Grinding It Out
The Huntress Story
Today, Huntress announced their Series D financing. Having led their Series C round, all of us at Sapphire couldn’t be more excited to co-lead the Series D and further support the team in elevating cybersecurity for the 99%.
To understand companies and their founders, I often look at significant decisions made during their early years. These pivotal choices, when successful, shape the company's culture and perspective on the world.
A core Huntress value is “we build trust by doing what we say we will do”. From Day 1, they’ve kept the SMB community and their MSP partners at the center of everything they do.
Kyle Hanslovan, Chris Bisnett and John Ferrell co-founded Huntress in 2015 after having established careers in the public sector. The mission was simple but bold - to safeguard small and mid-market organizations neglected by the cybersecurity industry. They recognized how SMBs and their service providers were continuously overwhelmed and unprotected by the complex and inadequate security solutions.
Things weren’t always obvious. For the first four years of the Company, they were knocking on every door. The platform wasn’t full-fledged, they were still figuring out the go-to-market, and the early wins were still small. To top it all off, most people didn’t think the market was big enough: Even Kyle’s mom, a staunch supporter and a small business owner herself, wondered if her DEFCON CTF-winning son should have built a company to support the Fortune 500 instead.
Yet, Huntress team's grit and relentless focus never wavered. The founders shared an almost delusional-level conviction that the SMB community deserves world-class cybersecurity. They tirelessly extended and refined their platform to meet users' needs, brick by brick. Gradually, then suddenly, they had built up the platform that today protects millions of endpoints and is beloved by the community.
What we seek in founders is a steadfast mission. Kyle, Chris and John are the epitome of this unwavering conviction.
When I congratulated Kyle on signing the term sheet, his first response was “the hard work is just getting started”. It remains Day 1 at Huntress.