Practical Founders Podcast

#181: When Systems Plus AI Scale Better Than People in SaaS – Jordon Comstock

Jan 28, 2026

Jordon Comstock is 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.

BoomCloud now does about $3M in ARR with roughly 600 dental practices and an 11-person team. The company helps dentists replace insurance-driven revenue with subscription-based patient memberships, creating higher margins and more predictable cash flow. BoomCloud has been profitable since 2016 and continues to grow steadily.

Jordon shares hard-earned lessons about hiring too fast, why systems scale better than people, and how he uses AI to increase output without adding headcount. He also shares how narrowing ICP transformed sales and marketing and why he’s committed to building a durable, profitable business instead of chasing a fast exit.

Key Takeaways

  • Bootstrap Talent Gap — VC-funded talent often struggles in capital-efficient environments that require ownership, speed, and scrappy execution.
  • AI Is Leverage — AI tools helped BoomCloud increase marketing and product output without rebuilding a large team.
  • Profit Creates Buffer — Staying profitable provided margin for mistakes and reduced stress during periods of experimentation.
  • Slow Markets Matter — Vertical SaaS wins by matching the pace of conservative industries instead of forcing VC-style growth.
  • Exit Isn’t Required — Steady profits allow founders to “exit slowly” through distributions without selling the business.

Quote from Jordon Comstock, Founder and CEO of BoomCloud

“We say systems scale, people don’t. And we’re learning that now. Let’s implement the systems first. It doesn’t mean people aren’t important. People are important. But they have to have a system or a 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, okay, you got to generate, you know, a thousand leads a month is what we were trying to do. And he couldn’t do it because he didn’t have systems. Fast forward a year, 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.

Links

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This podcast is sponsored by DesignliDesignli helps non-technical software founders build serious products with clarity, confidence, and peace of mind—by serving as their fully outsourced engineering team.

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Practical Founders Podcast with Greg Head

Every week, host Greg Head interviews a successful software founder who started, grew, and sometimes sold a valuable software company—without VC funding.

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