Huntress | Empowering cybersecurity’s ethical badasses; doing it for impact, not the 1%.
Question: We’re having an identity crisis. Our team’s grown 60% in the past 12 months, competition is ramping up, and questions from investors and customers are getting ever more forensic. How do we keep focused, unite a remote global team, assure our backers, engage new audiences and transition from a founder-led vision to a serious leader in one of the world’s most important sectors, all without losing our soul to mundane corporate bullshit?
Answer: Rapidly accelerating scale-ups face unique challenges, all of which can become existential threats or exponential opportunities.
An influx of new team members, the lengthening of boardroom tables with new voices and demands, ever-bigger targets on their backs from competitors, and a non-negotiable requirement for ever more growth can all push the original vision to its limits.
Collaborating with the company’s founders, senior leadership, marketing teams, ambassadors, developers, and practitioners across a series of workshops, stakeholder interviews, cultural and competitor deep-dives, market analysis and strategic reappraisal, Matt and the Hornbeam & Co. team led a three-month sprint to hit reset on the Huntress brand before it broke under its own weight.
Impact: Created through the lens of empowerment ‘from accounts payable to product marketing’, Hornbeam & Co. delivered a comprehensive brand stewardship guide which celebrated heritage while leveraging forecasting and insight to turn the ethereal concept of ‘the Huntress Swagger’ into practical, audience-appropriate playbooks and quick-start tools which empowered and represented the global team. The series of toolkits are the blueprint for a true disruptor doing it for impact, not the 1%.
Spanning segmentation to positioning, internal culture to external communications, and tone of voice to key messaging and campaign guidance, the delivery re-established the brand’s foundations, uniting the team behind a clear framework for autonomous action and posture. Launched at the 2024 Huntress Summer Summit in New York, the strategies and tools contributed to a successful Series D raise (making Huntress a Unicorn with their now $1.5bn valuation) and continues to pave the way for even bigger ambitions.
