The following interview is a conversation we had with Khaled Boukadoum, Founder of Torch Dental, on our podcast Category Visionaries. You can view the full episode here: $49.5 Million Raised to Transform Dental Supply Management Through Digital Innovation
Brett
Welcome to Category Visionaries, the show dedicated to exploring exciting visions for the future from the founders who are on the front lines building it. In each episode, we’ll speak with a visionary Founder who’s building a new category or reimagining an existing one. We’ll learn about the problem they solve, how their technology works, and unpack their vision for the future. I’m your host, Brett Stapper, CEO of Front Lines Media. Now let’s dive right into today’s episode.
Brett
Hey, everyone. And welcome back to Category Visionaries. Today we’re speaking with Khaled Boukadoum, Founder of Torch Dental, a dental supply platform that’s raised 49.5 million in funding. Holland, how are you?
Khaled Boukadoum
I’m doing well. I’m doing well. How are you, Brett?
Brett
I’m doing great. We were just joking there at the start that I was probably going to butcher how I pronounce your first name, and I surely did that, and I didn’t even say your last name because I really don’t want to insult you here to start the conversation off. So can you go ahead on the record? How do we properly say your name?
Khaled Boukadoum
You did great. I go by. Yeah, Khaled Bukhadoom, but my team will call me KB occasionally. Just, you know, it’s getting late and people are getting tired.
Brett
Yeah, okay. That’s an easier out, and I’ll definitely do that throughout the conversation when we wrap up. So, kb, let’s talk about it here. Man. What are you building?
Khaled Boukadoum
Yeah, no, I’m the Founder of Torch Dental, and we’re a dental supply platform that basically helps practices manage order and budget for all their supplies. And the story really is that, you know, we’re three co-founders, my twin brother and my CTO, Drew Werner. Twin brothers, ESC in Bukhara. And we all actually have dental professionals in our family and really just wanted to kind of help them out with, you know, kind of managing their business and managing their practice.
Brett
Take us back to the founding of the company. What’s the founding story?
Khaled Boukadoum
Yeah, of course. So my sister was actually studying for kind of to become a dentist. She was at NYU Dental, and, you know, she kind of came out of school after years and years of clinical training. And then, you know, you’re hit with as a dentist, just this massive amount of kind of expectation to open a practice at some point and really isn’t much training on that. So basically, after a number of years, you know, she was very excited to be a dental provider and to really work with patients to help them with their care. But really had no idea where to start in terms of kind of opening a practice, buying all the things she needed to run her practice.
Khaled Boukadoum
So, you know, she turns to me and said, hey, you know, you’ve been studying business, and you used to really kind of spend a lot of time thinking about how businesses can be run, you know, in a great way. You know, where would you start? And we basically got into it and really went deep on kind of what are the things you need to buy in order to set up your practice? What are the ways that you would set up systems in order to run your business? Well, and that’s really what kind of triggered, you know, getting deep into dental practice management.
Brett
What did the first, let’s say, six months look like?
Khaled Boukadoum
Yeah, it’s a great question. So really digging in on kind of how we could help, you know, dental practitioners. And I think the one thing that was really clear was that, you know, the supply ordering side of things was pretty broken. So starting with, you know, kind of managing your inventory, managing your product preferences, thinking about working with your team on creating order lists and a digital inventory and setting up reorders, and there really just was no system for that. So it was a bunch of whiteboards or pen and paper and Excel spreadsheets. And Excel spreadsheets was like the most advanced dental practices. And then onto the kind of ordering side, there just really was no transparency on pricing. So the reality is everyone had a different price for all the products they were ordering.
Khaled Boukadoum
And, you know, there’s this constant haggling on, you know, how much you should be paying for anesthetic or gloves or gauze or whatever it may be. And then finally, on the kind of expense management side, there really was almost like a disincentive to show how much the practice was spending, just because a lot of the time folks are making commission on that spending. So really are hoping that people will spend as much as possible. So, long story short, were really going deep on kind of the back office of the dental practice and then all the way through the supply chain on the dental side and got really excited about building out a platform to really help dental practice.
Brett
Early on. What were you thinking in terms of category? Was it practice management or what was that thinking?
Khaled Boukadoum
Yeah. So interestingly enough, practice management is the term used in the dental industry for the business side of running a practice. And then you ultimately have practice management software, which is the stuff that basically is like managing the scheduling and insurance and things like that. So we really started and got excited about the back office Generally and the areas that we saw were really big opportunity were supplies, spend management, and then we actually did see some, you know, pretty interesting stuff on revenue cycle management as well, but really got excited on the supply side and spend management. And that’s where went all in and really dove it.
