This CEO pirated video games as a teen and became a hacker for the Air Force. Now he’s built a $3 billion cyber firm 

In today’s uncertain job market, Gen Z keeps hearing the same advice: don’t map out your whole career now, just follow your instincts and trust that salary and stability will follow.

Kyle Hanslovan is proof that can actually work—just not in the way one might expect. Now the CEO of Huntress, a cybersecurity firm valued at $3 billion, his path to the top didn’t start with an Ivy League degree or Silicon Valley internship. Instead, it all started in AOL chatrooms and online hacker forums.

Hanslovan described his younger self as a “shady” kid who spent his time pirating video games while living with his single mom in Florida. That inquisitive, self-taught nature caught the attention of the U.S. Air Force, which recruited him at 17 to put those hacking skills to work—this time, legally.

“When you grow up pretty darn broke, you have to learn and experiment,” Hanslovan told Fortune. “Sometimes you learn by getting your hands slapped, and sometimes you learn with success.”

He spent years in offensive cyber operations before transitioning to the private sector, supporting missions tied to the National Security Agency. There, he began to see how dramatically the threat landscape was changing. What once felt like a clever way to outsmart corporate firewalls or download a free video game had evolved into something far more serious. Hackers were increasingly targeting........

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