At the recent IT Nation 2023 event, we pulled Kyle Hanslovan away from his busy booth to get an insightful update on Huntress. This firm provided technical solutions to the Managed Services Provider (MSP) community and has high favorble ratings. And for good reason - they've earned that right. I've tracked them over the years and impressed with this update showing continued growth. Hoefully you'll be impressed as well! Listen the podcast in the link below.
Listen to the podcast HERE!
Here is the podcast trascript
Harry Brelsford 00:08
So I'm with Kyle from Huntress. It's been a pandemic since we've gotten together. So that's where I want to start. What is Huntress? What is Huntress today? Yeah,
Kyle Hanslovan 00:18
we first started out living on the endpoint, right? endpoint detection response, next gen antivirus and 24 by seven humans. But it turned out, hackers changed their tradecraft. So nowadays, we're a multi product platform that allows us to protect both the endpoint and the Microsoft 365 identities, we do some security awareness as well. So long story short, total cost of ownership managed security, that's what hunters provides. Interesting.
Harry Brelsford 00:43
Now, you know, what has been really interesting if I, you know, kind of put my analyst hat on for the industry is the past several years, the merger and acquisition activity, both with MSPs, and then the community sponsors. To my knowledge, you haven't been acquired, I mean, now, right? You're like one of the last ones. We're,
Kyle Hanslovan 01:06
we're the ones doing the acquiring. I had an interview not long ago, they asked him, Hey, is it going to be SEO or ConnectWise that acquire you? And I smiled back and I said, Why don't you think it's Huntress acquiring? Because they're ConnectWise? You know, just not a chance? Not interested?
Harry Brelsford 01:23
Exactly. So what's up for 24? What's going on event staffing about product once
Kyle Hanslovan 01:30
imagined? It's always goes down to how can we thought hackers right? At the end of the day, our job is enabling our partners to kind of commoditize security at this point. Most folks are struggling with staffing. So the more I can automate, the more that I can enable their most junior IT technician to perform like a rock star. And so that's the mission statement, right? And if we go pull back and say, All right, now, what are you going to do that too? Yeah, hackers in general, they were going after the endpoints for years, they still are going after. But we saw a massive pivot somewhere after the pandemic, where like the digital transformation, everybody moved to, you know, some sort of identity provider, most of the time in this space, it's Microsoft 365. And they said, Oh, we might start and compromise an endpoint. But as soon as we can gather credentials, we're going to start going after the identities. And now all the SAS apps are linked up. The hackers are starting to move laterally, not between computer to computer or workstation to workstation, but identity to app to app to app. And so our big focus in 24 is continuing to build out that endpoint, right? If you could call that a beach front. But we look at the identity as new, you know, beachfront property. So we're having to really spin up our tooling. And so we already at we have 1.1 million identities, we're protecting already in three months with this new product. So next year is going to be taking that 1.1 million and get to several millions of our partners.
Harry Brelsford 02:54
So couple ask questions. For the audience. What's What's your background? Yeah, how'd you get here? Yeah,
Kyle Hanslovan 03:01
so I'm a offensive cyber warfare operator, I worked at NSA for 13 years, and building implants and exploits to steal critical intelligence, and didn't know much about the MSP world. But thankfully, I've had eight years now of my partners who have beaten me up, telling me where you need to go. And it turns out, if you just do more listening than talking, you can build, you know, a solution your partners actually need at a price point that actually makes sense to them. And for me, that's super fulfilling. That's part of the reason, you know, we're not going anywhere.
Harry Brelsford 03:31
Yeah, no, no, no, you by all appearances. You know, I don't feel your financials. But by all appearances, you have a healthy balance sheet. Yeah,
Kyle Hanslovan 03:40
we're coming companies creeping up on about 100 100 million in recurring revenue. And that comes from the bean counters. Right? finance folks want to talk about revenue. We talk internally about how many partners and how many customers are protected, right. And so when you're able to turn around and say, Hey, through my 4000 partners, I've got 110,000 businesses, that's just a really fulfilling point. So yeah, things are going good. And doubling down on our partners.
Harry Brelsford 04:05
And a follow up final, final two points. How many employees and I always like to ask, are you an investor back? You know, you've had phenomenal growth? Yeah, it's hard to do organically. Yeah, it
Kyle Hanslovan 04:18
is. So the first question, we're about 300 teammates. So we're spread across 40 states in the US in four countries. So US, Canada, Australia, and the UK. And as for the backing for us, there's a big difference between private equity, who takes the majority portion of your company, and we do the venture capital route, like the same people who do like Uber and slack and some of those companies. So we do, I've raised about 200 million in venture capital. But we still have that independence on our end of I don't have, you know, nobody owns hunters. At that end. We're a board driven company owned by and possessed by the founders. So all right, well, thanks
Harry Brelsford 04:55
for your time. I'll see somehow some way in 2024
Kyle Hanslovan 04:59
I We'll see you in 2024 I appreciate you having me on