Huntress has carved out a unique position in cybersecurity by staying laser-focused on SMBs while competitors chase enterprise deals. With 70% year-over-year growth and a tripling of company size in just two years, Chief Marketing & Growth Officer Jason Marshall joined us to break down their unconventional approach to building a marketing engine that scales from $45M to $500M ARR. Rather than following the typical cybersecurity playbook of chest-pounding about AI and technology superiority, Huntress has built their growth on a foundation of customer...
Huntress has carved out a unique position in cybersecurity by staying laser-focused on SMBs while competitors chase enterprise deals. With 70% year-over-year growth and a tripling of company size in just two years, Chief Marketing & Growth Officer Jason Marshall joined us to break down their unconventional approach to building a marketing engine that scales from $45M to $500M ARR. Rather than following the typical cybersecurity playbook of chest-pounding about AI and technology superiority, Huntress has built their growth on a foundation of customer education, community engagement, and an unwavering commitment to making customers the hero of their story.
Topics Discussed:
- Huntress's decision to stay focused on SMB market (up to 2,000 employees) rather than moving upmarket
- The company's educational content strategy that drives 80% education, 20% product marketing
- Building and scaling a 45-person remote marketing team through rapid growth
- Transitioning from word-of-mouth and events to a comprehensive digital marketing engine
- Reddit and community marketing strategies that actually work without getting "eviscerated"
- The "Go Giver" philosophy and how it translates to measurable business results
- Channel-first strategy and why Huntress will never cut out partners
- Hiring and managing high-performing remote marketing teams
GTM Lessons For B2B Founders:
- Make customers the hero, not your technology: Jason emphasized that cybersecurity is full of "chest pounding" about AI and tech superiority, but Huntress flipped the script entirely. "We put the customer at the center of the story. They're the hero of this journey and we're just here to kind of support them." Instead of leading with features, they focus on customer outcomes and making IT professionals look like heroes within their organizations. B2B founders should resist the temptation to make their technology the star and instead position customers as the protagonist of their success story.
- Stay in your lane and dominate it: Unlike most SaaS companies that start SMB and quickly move upmarket, Huntress has stayed committed to serving businesses up to 2,000 employees. Jason uses a car analogy: "There are some great companies out there that service the people that have Formula 1 car budgets... We built a Lamborghini or Porsche... it's still fast enough to wreck hackers, but when something goes wrong, you can take your Porsche into an Audi dealership and get it fixed." B2B founders should carefully evaluate whether moving upmarket actually serves their core value proposition or if doubling down on their initial segment creates more defensible growth.
- Lead with education, not pitches: Huntress runs on the "Go Giver" principle of giving more than you take. Their content is 80% education, 20% product marketing, with Jason noting "most people are come to my webinar, book a demo, buy, buy, buy... we put the community first and we put education first." Their Reddit ads show redacted screenshots of actual attacks with the hook "If you'd like to learn how to do this yourself, click this link" rather than product demos. B2B founders should consider whether their content strategy truly educates or just sells with a thin educational veneer.
- Community marketing requires authentic value-add first: Jason shared a painful lesson about Reddit marketing: traditional ads failed completely until they shifted to showing real attack scenarios and offering free cybersecurity training. "ROI was terrible... So we kind of took a step back... Let's get back to our roots... rather than putting us at the center of the story... giving back to the community." The key insight is that community platforms will "eviscerate you if you misstep" by trying to sell first. B2B founders entering community marketing must genuinely contribute value before ever asking for anything.
- Screen for ownership mindset during hiring: Jason's primary hiring criterion is finding people who "act like owners" rather than focusing solely on skills. His screening method involves asking candidates to dive deep into a specific problem they solved: "You can tell the difference between people who've just read a bunch and know the surface level or like really solved the problem and understood it." He also uses homework assignments (unrelated to his actual business) to test work ethic. B2B founders should prioritize ownership mentality and intellectual curiosity over perfect resume matches, especially in high-growth environments.
- Over-communicate clarity in remote environments: Managing a 45-person remote marketing team requires obsessive clarity reinforcement. Jason runs weekly 90-minute business reviews with the entire marketing team, covering every function's progress, blockers, and challenges. "It is incredibly hard when you are growing as fast as we are... making sure that you have the right people on the bus, in the right seats on the bus and they understand... this is the cadence that we are going to row at." B2B founders scaling remote teams should expect to over-communicate goals, progress, and context far more than feels necessary.
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