Torch Dental’s Dual-Motion GTM: Scaling Self-Serve in a High-Touch Market

Torch Dental’s Dual-Motion GTM: Scaling Self-Serve in a High-Touch Market

Healthcare software founders face an impossible choice: build for self-serve velocity or enterprise sales cycles. The conventional wisdom says you can’t do both. Complex integrations, compliance requirements, and diverse customer needs force you to pick a lane.

Khaled Boukadoum, Founder of Torch Dental, rejected this false choice entirely. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, he shared how Torch built a platform that serves solo practitioners through self-serve onboarding while simultaneously closing deals with 50-location dental groups requiring white-glove implementation.

The secret isn’t clever marketing or sales tactics. It’s product architecture decisions made from day one that allow both motions to coexist—and reinforce each other.

The Market Reality: Massive and Fragmented

The dental industry presents a unique GTM challenge that exposes the limitations of single-motion strategies. There are roughly 200,000 dental practices in the United States. The market is enormous, but it’s also radically fragmented.

Large dental service organizations with 50+ locations exist, but they represent a small percentage of total practices. The vast majority are independent practices or small groups with just a handful of locations. Each segment has value, but they require fundamentally different sales approaches.

Traditional healthcare software companies solve this by choosing: either pursue enterprise deals with long sales cycles and custom implementations, or build simple tools for small practices with limited functionality. You optimize for one or accept mediocrity in both.

Torch’s insight was that this tradeoff is a product problem, not a GTM problem. If you architect the platform correctly, you can serve both segments without compromise.

The Product Foundation: Self-Serve by Default, Enterprise by Design

Most companies approach dual-motion GTM backward. They build for enterprise first, then try to simplify for self-serve. Or they build self-serve tools and attempt to add enterprise features later. Both approaches fail because the product architecture fights against the secondary motion.

Torch started with a different principle: build product infrastructure that’s sophisticated enough for enterprise needs but accessible enough for self-serve adoption. This isn’t about dumbing down enterprise features or bolting complex capabilities onto simple tools—it’s about architectural decisions that enable both simultaneously.

“We sit on top of the practice management system and we’re really focused exclusively on everything that happens post clinical treatment,” Khaled explains. This positioning was crucial for enabling dual motion.

By integrating with existing practice management systems rather than replacing them, Torch eliminated the biggest barrier to self-serve adoption: data migration and system replacement. A solo practitioner using Dentrix could connect Torch to their existing infrastructure without implementation support. Meanwhile, a 50-location group using Open Dental could do the same thing, just at larger scale.

The integration architecture scales naturally. One location or fifty locations—the fundamental connection points remain the same. This allows self-serve onboarding to work identically for both segments, with complexity layered on top for enterprise deployments rather than built into the foundation.

Automation as the Equalizer

The core insight enabling Torch’s dual motion is that automation serves both segments differently but equally well.

“Our bread and butter at Torch is really using AI to take all these manual workflows and automate them,” Khaled notes. For a solo practitioner, this automation means not hiring additional administrative staff as the practice grows. For a 50-location group, it means dramatically reducing the administrative workforce needed to process thousands of patient transactions daily.

Same automation. Different value propositions. Both segments get immediate, measurable impact—just scaled to their operational reality.

This is why product-led growth can work in healthcare software despite the industry’s complexity. When automation eliminates work entirely rather than just optimizing workflows, the value is self-evident regardless of practice size. A small practice sees it in hours saved per week. A large group sees it in FTEs not hired and operational costs reduced.

The product demonstrates value before a sales conversation ever happens. Self-serve customers can see the impact immediately. Enterprise prospects can run pilots that prove ROI before committing to organization-wide deployment.

Where the Motions Diverge: Implementation Complexity

While Torch’s core product works self-serve for both segments, enterprise deployments require different support layers—not different products.

Large dental groups have change management needs, multiple stakeholder approval processes, compliance requirements, and integration complexities that solo practitioners don’t face. These aren’t product limitations—they’re organizational realities.

Torch’s architecture allows them to layer on white-glove implementation support for enterprise customers without changing the underlying product. The same integration that a solo practitioner completes independently gets hands-on support and project management for enterprise deployments.

This distinction is crucial. Companies that build separate products for different segments create operational nightmares—multiple codebases, fragmented roadmaps, diverging feature sets. Companies that build one product but enable different service layers around it maintain product velocity while serving diverse customer needs.

“We’re now a couple hundred practices live and definitely growing quickly,” Khaled shares. This growth spans both segments because the product architecture supports both motions natively.

The Data Flywheel Connecting Both Motions

Here’s where Torch’s dual-motion strategy becomes particularly powerful: both customer segments contribute to the same data flywheel that improves the product for everyone.

Every transaction processed through Torch—whether from a solo practitioner or a 50-location group—feeds the AI models powering automation. Small practices generate transaction diversity across different insurance plans and patient demographics. Large groups generate transaction volume at scale.

Both types of data matter. Diversity improves model robustness. Volume improves accuracy. Solo practitioners and enterprise customers are simultaneously product users and data contributors, creating a flywheel where growth in either segment benefits all customers.

This shared infrastructure creates strategic advantages that single-motion companies can’t replicate. Pure enterprise players lack the transaction diversity that comes from serving thousands of small practices. Pure self-serve tools lack the volume that comes from large group deployments.

Torch gets both, compounding their data advantage regardless of which segment grows faster.

The GTM Implications: Efficiency at Both Ends

Dual-motion product architecture enables GTM efficiency that seems impossible in complex B2B markets.

Self-serve onboarding allows Torch to acquire small practices with minimal sales involvement. These customers provide revenue, data, and proof points—all while requiring limited customer acquisition cost. The self-serve motion funds growth and builds product value.

Meanwhile, the same product serves enterprise deals that require traditional sales cycles but benefit from self-serve product validation. Enterprise prospects can test Torch at single locations before organization-wide commitments. The sales cycle shortens because the product demonstrates value directly rather than through demos and promises.

Both motions reinforce each other. Self-serve customers become reference accounts for enterprise sales. Enterprise customers validate the platform’s scalability for self-serve prospects considering future growth. The credibility works bidirectionally.

Why This Matters Beyond Dental Software

Torch Dental’s dual-motion strategy offers a blueprint for any B2B company facing fragmented markets with diverse customer segments.

The key insight isn’t that you need better sales and marketing—it’s that you need product architecture that treats different go-to-market motions as service layers rather than product variations. Build the foundation to work self-serve. Layer on support for complexity. Let the same core product serve both motions without compromise.

“We want to be the back office, effectively, for these practices, so that they can focus on providing great care,” Khaled explains. This vision works whether the practice is a solo practitioner or a hundred-location enterprise—because the infrastructure doesn’t care about practice size. It cares about solving the problem.

For founders building in complex markets, the lesson is clear: the choice between self-serve and enterprise sales is often a false dichotomy created by product decisions, not market realities. Build the right foundation, and you can scale both motions simultaneously, letting each customer segment choose the path that works for them while you capture value across the entire market.