In New York: Let’s Hear it for Huntress

Last July, Huntress hit Hollywood for their annual Summer Summit, an exhilarating and invigorating multi-day affair that united their 100% remote workforce of warriors around whom they serve and why, while strategically centering and motivating all to tackle what’s ahead. This year, on the heels of their successful Series D round and newfound unicorn status, the team hit the Big Apple for another magical summer sojourn together in that muggy and wonderful concrete jungle where dreams are made of.

Only this time, they rolled 393 heads deep (~60% more than 2023), and stronger than ever.

With the daily themes of “Own It, Elevate It, Send It”, thank goodness Summit is impossible to fully recap, with its rich, multi-faceted (and mostly confidential) program developed by Kyle, Chris, Ehret, Brenda, and the Huntress leadership team. Our time together spanned so many areas, with an agenda designed to make real and drive home the vast, addressable market and power of Huntress to deliver as long as it stays true to its mission, culture, and core values.

From product, culture, brand, differentiation, the power of data, to the dynamic life of a SOC analyst- to special guests that included actual customer-partners, teammates with inspiring personal stories, and a legit spy- to special events that included packing healthy food and hygiene products for various nonprofit partners, a group outing to Wicked: The Musical, and a legit yacht party- it was truly a whirlwind of learning, listening, and leaning in, all with that trademark Huntress (approachable) swagger.  

Huntress continues to crush it, protecting 150K companies and 3 million endpoints (and counting) and racking up hundreds upon hundreds of five-star G2 ratings for its core managed EDR product and security awareness trainings (plus 44 new leader badges!). But don’t get me wrong: from the top of Day One throughout Summit, Kyle and the team kept things real for all the motivation and celebration woven into the program.  

We already live in a world of ever-expanding attack surfaces and increasingly sophisticated threat actors; now armed with AI/GenAI, “they are the best as they have ever been” while their targets remain vulnerable, lack defenses, and have limited to no cybersecurity resources. As a company, Huntress faces a “gold- or really a platinum rush” as competition enters the fray- seeing the massive market opportunity to serve the over 33M SMBs in the US alone (44% of the US GDP). 

But what is the company’s biggest threat? It was as Kyle described, the impact of scale- in adding hundreds of new employees as Huntress grows and enters new markets across geos, reaching more companies and partners worldwide- all while augmenting the platform and continually refining and improving how they operate as a team.  

Rapid scale is a privilege and dilemma that only a few startups ever get to face, and one I’ve had the fortune to live first-hand in my career. We celebrated deploy nights, banged gongs for every sale, lived for our town halls, and held user summits that felt like rock concerts. We scrutinized the competition and outdid them on every beachhead, channeling the best in David versus Goliath. We kept our enemies close but our customers and partners closer, highlighting their stories and successes because they were the real heroes at the end of the day: they adopted our product above all others to make their organizations, teams, and people stronger, happier, and more productive. It was magical. 

For all the excitement and momentum, there were moments that brought about a clash of old versus new, and of agility and speed against process and structure. As new, well-meaning talent eagerly jumped in with fresh ideas and different ways of doing things, it was natural for earlier, “OG” employees who had been there from the jump to hearken the old days and resist change. Leaders and teams, new and old, at times faltered and made missteps because they didn’t work in harmony. Divided fronts, information silos, and hidden camps hindered our success in working for the greater good. Just as legacy thinking and inflexibility can impair growth, so can moving too fast while not bringing people along or assuming what applied at other companies automatically fits here.  

Rapid scale and quickly adding headcount brings constant forming, storming, and norming. Many call this “building the plane while flying it” – except for the rare startup on this trajectory, which is more like a rocket ship. Or, as Ernie says, from experience, “More like an F-16 fighter jet in afterburner!” 

One of my favorite sessions during Summit was on How We’re Going to Scale Performance with Culture, where Chris Bisnett, Co-Founder & CTO, opened with the Huntress Way and the Warrior Spirit, which is to be competitive, passionate, deliberate (and not afraid of first principles, asking the why), and genuine, especially in understanding others’ perspectives – as a partner, a supporter, or even an end customer who just got hacked. He emphasized doing more than what we did yesterday and pushing to be the best, while not being afraid to try something that might fail.

See a problem? Own it, take initiative, think strategically, and present a solution. Find ways to elevate Huntress, don’t settle. Like Kaizen on Red Bull (Rockstar? Monster Zero Carb?), look for continuous improvement and make it happen.

Sounds easy, but driving change for the better is hard. Good thing there’s always “the F-word”. No, not that one (necessarily) but “Feedback”, as pointed out by Heather Eberhart, Director of People, who shared a Venn diagram elegantly comparing the power of both (hint: timing is everything) while noting the contrast in vernacular with her previous place of employment. Heather, whose first day was in April of this year, also shared that 20% of the company started after her. For Huntress to achieve success at scale, they need to universally accept how critical it is to give and receive feedback– otherwise how do all parties know how they’re individually and collectively performing? 

With its intensity, constant need for adaptation, and propensity of successful companies to spawn others, the startup world can be utterly Darwinist. Vision and conviction meet value creation- resulting in natural selection- just at an accelerated pace. So what defines the standouts and why will Huntress make it?  

The Huntress Way – of showing up and doing your best (wherever you may be), living that Warrior Spirit, and embracing feedback- is the key. What really strikes me about Huntress is its relentlessness determination to serve the specific profile and needs of its customers and partners while building and developing a culture of radical transparency, communication, and bottoms-up leadership- critical elements to human motivation and collaboration. Sure, some established companies with expert employees work well on a limited, “need to know” basis, but I have yet to meet a successful startup where that was the guiding philosophy. From my experience, the uniquely talented and passionate people who join a team like this find meaning in the mission and make the most impact when they know what’s what, can operate with clarity, and are able to lead and mentor from the ground up- driving individual and collective responsibility and accountability.  

The biggest threat may be rapid growth and scale, but from what I’ve seen, Huntress: you got this. LFG.