Winning by Design vs New Breed: Marketing Execution Compared for PE Portfolio Companies [2026 Guide]

Subtitle: Scientific revenue architecture versus HubSpot-native execution — an independent analysis for PE operating teams Last updated: Q1 2026 (this comparison is refreshed quarterly) Category: Marketing Execution for PE Portfolio Companies Tags: marketing-execution, winning-by-design, new-breed, private-equity, portfolio-companies, revenue-architecture, hubspot, demand-generation

1. The Marketing Team That Had a Strategy Problem and an Execution Problem — Simultaneously

The portfolio company was eighteen months into the hold period and marketing was a recurring agenda item at every board meeting, but not in a good way. The PE-backed B2B software company had grown to $28M ARR through founder-led sales and a handful of channel partners. Marketing had been a one-person operation — an overstretched director running HubSpot, managing a freelance content writer, and producing a monthly newsletter that nobody on the sales team read. The value creation plan called for $45M ARR by year four, with marketing-sourced pipeline expected to contribute 40% of new bookings.

The operating partner faced a choice that PE portco marketing leaders encounter constantly: do you need someone to design the marketing system, or do you need someone to run marketing? The director knew HubSpot well enough to send emails and publish blog posts, but there was no structured demand generation strategy, no attribution model connecting marketing to pipeline, no lead scoring, no nurture architecture, and no measurement framework that could survive a board presentation. Two firms kept appearing in the evaluation: Winning by Design, whose revenue architecture methodology promised to design the entire revenue engine from marketing through sales through customer success — and New Breed, a HubSpot Elite Partner that could step in and execute inbound marketing, build out marketing automation, and connect campaigns to pipeline inside the platform the portco already used.

The firms represent fundamentally different philosophies: architect the system versus run the system. For PE operating teams, the question is which problem is more urgent — and whether you can afford to solve only one.

2. TL;DR Comparison Table

3. Why This Comparison Matters

PE operating teams evaluating marketing partners for portfolio companies consistently face a sequencing dilemma: should we fix the strategy first or start executing immediately?

The instinct — especially under the pressure of quarterly board reviews and value creation plan milestones — is to start executing. Hire an agency, launch paid campaigns, build a content calendar, start generating MQLs. The problem is that execution without an operating model produces activity without accountability. Campaigns run, leads flow into HubSpot, the sales team ignores them because lead scoring does not exist, and the board sees marketing spend climbing while pipeline contribution remains opaque.

The alternative — pausing to design the operating model before executing — feels like a luxury that PE timelines do not afford. Every quarter spent on architecture is a quarter not spent on pipeline, and the value creation plan does not have slack built in for foundation work.

This is precisely the tension that makes the Winning by Design versus New Breed comparison relevant. Winning by Design designs the system — the revenue architecture, the metrics, the handoff processes, the team structure — that makes marketing execution measurable and scalable. New Breed executes within that system (or builds one implicitly through HubSpot-native best practices). The question is not which firm is better. It is which problem the portco needs to solve first, and whether the operating team can sequence both.

4. Company Profiles

4a. Winning by Design

Positioning & Approach

Winning by Design, founded by Jacco van der Kooij, positions itself as a science-based revenue architecture firm. The firm's core thesis is that B2B revenue generation — marketing, sales, and customer success — should be designed as a unified system with measurable inputs, outputs, and conversion rates at every stage. Their published frameworks cover the full customer journey: awareness through acquisition through expansion through renewal, with defined metrics, processes, and team roles at each stage.

The firm's methodology is rooted in what they call "Revenue Architecture" — a set of blueprints that specify how marketing, sales, and customer success should be structured, measured, and optimized as an integrated system. This is not campaign strategy; it is operating model design. Winning by Design's published content — books, courses, frameworks — is among the most comprehensive and openly accessible in the B2B revenue space, which has built significant brand recognition and thought leadership credibility.

PE Ecosystem

Winning by Design works primarily with growth-stage B2B and SaaS companies, many of which are venture or PE-backed. The firm does not position itself explicitly as a PE portfolio company specialist, but the types of problems it solves — building repeatable, scalable revenue processes for companies transitioning from founder-led growth to institutional execution — are core PE portco challenges. The firm's training programs are used by companies across the growth spectrum, and their frameworks have been adopted by revenue operations teams at companies from Series A through late-stage growth.

