Hidden Champions: Successful but little-known businesses

I suppose the author wants to keep them hidden.

Coined by Hermann Simon. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden_champions

The natural state of a business is to become known to its target market, but keep its secrets and success hidden to avoid competition. Growing up in an entrepreneurial family for the first 15 years of my life I learned to never brag about my successes, but to show vulnerability and connect/help the vulnerability shown by fellow founders, because your network is a lot more likely to help you that way. In silicon valley that impetus is reversed. Desire for investors flips the publicity of most SV companies in an unnatural way. You see a market, you lift it like a big juicy steak in the air and you announce to everyone how much money you have to go after it. That instantly gets everyone else interested in the game and everyone has a big public race to burn as much money as possible until the last one or two standing get to public offering. Consumer startups are the exception as they inherently need the exposure. Hidden Champions pick niche, perfect a product that wins it, and own it quietly.

Definitely an A-Ha in my life was visiting a friends family business many years ago in a nondescript industrial park on the way out to the desert. They're in the Pet supplement space. Family owned for over twenty years old. Legacy customers. Millions a year in revenue with a healthy margin. Barely any signage amongst two dozen units yet luxury cars lined the parking lot. The A-Ha was the idea of "unglamorous businesses" having all the benefits of success without having to maintain the shine. At the time, I only saw the opposite; chase buzz, etc. so this was a paradigm shift on the nature of how businesses operate.