Two opposite product strategies, where vertical means going deep in one industry with workflow no generic tool can match, and horizontal means serving one workflow across every industry.
Veeva launched in 2007 as a CRM built only for pharma reps, with compliance, sample tracking, and regulated workflows baked in. By the 2020s it was a $30B+ public company, and the major drug companies that once ran on Salesforce had quietly migrated, because the vertical-specific schema was worth more than horizontal flexibility.