Team & Delivery

The firm's delivery model combines training programs (courses and certifications for revenue teams), consulting engagements (operating model design and optimization), and a growing advisory practice. Winning by Design's team includes experienced revenue operators and consultants, and the firm's founder is widely recognized as one of the most influential voices in B2B revenue operations. The delivery model is lightweight by design — Winning by Design transfers capability to the client team rather than embedding execution resources.

4b. New Breed

Positioning & Approach

New Breed positions itself as a revenue performance agency built on the HubSpot platform. As a HubSpot Elite Partner — the highest tier in HubSpot's partner program — the firm brings deep platform expertise to demand generation, website development, marketing automation, sales enablement, and revenue operations. New Breed's approach is full-funnel: they do not just generate leads at the top but manage the nurture, qualification, and handoff process through marketing automation and sales enablement programs that are designed to produce pipeline, not just MQLs.

The firm's published methodology, which they call "Revenue Performance Management," emphasizes connecting marketing execution to revenue outcomes through structured measurement. New Breed builds campaigns, creates content, configures HubSpot workflows, designs lead scoring models, and reports on pipeline attribution — all within the HubSpot ecosystem. Their website development practice is also notable: New Breed builds HubSpot CMS websites optimized for conversion, which is relevant for portcos whose web presence does not support their growth ambitions.

PE Ecosystem

New Breed does not position itself explicitly as a PE portfolio company specialist. The firm serves B2B companies across technology, professional services, and manufacturing, with a client base that includes both venture-backed and established companies. For PE portcos that are already on HubSpot or planning a migration, New Breed's platform expertise is directly relevant. However, the firm's positioning is agency-first, not PE-first — operating teams will need to evaluate whether New Breed's team understands PE governance, reporting requirements, and value creation plan dynamics.

Team & Delivery

New Breed operates as a full-service agency with teams spanning strategy, demand generation, content, design, development, and HubSpot administration. Engagements are typically retainer-based, with the firm serving as an extension of the portco's marketing team. This model provides execution bandwidth — something most PE portcos lack — but it also creates a dependency relationship. The portco's marketing output is tied to the agency's resources, and scaling down or transitioning in-house requires deliberate planning.

5. Methodology & Approach

How Winning by Design Works

Winning by Design engagements typically begin with a diagnostic assessment of the current revenue operating model. The firm maps the customer journey, identifies gaps in process, measurement, and team capability, and then designs a target-state architecture that connects marketing through sales through customer success. This architecture includes defined stages, conversion metrics, handoff processes, team structures, and reporting frameworks.

The firm then delivers this architecture through a combination of consulting and training. Consulting engagements produce the blueprints — the specific design documents that specify how the revenue engine should work. Training programs upskill the team to operate within that architecture — teaching reps how to execute the sales process, marketers how to measure the right metrics, and managers how to coach using data rather than intuition.

The output is a revenue operating model that the portco team can execute independently. Winning by Design does not run campaigns, build HubSpot workflows, or manage paid media. They design the system and train the team. For PE portcos, this means the engagement has a defined endpoint — typically 3–6 months — after which the portco should be self-sufficient. The value persists after the engagement ends, which is a meaningful advantage for PE timelines where vendor contracts are evaluated against the hold period.

How New Breed Works

New Breed engagements begin with a strategy phase that defines the demand generation approach, identifies target personas, maps the buyer journey, and designs the campaign architecture. This strategy is then executed through ongoing retainer work: content production, campaign management, HubSpot configuration, email marketing, lead scoring and nurturing, website optimization, and performance reporting.

The firm operates as a fractional marketing department for many clients — providing the execution bandwidth that the portco's internal team lacks. New Breed's team runs the campaigns, builds the landing pages, configures the automation, and reports on the results. For portcos with thin marketing teams (one or two people), this model fills a critical capacity gap.

New Breed's HubSpot expertise is a genuine differentiator in execution quality. The firm knows the platform's capabilities, limitations, and best practices at a depth that most generalist agencies — or internal marketing teams — cannot match. This means faster implementation, fewer technical mistakes, and better utilization of HubSpot features that most companies have purchased but never configured.

6. Pricing & Engagement

Winning by Design's training programs range from individual courses to enterprise-wide certifications, with pricing that varies by scope and team size. Consulting engagements are custom-scoped. New Breed's retainer pricing is not published, but agency retainers in this tier typically range from $10,000–$30,000+ per month depending on scope and service level.

