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Huntress: Pioneering Cybersecurity for the 99%

In the rapidly evolving landscape of cybersecurity, one company stands out for its innovative approach to protecting small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Huntress, led by CEO Kyle Hanslovan, has navigated the challenges of the tech sector to become a leading player in the industry. This article explores Huntress’s journey, from its inception to its vision for the future, highlighting the pivotal moments and strategies that have shaped its success.

The Genesis of Huntress

Huntress’s story begins with a vision to capitalize on the massive opportunity in the cybersecurity market. As Hanslovan explains, “The world is building $150 trillion of new energy assets. Big wind farms, big solar farms, big grid scale batteries.” Initially, the company aimed to develop software for trading power through these assets. However, they quickly realized that this approach wasn’t viable for a small startup team.

Facing dwindling resources and mounting challenges, Huntress made a crucial decision that would redefine their future. The team decided to pivot their entire business model. Instead of trading power, they would become a cybersecurity company focused on serving the often-overlooked SMB market.

This pivot was a game-changer for Huntress. By focusing on cybersecurity for SMBs, they addressed a critical gap in the market, providing invaluable protection for businesses that often lack the resources for sophisticated cybersecurity measures.

Understanding Huntress’s Core Offering

At its core, Huntress is a managed security platform. Their service helps stakeholders in the SMB sector understand and protect against cybersecurity threats. As Hanslovan describes, “There’s a lot of great IT talent out there, and there’s not a whole lot of amazing cybersecurity talent. There is a gap. What if you could buy the expertise of cybersecurity rockstars for the price of a product, enabling your most junior technicians to be more efficient, and for those awesome cybersecurity folks that you have, hopefully retaining them and allowing them to focus on what matters most to your business?”

Huntress’s platform provides crucial protection and expertise, helping clients make informed decisions about their cybersecurity needs. This is particularly important for SMBs, where sophisticated cybersecurity expertise is often lacking.

Innovative Go-to-Market Strategy

One of the key factors in Huntress’s success has been its innovative approach to reaching its target market. Recognizing that most SMBs don’t have dedicated IT staff, let alone cybersecurity experts, Huntress decided to go to market through IT outsourcers, often called managed service providers (MSPs).

Kyle shares, “We’ve got about 4000 of those. And they bring us to about 110,000 of those SMBs.” This channel partner approach has allowed Huntress to rapidly scale its reach and impact in the SMB market.

To build these crucial relationships, Hanslovan took an unconventional approach in the early days of the company. He recalls, “I ended up pitching my first handful of customers and was like, I will work for free one day a week in your office to learn more about MSPs. And I did that for probably the first two and a half years just to learn.”

This hands-on approach allowed Huntress to deeply understand the needs of their target market and refine their offering accordingly.

Overcoming Challenges and Skepticism

Building a company focused on SMB cybersecurity wasn’t without its challenges. Hanslovan recalls, “From the Angels to the series A all the way, believe it or not, into series B was the first time I got conviction for SMB. So that is five years in, people did not believe in my go to market.”

Despite the skepticism, Hanslovan and his team remained committed to their vision. He attributes this perseverance to “conviction” and having the data to back up their strategy. Kyle explains, “I had the people telling me the stories, people showing. I had the data that I was building from the bottom up on saying, look, this is how big the total addressable market is. That kept me going.”

This commitment to their vision, even in the face of doubt from potential investors, has been a defining characteristic of Huntress’s journey.

The Competitive Landscape and Huntress’s Edge

As the importance of cybersecurity for SMBs has become more widely recognized, the competitive landscape has intensified. Hanslovan notes, “Today, everybody wants to be a managed security platform of the SMB. You literally have the greatest enterprise players from above coming down. You have some of these incumbent smaller players from the bottom coming up, and then you’ve got unrelated companies that do just traditional IT management trying to come over.”

Despite this increased competition, Huntress maintains its edge through what Hanslovan calls “lowest total cost of ownership.” He explains, “Even though my product isn’t the cheapest, if you combine the cost of acquisition plus the cost of the operations or humans to manage it, plus that opportunity that you could be doing other things and those three things into TCO or total cost ownership. I am the lowest total cost of ownership and we just disproportionately win our deals.”

This focus on providing the best overall value, rather than just the lowest price, has allowed Huntress to thrive in an increasingly competitive market.

Adapting to the AI Revolution

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to reshape the tech landscape, Huntress is actively exploring how to leverage this technology to enhance its offerings. Hanslovan sees AI as a powerful tool for augmentation rather than replacement. He explains, “We found very few cases where AI truly replaces, but many cases where it augments. So you can imagine, on my end, as I’m considering efficiency, I’m having to bat away some of the crazy questions of like, can AI just ruin all this? And I’m like, look, my Tesla drive tries to kill me eight times a day with its AI. It’s not perfect, but what it can do is it makes my distracted self way better at driving.”

This balanced approach to AI integration allows Huntress to enhance its services while maintaining the human expertise that is crucial in cybersecurity.

Vision for the Future

Looking ahead, Hanslovan has ambitious plans for Huntress. He envisions the company becoming a central player in the cybersecurity landscape for SMBs globally. Kyle muses, “Five years into it, I’m probably looking at, all right, I see a billion dollars in ARR coming. How do I get to 2 billion?”

But for Hanslovan, these financial goals are just a means to an end. He explains, “What SMBs want to hear is, all right, great. You’re protecting 300 or 400,000 of us SMBs. How do you protect the 34 million that are in the US alone, let alone the hundreds of millions across the globe?”

Conclusion

Huntress’s journey from a small startup to a key player in the SMB cybersecurity sector is a testament to the power of adaptability, innovative go-to-market strategies, and a clear vision for the future. By pivoting their business model, embracing a channel partner approach, and maintaining a focus on providing the best overall value to their customers, Huntress has positioned itself at the forefront of the cybersecurity revolution for SMBs.

As the world continues its digital transformation and the importance of cybersecurity grows, Huntress is well-positioned to play a crucial role in protecting the backbone of the global economy – small and medium-sized businesses. With their innovative platform, strategic approach, and ambitious vision for the future, Huntress is set to continue pioneering cybersecurity for the 99%.