jordon Comstock is the founder and CEO of BoomCloud, a vertical SaaS company serving dental practices with patient membership software.
He started the company scrappy and bootstrapped, with no outside funding, after years in the dental industry managing his family’s dental lab business.
The company helps dentists replace insurance-driven revenue with subscription-based patient memberships, creating higher margins and more predictable cash flow.
BoomCloud has about $3M in ARR, serves roughly 600 dental practices, and has an 11-person team. They have been profitable since 2016 and continue to grow steadily.
Jordon learned the hard way about hiring too fast, why systems scale better than people, and how AI can increase output without adding headcount.
He made the classic mistake of “just hiring executives and team members” before creating the structure and systems needed for them to succeed.
Now, with highly tuned systems and practical AI execution, they need fewer than half the people they had 18 months ago to grow twice as fast.
“We say, Systems Scale, People Don’t. And we’ve learned that now. Let’s implement the systems first. It doesn’t mean people aren’t important. People are important. But they need a system or process first.
“We’ve got to build it as a company and build that foundation first. When we hired a director of marketing and said, OK, You’ve got to generate a thousand leads a month. And he couldn’t do it because he didn’t have systems. Fast forward a year, and we implemented SEO systems to drive consistent traffic.
“And we convert that traffic into leads, and now a thousand leads in a month is automatic. Because we have systems. We don’t have a director of marketing anymore. I guess it’s me, me with systems and AI.”
This is a common theme I hear every week from practical founders. Adding people too early is costly and slows progress. AI systems are more efficient when people set them up right and tune them constantly.
Jordon has been a member of my Practical Founders CEO Peer Groups for over two years.
Check out this revealing episode with Jordon Comstock on the Practical Founders Podcast.
