Serval

Servals are cheetah strategy at smaller scale: speed and agility optimized for different prey. Where cheetahs chase gazelles at 70 mph, servals pounce on rodents and birds with extraordinary vertical leaps—they can jump 10 feet straight up to snatch birds from flight. Same principle of speed-based hunting, adapted to a niche cheetahs can't access.

Servals demonstrate how speed strategies scale. Their long legs (relative to body size, the longest of any cat) provide the same explosive acceleration cheetahs use, but applied vertically rather than horizontally. They hunt in tall grass where cheetahs can't operate, taking prey too small and quick for larger predators. It's speed predation in a micro-niche.

The business parallel is specialized players applying dominant-player strategies to underserved segments. Servals are like companies that bring enterprise-grade capabilities to small business markets—Salesforce Essentials, QuickBooks, or Shopify bringing sophisticated tools to segments too small for IBM or Oracle to address. The core capability (speed/technology) remains the same, but the application targets a niche the dominant player can't profitably serve. Serval strategy works when the micro-niche is large enough to sustain the specialized operator.