
Right now, sitting behind their keyboards in various cities throughout the world, countless hackers are testing the boundaries of your networks. Your bank, your corner bakery, your favorite streaming platform; nobody is safe. You're an even bigger target if you're a small or midsize business owner with anywhere from one to 100 employees and less than $1 billion in revenue. With less disposable capital, your data is nowhere near as protected as the Fortune 1,000s who can afford the hefty price tag of white hat security analysts and cybercriminals knowing their market.
In the Wild West, only an outlaw could outpace another outlaw. In today's yet-to-be-tamed Internet landscape, only an accomplished hacker can outsmart another hacker. Kyle Hanslovan spent more than half his life in the trenches of the dark web. What began as a curiosity grew into a full-blown obsession powerful enough to propel a defiant teenager from the Florida slums into the highest ranks of the NSA cyber warfare unit.
Throughout a remarkable 25-year career, Hanslovan remained one step ahead of the world's best hackers, eventually pioneering a business model that continues to revolutionize cybersecurity. Among the keys to his success, the foremost is that he knows his enemies. The self-made titan of his industry and the nefarious data thieves he proudly thwarts share an impenetrable will to render any network vulnerable – the one to shore up its defenses, the other to exploit its secrets. willing to try anything and, if it fails, keep trying until you hit the mark.

So what advice might Hanslovan give to a fellow business owner struggling against fierce competition? Don't hate the player, sharpen your aim. "Leave it to Ice-T to offer some of the best wisdom in modern business. If you can't stand to see someone else succeed, don't waste your time hating them; develop your own game-winning strategy." Competition can push you to new levels of achievement if you let it.
For Hanslovan, that moment came after he'd turned down multiple employment offers from Fortune 500s to pursue a vision of his own… only to be laughed out of the office by every potential investor. Instead of giving up, he doubled down, using the experience to fuel his motivation toward a new paradigm in cybersecurity. "If you want to outsmart a hacker, you have to play the game like they do," Hanslovan revealed. "They don't care about office politics or 'the way things have always been done.' They only care about what works. Break what needs to be broken and build what needs to be built."
For Hanslovan, that meant Huntress needed to operate differently than any cybersecurity outfit before it, predicated on an innovative framework: that data breaches are not an anomaly. In this new Internet era, they are the norm rather than the exception. According to this approach, Huntress's goal is not to halt every single hacker in their tracks but rather to mitigate issues quickly enough so that business owners aren't paralyzed from conducting business as usual.
Once Hanslovan proved the viability of his methods, his next step aimed to multiply his efforts. Any great hacker knows that success is found in rapid replication. Here again, success depends on setting aside every obstruction, including ego. Hanslovan seeks to construct a nimble team capable of evolving with the hacker movement. That means hiring people smarter than him and being extremely honest about who's best for the job – even his own. "I have to reassess every year whether I'm the best candidate to take this company forward. There is no room for my pride and self-image to get in the way of progress."
Huntress stands out notably for its perspective on failure, which aligns more closely with its villainous counterparts than modern business practices. While the standard approach in business often revolves around avoiding risks, hackers tend to think differently. Hanslovan believes that "if you fail 9,999 times while trying to access a network, it doesn't matter as long as you succeed on the 10,000th attempt." The key takeaway is persistence. In the end, it all relates back to the initial passion of that scrappy teenager determined to push boundaries—the bold vigilante who engages in the challenge simply for the love of the game. Now, valued at over $1.56 billion, Huntress proves that true innovation lies in relentless pursuit, reminding us that the thrill of the chase is what truly drives success.