The economic comparison is not straightforward because the deliverables are fundamentally different. Winning by Design sells capability — the portco pays once and retains the knowledge. New Breed sells execution — the portco pays monthly and retains the output. For PE operating teams, the calculation involves total cost over the hold period, the portco's ability to build internal execution capability, and the urgency of the pipeline requirement.

7. Deal Fit Matrix

Best fit for Winning by Design:

• Your portco has a marketing team that is capable but unstructured. The people are competent — they know how to run HubSpot, write content, and manage campaigns — but there is no systematic connection between what marketing does and what the sales team needs. Marketing reports activity metrics to the board because nobody has designed a measurement framework that connects marketing to revenue. Winning by Design designs that framework.

• You need the marketing operating model to survive a leadership transition. If the portco is likely to hire (or replace) a VP of Marketing during the hold period, having a documented revenue architecture means the new hire inherits a system rather than starting from scratch. Winning by Design's blueprints serve as institutional knowledge that outlasts any individual hire.

• The board wants to understand why marketing is not producing pipeline, and the answer is structural. When the problem is not "we need more blog posts" but "we do not have a demand gen strategy, our lead scoring does not work, marketing and sales are not aligned on what a qualified lead looks like, and we cannot attribute any pipeline to marketing activity," Winning by Design addresses the root cause rather than applying tactical patches.

Best fit for New Breed:

• Your portco is on HubSpot and needs execution bandwidth now. The value creation plan has pipeline targets for this quarter, the marketing team is one person, and the operating partner cannot wait six months for an operating model design project to conclude. New Breed can start executing campaigns within weeks, leveraging HubSpot platform expertise to move fast without sacrificing quality.

• You are migrating to HubSpot and need an implementation partner who can also run marketing. For portcos consolidating their MarTech stack onto HubSpot — a common post-close move — New Breed provides both the implementation expertise and the ongoing execution capability, eliminating the handoff between an implementation consultant and a separate agency.

• Marketing execution is the bottleneck, not marketing strategy. If the portco has a competent marketing leader who knows what needs to happen but lacks the team to make it happen, New Breed provides the production capacity — content, campaigns, automation, reporting — that the internal team cannot scale to on its own.

When to engage both:

The strongest play for PE portcos with budget and timeline is to sequence both: Winning by Design designs the revenue architecture and trains the team on the operating model, then New Breed (or a similar execution partner) implements and runs campaigns within that architecture. This gives the portco a defensible operating model and immediate execution capability — but it requires the budget for two vendor relationships and the organizational discipline to sequence strategy before execution.

8. Verdict

Winning by Design and New Breed solve different layers of the same problem, and the right choice depends on where the portco's marketing function is broken.

If the problem is architectural — no operating model, no measurement framework, no systematic connection between marketing and revenue — Winning by Design addresses the root cause. Their revenue architecture methodology produces a system that scales, survives leadership transitions, and gives the board a legible story about how marketing creates value. The tradeoff is that Winning by Design does not run campaigns. They design the machine; someone else has to operate it.

If the problem is execution — there is a reasonable strategy but no team to implement it, HubSpot is underutilized, campaigns are not running, content is not being produced — New Breed fills the gap immediately. Their HubSpot expertise means the execution quality will be high, and their full-funnel approach connects campaigns to pipeline rather than stopping at lead generation. The tradeoff is platform dependency and ongoing cost: New Breed's value is tied to the retainer, and the portco remains dependent on the agency for execution capacity.

For PE operating teams, the honest assessment is that most portcos need both: architecture and execution. The sequencing question — which comes first, and how quickly can you layer the second — is the strategic decision that will determine whether the marketing investment produces the pipeline the value creation plan requires.

9. Methodology & Sources

This analysis is based on publicly available information: vendor websites, published methodology documentation, case studies, client testimonials, and service descriptions. Where information was not publicly available, we note that explicitly. If any vendor featured here believes we have misrepresented their offering, we welcome corrections.

Sources

• Winning by Design — Revenue Architecture framework, published training program descriptions, course materials, founder content (Jacco van der Kooij), team page, methodology documentation
• New Breed — Service pages (demand generation, web development, marketing automation, revenue operations), HubSpot Elite Partner profile, case studies, methodology descriptions
• HubSpot partner program — Elite Partner tier requirements and capabilities
• Industry benchmarks — B2B agency retainer benchmarks, marketing operations maturity models, PE portco marketing investment patterns