Brett
It’s a very different vertical, but we had a guy named Jack Newton on, he’s the Founder of Clio. They’re like, I think like 150 million ARR and they’re in the legal space. So they have legal practice management. What he was talking about was just how lawyers in general aren’t quick to adopt new technology. What about for the dental industry and dentists? Are they quick to adopt new technology or are they still running their businesses a very old school way?
Khaled Boukadoum
Yeah, no, it’s a great question. So they definitely are not at the cutting edge of technology and tend to actually be quite skeptical at first in terms of adopting new technology. So what we found is you really have to make sure the value prop is super clear and the ROI to the customer is apparent and materially better for them in order for them to adopt the tech. So, you know, if you think about these dental practices or SMBs, they don’t just have a bunch of consultants running around who are saying you should put this system in process in place. They really are kind of mom and pop type shops. So in order to adopt something new, it really needs to be, you know, kind of mission critical for them and make their lives a lot better.
Brett
When it comes to the marketing strategy, what did it look like when you started and how have you seen it evolve since launching?
Khaled Boukadoum
Yeah, of course. So we launched in New York City and our headquarters are still in New York City. And actually it was me and my Co-Founder, twin brother. You seen, we actually went and started knocking on doors in New York. And part of the beauty of Manhattan and the density of it is there are hundreds and hundreds of dental practices on the island. And this was super helpful in terms of just like going in, talking to practices Seeing what their needs were. We’d sign up a few practices, and then we’d run back to our office and we’d actually, you know, start chatting with our CTO and kind of make adaptations or changes to the product to, you know, kind of fill those needs.
Khaled Boukadoum
So were actually doing that for the first six months plus of just, you know, kind of initial marketing and sales to practices in New York.
Brett
And then what’s it look like today? How would you describe the general marketing approach and general marketing strategy?
Khaled Boukadoum
Yeah, as much as I love knocking the doors, you know, in New York City, we’re not doing that anymore. So we now actually just launched. We’re fully national in all 48 states, and we have a fair amount of kind of marketing efforts on what it characterizes. You know, digital marketing trade shows are a big strategy where, you know, you have these big conferences where a number of dentists will come out to look for new solutions. Referrals are a big part of our strategy. And actually, organic is a pretty material part of kind of inbound for us. And then we have, you know, we have account executives who ultimately are demoing and kind of closing business.
Khaled Boukadoum
And basically these practices, a lot of the time will, you know, be really interested because we can save them 15, 20, 25% on exactly the same supplies they’re ordering. And then they typically want to see kind of what the platform looks like, number one. And then number two, we’ve built our engineering and product team has done an amazing job of building out what we call as pre Torch analytics, which is basically we allow practices to input a few pieces of data, and then, you know, we’ll create a whole custom demo for them, showing them how much they could save on exactly the same products. You know, pulling up a demo for them that is tailored exact based on all of their order history and their products. And then ultimately from their practices, are really excited to sign up and they’re off to the races.
Brett
From a marketing perspective, is there anything that you were previously doing that was working well, that you’ve since stopped working.
Khaled Boukadoum
Well, that we stopped. So we field sales actually worked really well for us in New York. And field sales meeting, kind of showing up in person, ultimately Covid hit, which kind of led to that basically us, you know, kind of pulling the plug on that. And then we found a lot of success in actually doing things, you know, fully digitally and allowing practices to sign up on their own.
Brett
What about building out the marketing team? What have you learned from building out the team? And the reason I ask all the founders. I know that’s a struggle. It’s really hard to build a marketing team. What have you learned from that experience?
Khaled Boukadoum
Yeah, so it’s actually interesting because we built the sales team first and then we actually are scaling the marketing team now. So what I’ve learned on the marketing front is that there are no shortage of strategies out there. And if you’re not careful and you’re not very metrics focused, like you can flush a lot of money down the toilet. And I think there’s, you know, a pretty. I forget who the quote is from, but it’s, you know, I know 50% of my marketing is working, I just don’t know which 50%. Right. And that’s kind of like the classic marketing issue which is attribution. But what I’d say is we’ve learned to be super metrics focused.
