Companies use the term “best of breed” to frame themselves as the slayers of big players, with a niche product that appeals to the savvy customer. — JACKSON GIBBS/The New York Times
In February, a Giant Schnauzer known as Monty beat out more than 2,500 other dogs to win the Westminster Kennel Club dog show, the first Giant Schnauzer to win. Not only was he best in breed, he was also best in show.
For a certain slice of tech startup, cultivating a reputation as the “best of breed” – a term that’s been around for at least a couple of decades – is the goal.
Such companies, in their early days, focus on dominating a niche. Think: Zoom, Dropbox, Slack and other product leaders that created software meant to be used alongside other specialized applications. These companies exist in contrast to the Googles and Microsofts and Adobes of the world, which sell product bundles.
Best-of-breed companies often make bold attempts to grab market share from a dominant incumbent in an established industry, according to Andy Wu, an associate professor at Harvard Business School who focuses on strategy.
Positioning oneself as best of breed, he explained, is “an entry strategy” that can serve startups. But because it can be tough for such focused companies to sustain long-term growth, the marker is almost by definition temporary. Eventually, if a company integrates with a larger platform, or matures into a sprawling software firm, it will lose its best-of-breed bragging rights. (That happened with Slack, for example, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2021.)
Declaring oneself best of breed is a boast – a way for companies to frame themselves as the slayers of big players, with a niche product that appeals to a certain type of savvy customer. Such firms are often creative about how they attract and expand their business. While enterprise companies generally pitch their wares to chief technology officers and other executives with the power to buy expensive packages, best-of-breed companies employ savvy marketing techniques to get in with the workers, partly by making their tools easy to find and download.
“They are selling by first appealing to front-line employees, who then put pressure on an organization,” Wu said. If the people demand a cool new work app they’ve found, for example, the chief technology officer might give them that app – even if they could do fine with tools from an existing, perhaps less glamorous, enterprise vendor.
Best-of-breed companies generally offer an excellent user experience, but sometimes at the expense of excellent security, Wu said. Brand-new startups may be more inclined to play fast and loose with things like password security and authentication as they try to make their products frictionless. The approach can delight users but worry executives. Chief technology officers, especially at more traditional companies, prioritize security, Wu said.
Executives also embrace ease of buying. And negotiating one big contract with an enterprise software firm can be less taxing than arranging for a bespoke suite of apps from a slew of different firms. “Any large enterprise,” Wu added, “has a culture of avoiding getting in trouble.” Choosing established, unflashy vendors is one tried-and-true way to avoid trouble.
Those crowned (or self-appointed) as best of breed, whether in the world of applications or dog shows, are “very good at narrowly doing one thing,” Wu said, which can work well in a certain context. “But if you need a general dog that can survive anything in the wild,” he added, a variety of different strengths can help. – ©2025 The New York Times Company
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
