Unbundle Your Thinking: Strategy That Scales
Matt Wallach built Veeva into a $2.75B B Corp by focusing, saying no, and building only what mattered.
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Buying software these days feels like going to Costco for milk and leaving with a kayak. You wanted a solid Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system but ended up with a pile of clunky extras—a “revenue harmonizer,” a “customer sentiment heatmap,” and other stuff no one asked for. It’s the oldest trick in the book: bundle more, charge more, hope they don’t notice what’s broken.
But what if, instead of bundling, you did the opposite? What if you made every single product win the business on its own merit?
That’s exactly what Matt Wallach did as co-founder of Veeva Systems, a global provider of cloud-based life science software solutions like CRMs for pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device companies. In a recent Strategy at Scale podcast, he shared how he didn’t just build a successful software company—now a publicly traded B Corp with $2.75 billion in revenue—he redefined how strategic discipline and customer obsession can work together to scale a multi-billion-dollar enterprise.
For chief strategy officers (CSOs), Wallach's story isn't just inspiring. It's instructional.
Farewell Bundles, Hello Precision
Veeva didn't win by packaging mediocrity. It won by making sure every product was best-of-breed. Wallach's mantra is “We are only as good as our worst product.”
Rather than hide a weak offering behind flashier siblings, Veeva insisted on product excellence across its entire portfolio. Each product team had to stand on its own. They weren’t thrown into bundles like passengers on a lifeboat. If you built something at Veeva, it needed to earn its keep.
Most companies instinctively bundle products to leverage their existing customer base, reduce acquisition costs, and benefit from switching friction. They rely on pricing tactics to drive upsells and cross-sells.
But as Wallach points out, these short-term gains come at a cost: bundling protects add-on teams from true market pressure, lowering the bar for product excellence. For CSOs navigating strategic growth, the takeaway is clear: don’t rely on bundling to mask your weaknesses. Instead, build for substance. If your strategy requires propping up a weak product, your foundation is already cracking.
This is one of at least eight strategic choices Wallach and his leadership team made that cut against convention. By rejecting the standard playbook, they unlocked a path to scale that others overlooked—and turned their contrarian instincts into a competitive advantage.
Start Small, Win Big
Conventional wisdom says go big or go home. Investors want you to show a big total addressable market (TAM) (see the recent Outthinkers podcast with Dave Whorton for more on this). But Wallach flipped that script. He avoided Goliaths who could "crush" his startup and instead focused on first serving nimble, innovative mid-market firms.
Why? Because the early adopter isn’t just a revenue source—they're a strategic partner. The right customer pushes you to get better, gives feedback that shapes your roadmap, and becomes your proof point for larger players.
Establish a foothold first. A disciplined land-and-expand strategy delivers far better results than a premature full-scale push.
Say No, Win Trust
You don’t earn industry loyalty by saying yes to everything. In fact, Wallach says Veeva earned trust by saying "no"—strategically, politely, and often. His team refused to build features just because a massive client wanted them. Instead, they asked: Will this actually help the end user? Does it simplify or complicate?
He called this the "shit sandwich" approach: compliment, deliver the no, end on another high note.
Veeva's competitors tried to win by doing more. Veeva won by doing less, better. They saw that simplicity was a competitive advantage—especially in regulated industries like pharma, where usability and compliance are life-or-death.
Titles Don’t Build Products
Veeva hired for execution, not optics. "You can’t have a VP of everything before you have people to do the work," Wallach said. It sounds obvious, but CSOs know that org charts often balloon with impressive titles before the core work is nailed.
Veeva waited to build leadership layers until the workload demanded it. This created lean, focused teams with shared accountability. Strategy wasn’t written in decks; it was executed in product sprints, customer calls, and iterative improvements.
For CSOs in scaling organizations, it’s a reminder: strategy lives downstream of operations.
Don’t just design an empire. Build the plumbing first.
Go Deep, Not Wide
Most SaaS companies try to build horizontal tools for every vertical. There is an economic logic to this. Economies of scope come from building a tool or feature or product and then using it over and over again. This is why Honda makes engines that go into cars, boats, lawn mowers, and motorcycles.
In contrast, Veeva stayed obsessively focused on life sciences—not because they lacked ambition, but because they understood a different kind of economic logic: economies of depth. Rather than chasing horizontal growth across industries, Veeva drilled vertically into the specific, highly regulated needs of pharmaceutical and biotech companies.
Starting with CRM, they didn’t diversify into unrelated markets like retail or banking. Instead, they focused on adjacent domains within the same industry—clinical operations, regulatory compliance, quality management, and marketing—each one tightly integrated and informed by domain-specific workflows, data models, and compliance requirements.
That industry focus became a flywheel. Customers trusted them. Integration was easier. Cross-sell became natural. By the time Veeva had 40+ products, they weren’t bundled—they were individually excellent and collectively irresistible.
For CSOs navigating growth, this raises the question: are you spreading wide or digging deep? Are you building brand permission and platform synergy, or just planting flags?
Execute Like You Mean It
Wallach is the first to admit that Veeva didn’t win by having the most novel strategy. They won because they out-executed everyone else. Strategic ideas were important. But without ruthless prioritization and discipline to say no, they meant little.
"Lots of companies have great strategy statements, but they can't execute themselves out of a box," he said. "We ran circles around those companies."
Execution is strategy. And execution thrives in cultures that prize clarity, feedback loops, and discipline over vanity.
Governance with a Soul
Wallach and his team made a bold governance decision: converting Veeva into a Public Benefit Corporation (PBC). For them, this wasn't a PR stunt. It was codifying what they'd always practiced: putting customers and employees on equal footing with shareholders.
They also aligned with investors who shared their long-term vision—partners who valued durable impact over short-term gains. This governance shift gave Veeva a credible voice in industry-wide regulatory conversations. It told CSOs at pharma giants: "We’re not here to squeeze you. We're here to build with you."
Sharpen Strategy with Selectivity
Wallach’s view that bundling often hides mediocrity is just one of many moves that defy conventional strategy. At Veeva, he proved that great products don’t need cover. When every offering is best-in-class, every early adopter is intentional, and execution is non-negotiable—strategy stops being theory and starts being real.
For chief strategy officers, the Veeva story is a masterclass in challenging conventional wisdom. Not every company can follow their exact playbook—but every strategist can start by asking tougher questions.
What choices are we making by default?
Are we bundling because it’s smart—or just because it’s standard?
Should we really chase the biggest market or the loudest customer?
Do we need more strategy or just better execution?
Are we building around investors who align with our vision—or ones who dilute it?
The point isn’t to copy Veeva—it’s to question what you’ve stopped questioning.
Great strategy is about doing what matters most and having the discipline to ignore the rest. For executives, that means making the hard calls, clearing the noise, and aligning your teams around what truly moves the needle. Start there, and the results will follow.
For insights on building billion-dollar businesses, product development, and cutting-edge innovation visit Outthinker.com.