IMHO and experience, most B2B founders aren’t Killers. They’re Builders.

In fact, the two jobs of a founder/CEO are antithetically opposed to zero-sum and attack thinking.  First, at a strategic level, the founder/CEO has to see the future, a positive future, that is 100x bigger than today.  Focused on putting the internal pieces together it takes to get there.  Second, at a tactical level, the founder/CEO has to be super win-win at heart and, in practice, to build a team, to manage a team, to drag the squad and the platoon through the war.

So most founder/CEOs want to take the hill, win the war, be good to their customers, and protect the team.  Killing the enemy dead isn’t the primary goal.  Here’s how we generally think:

If you are #1 in your category and growing nicely, then great, we’ll keep building on that lead.  We have more money, more resources, more customers, more, more, more.  Success breeds success.  We’ll stay #1, the market will grow, we’ll be even more #1-ey.  Probably True.

If you are #2 in your category and growing nicely, then great, you’re scrappier.  You’ve got the better product, by definition, at least for some customers (because otherwise, they’d all go for #1).  You have a clear target in #1.  It’s fun to win against #1.  And #1 can’t beat you in your zone.  And you’ll keep growing and knocking it out of the park.  Probably True.

And everyone can indeed have success and make a lot of money in this #1/#2 or #1/#2/#3 semi-equilibrium.  Replit vs. Lovable.  Claude vs. Codex.  Everyone did win/is winning.  And take a look at the “Postmates Effect“.  With every AI leader now a Decacorn or bigger, not a Unicorn, even the #3 in a market today can be worth billions of dollars or more.

Great.  But the thing is, in most B2B categories, you can and probably should try to do even better than this.  You should try to kill your top competitor.  Dead.  Because it pays.  Look at what Zoom did to WebEx.  Look at what Slack did to HipChat.  Look how DataDog did to New Relic.  Maybe even Clay etc. to Zoominfo.

There are two reasons to kill your competition, one strategic, one tactical.

• First, you want to achieve Dominant Strategy as Quickly as Possible and Not Let Your Competitor Achieve It.  More about dominant strategy here.  But basically, when you are in this equilibrium phase with your competitor, you are both picking and choosing.  Playing to your strengths.  Doubling down on the categories where you are winning.  Taking your time with categories and customers that don’t work as well.  That’s great.  But if you really want to Go Big in B2B, ideally, you want to double down where you are losing, too.  Where the ROI is negative for you, but positive for your competitor.  You want to play in Every Single Possible Category and Win Every Single Customer, even the ones with highly negative ROI.  Because imagine if you had Infinite Capital — you would do this in SaaS.  Because the B2B multiples on fast-growing revenue are huge for the big winners.  So the one that can play Dominant Strategy has a huge advantage.  Examples include entering segments (e.g., Real Estate or Healthcare or whatever) where you are weak, or pushing upmarket even if you are strong in SMB.  Etc. etc.

• Second, B2B Multiples Highly Reward Killing Your Key Competitor.  It’s Grow or Die today.  The top public software companies trade at 20x+ or more, even today.  The bottom?  Often 2x-3x.  See also, Miro and Airtable.

And a few things here that are easy to implement now:

• Do buy-out deals.  This is one of the easiest tactics, and Zoom did it aggressively in the early days.  If your competition signs folks up to 3-year contracts, “buy out” their contract by not charging them for overlapping time periods.
• Pay your reps a big spiff on rip-out deals.  And put a few reps just on this.  Related to the prior point, and expensive.  But pay up if your reps can get a deal ripped out of the competition.  Even better, put a specialized team on it.  That’s all they do.  Call into your competitor’s accounts.  Back in the day, DocuSign would pay their reps a full sales commission if they stole a deal from us — and then give the product away for free for the rest of the term.  Aggressive?  Yes.  Smart?  Probably, if you have the capital.
• Have dedicated marketing and campaigns to lost customers.  The best B2B companies know they can get back deals they lost to the competition.  The very best ones have dedicated, segmented marketing here.
• Get really, really good at FUD and counter-FUD.  Does your sales team know how to counter every aggressive point from the other guys?  Does your sales team know how to win on every tough question?  They should.
• Never lose a key logo account.  Swarm them. I know you already do this.  But go all in.  The CEO should always be involved.  Do whatever it takes.  When you can again, get on a jet.  Deem a Lost Key Logo as a Total Failure.  The most aggressive SaaS CEOs and CROs do.  Rather than dust themselves off and move on, as most of us do.
• Build relationships with CEOs at your top competitors.  Sometimes, the best way to kill your competition is to buy them.  Zoominfo did this and is worth $15b+.  This is easiest if you’ve built relationships early.

Ok, you say, I get it, but if I somehow manage to kill my top competitor, won’t another just pop up like a weed?

Won’t my next largest competitor grow to be my next big threat?

Yes but scale matters.  Even today, even in the Age of AI.  How will you catch Eleven Labs?  Or Harvey/Legora?  Or Sierra. You can. But they have built so much now.

I’m not saying you should spend 50% of your scarce energy and time on Killing Your Competitor.  Doing this half-baked can be very distracting and dilutive.  Lawsuits, threats to customers, excessively aggressive sales tactics, etc. can consume too much internal energy and capital.  Also, be careful when you do it.  Many seem to get the Killer Instinct Too Late — once their competitor is too large to kill.  But it’s worth challenging yourself and your team to see if you can do it, if you are in an oligopical-ish market.  Because if you can, if you succeed, it pays.  Even if it feels … strange.

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When Not to Try to Kill Your Competition:

(note: an updated SaaStr Classic)