A friend recently pointed me to an essay by Paul Graham, one of the founders of Y Combinator, titled Do Things That Don't Scale. I was lamenting that this was a tough business model and I wasn't sure how it would scale, but that I was content with a smaller business offering deep value. Really idealistic stuff. He was making the point that what I'm building sounds a lot like what Graham describes.
The reason a service like Pareto Dental doesn't already exist isn't an oversight. It's that this kind of work is genuinely intensive. Connecting a practice's data sources into consolidated, meaningful reporting takes real configuration and judgment. Translating those numbers into strategic conversations takes time and attention. Editing all that to stay abreast of trends and an individual business's goals. There's no software product that does this automatically, and there probably won't be one anytime soon — because the value isn't just in the output. It's in the thinking that goes into it and the relationship it necessarily spawns.
I'm not trying to build something that serves thousands of practices simultaneously with minimal human involvement. I'm trying to build something genuinely useful for a focused group of practice owners — and to be a real thought partner to each of them.
Graham's essay makes the case that doing unscalable things intentionally, at least early on, is often exactly the right strategy. To take that a step further: for some services, the unscalability isn't a phase you eventually grow out of. It's the point.
Some practice owners have told me they didn't realize this kind of partnership was even possible. If that resonates, I'd be glad to talk.