Unpacking the Huntress Growth Playbook w/ Jason Marshall: Reddit, Community, and Customer Love

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 train