Speed vs Process: Inside LightForce’s Framework for Maintaining Startup Velocity at Scale
When you’re disrupting a regulated industry, speed isn’t optional – it’s survival. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, LightForce Orthodontics CEO Alfred Griffin shared how they maintain startup velocity while scaling in the heavily regulated medical device industry.
The Speed Imperative
“If nothing changes in this industry, then our competitors will win,” Alfred emphasized. “Our competitors are big ortho companies, and if nothing changes, they will win. They’ve got a lot of cash and they’ve done very well for many years.” This reality drives LightForce’s obsession with maintaining execution speed even as they scale.
Navigating Regulatory Requirements
As a medical device company, LightForce operates under strict FDA oversight. “We are a 510k class two device, both for the software and for the hardware,” Alfred explained. This regulatory framework adds complexity to every decision, requiring careful balance between compliance and speed.
This became particularly challenging during their early FDA approval process. As Alfred notes, “We had a very close relationship with the FDA because there really was not a whole world of 3d printed directly. 3d printed medical devices.”
Scaling Decision-Making
Growing from 20 to 650 employees in four years required rethinking how decisions get made. “Culture is very important. It’s hard to scale culture as the company grows,” Alfred shared. Their solution focused on three key elements:
- Transparency in goal-setting
- Clear alignment between individual work and company objectives
- Maintaining feedback loops from the bottom up
The Trust-Speed Connection
LightForce discovered that transparency builds trust, and trust enables speed. As Alfred explains, “Trust is a core principle of LightForce, which sounds cliche, but once you have it and once you earn it enables you to make quicker decisions in an organization and move faster, minimizing bureaucracy.”
Balancing Life Minutes
Speed doesn’t mean burnout. “There’s a balance,” Alfred noted. “There’s a balance, and you only have so many life minutes to give.” This philosophy shapes how they think about process implementation, ensuring systems support rather than hinder their team’s effectiveness.
Creating Process That Enables
Rather than viewing process as a necessary evil of scaling, LightForce focuses on “bringing on the right processes that enable people to continue being creative and build.” This means carefully evaluating each new system or procedure against their need for speed.
Lessons for Scaling in Regulated Industries
LightForce’s experience offers valuable insights for founders navigating similar challenges:
- Make speed a cultural priority
- Build trust to enable faster decision-making
- Create processes that enable rather than restrict
- Maintain transparency as you scale
- Balance regulatory compliance with execution velocity
Measuring Success
The results speak for themselves. Despite operating in a heavily regulated industry, LightForce achieved 300% year-over-year growth and now serves approximately 10% of North American orthodontists. They’ve done this while maintaining FDA compliance and scaling their team by 32x.
The key takeaway? As Alfred puts it, “Our strength as a company is to move quickly, and if we fail to continue moving quickly, then the competition wins.” The challenge isn’t choosing between speed and process – it’s building processes that preserve and enhance your ability to move fast.
For founders scaling regulated businesses, this means viewing process not as a necessary evil, but as an enabler of sustainable speed. The goal isn’t to eliminate process, but to create systems that allow you to move faster while maintaining compliance and quality.
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