Khaled Boukadoum
We’ve learned to be really focused on kind of demand capture and demand gen opposed to more of kind of just general brand level marketing, which I think these are all probably pretty obvious things in the B2B world. And then I think we’re just pretty blessed in that we’re focused exclusively on dental practices at this stage. So we know who our customer is, we know where they live, and we’re just really targeted in our approach on how to communicate with that and where to communicate with them.
Brett
Co. What’s the competitive landscape look like? Who are those competitors? Is it super fragmented? Is there a giant in the space?
Khaled Boukadoum
Yeah. So the large dental supply competitors are incumbents that have been around for decades. Right. So these are, they’re public companies. Henry Schein Patterson Benko is a private company and they basically are pretty old school models where they have door to door sales reps and kind of go around with catalogs and kind of ask the practices to continue to order with them as they have for years. As it relates to kind of new digital player, I would say that we’re probably the leader in terms of kind of bringing this all in house to practices digitally and giving them a digital first approach to doing all of their supply ordering. There are some kind of smaller players, but I would say they’re a little bit more niche and are not really going for kind of the whole US market. Across all dentists.
Brett
I’ve had probably 700 venture backed founders in the podcast so far and I think I’ve only talked to two that are in like the dental technology space. Why is that, do you think? It seems like it’s a massive market. Why is venture not focused on it? Or maybe I’m just like reaching out to the wrong people and there’s like this massive group of dental tech founders that I just haven’t reached yet.
Khaled Boukadoum
Yeah, no, it’s a great question. I mean, I think there’s no shortage of incredible tech companies out there. I think dental tech is. There certainly are a number of VC backed companies, but I would say as a percentage of total VC backed companies, I’m not a hundred percent sure. If I were to like actually match it up, I’d look at like what percentage of GDP is the dental market and then see if that actually lines up with what percentage of like VC backed tech companies are dental. I would guess it’s probably pretty aligned. Got it.
Brett
That makes a lot of sense. What have you learned about fundraising so far? As we mentioned there, you’ve raised almost 50 million to date. What have you learned?
Khaled Boukadoum
Yeah, I mean, I would say that, you know, you’ll probably hear this cliche a bunch, but fundraising is kind of like dating, right? And you’re ultimately looking for the right partner. And I think you don’t want to rush it. You don’t want to kind of just rush into things with the wrong person. Same time people take time to kind of get to know each other and you ultimately are looking for the right fit, right? So I think a lot of the time people are so focused on just like closing the capital that they sometimes forget that like they’re going to be living with these people for three, five, seven, nine years. So I would say one of the biggest learnings that I’ve had is make sure you pick the right people that you want to work with for years and years.
Khaled Boukadoum
I think we’re very fortunate in that we have investors that, you know, we’re really excited about and we really love working with. But I would say that’s kind of the biggest learning that I didn’t fully appreciate up front and I would say I’m very thankful for now.
Brett
Final question for you. Let’s zoom out three to five years into the future. What’s the big picture vision look like?
Khaled Boukadoum
Yeah, so we just, you know, launched the lower 48 states in the US which we’re really excited about. You know, we’re opening an Austin, Texas office in January 2025 here. So really excited about hiring talented folks there. And I would say, as we think about, you know, the next three to five years, I would say, you know, we want to continue to grow across the US and potentially in more of North America and potentially globally.
Khaled Boukadoum
But more importantly, I think we want to get into other categories of spent outside of just supplies, where we see the opportunity to really help dental practices, you know, kind of manage their spending, continue to have great processes and controls for, you know, budgeting and expense management, and then really just drive kind of savings to the bottom line on all kinds of categories to really help these practitioners. Amazing. I love it.
Brett
All right, man, before we wrap, if there’s anyone that’s listening in that wants to follow along with your journey, where should we send them?
Khaled Boukadoum
Yeah, of course www.torchdental.com we actually just launched our new marketing site, so we’ve got all kinds of info there. We also have kind of careers. We are again opening an Austin, Texas office. We also have an office in New York. So please apply, you know, for any of those positions if interested. At the same time, if you’re a Founder or somebody who’s just interested in kind of connecting@torchdental.com that’s khaled@torchdental.com Amazing.
Brett
Thanks so much for taking the time.
Khaled Boukadoum
Thanks, Brett. Appreciate it.
Brett
This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Front Lines Media, Silicon Valley’s leading podcast production studio. If you’re a B2B Founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io Podcast. And for the latest episode, search for Category Visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening and we’ll catch you on the next episode.
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