GuidePoint Security Surging With Industry Giants, Startups: ‘We’re Always Early Adopters’

For more than a decade, the solution and service provider has specialized in building relationships with emerging cybersecurity vendors, GuidePoint’s Mark Thornberry tells CRN. ‘They don't think they have to become a big company before they're comfortable reaching out.’

GuidePoint Security is finding massive momentum thanks to its focus on building relationships with emerging cybersecurity vendors as well as the largest players in the industry — a highly differentiated approach in the channel, executives told CRN.

Without a doubt, solution and service provider GuidePoint is “on a crazy growth trajectory right now,” said Mark Thornberry (pictured), senior vice president for vendor management at Herndon, Va.-based GuidePoint, in an interview.

As just one indicator, GuidePoint Security advanced to No. 37 on CRN’s just-disclosed annual ranking of the largest IT channel players, the 2025 Solution Provider 500, up from No. 39 on the prior year’s list. That puts 14-year-old GuidePoint ahead of numerous solution and service providers that were founded decades earlier — and notably, “it's all organic,” Thornberry said.

It’s also a testament to the solution and service provider’s longtime focus on emerging vendors in cybersecurity, he said.

“When we started out as a company, that's how we built our business,” Thornberry said. “We have great relationships with the bigger vendors. But the smaller vendors were leaning in with us [early on]. And that was a huge differentiator. That's how we were getting meetings.”

GuidePoint has continued to specialize around engaging early with cybersecurity startups, he said, even if it may be some time before the partnership produces sales.

“I’m always super direct. I might tell them that, 'Hey, you might be a year out before we can really do anything,’” Thornberry said. “I think they appreciate that candid feedback.”

Prioritizing engagement with startups is no small feat in an industry comprised of thousands of companies, with scores of new vendors entering the market every year.

“It is rare” to take this approach, Thornberry said. “But it’s something we take very seriously.”

GuidePoint also doesn’t restrict itself to only partnering with startups that show the potential to become the next cybersecurity industry giant, he noted.

“They might not become CrowdStrike. That’s OK. You don't need to be that to matter to us,” Thornberry said. “It's a totally different kind of method than what the market has traditionally done.”

The bottom line, he said, is that “we're always early adopters” at GuidePoint Security.

As an example, GuidePoint was among the first channel partners for cloud security vendor Wiz — a company that went on to achieve one of the fastest growth rates in IT history, with the help of partners such as GuidePoint. In March, Google announced a deal to acquire Wiz for a company record of $32 billion.

Thornberry recalled signing its partnership with Wiz in early 2021, shortly after the startup had come out of stealth. “We were selling Wiz before it was cool,” he said.

And the partnership has only gotten stronger over time: “They're one of our best business partners,” Thornberry said. “They're well entrenched in our top 10.”

Reaching ‘Critical Mass’

Even for many vendors, it’s a shift in mindset to start thinking about engaging with channel partners at an early point, according to GuidePoint CMO Rachel Haag.

“A lot of resellers or service providers won’t really start with a vendor until they've hit critical mass,” Haag said.

But GuidePoint has been working hard to change that mentality in the market, she said.

“I think building that relationship early on is just an incredible way for them to grow — and for us to grow with them,” Haag said.

Part of the mindset shift is about helping startups to realize that working with the channel is, in fact, the way to get scale. “We want to help them hit critical mass,” Thornberry said.

When it comes to emerging vendors in security, “I always want them to think of us first. And being candid, I think they are. I think the market is responding by coming to us,” he said. “They don't think they have to become a big company before they're comfortable reaching out.”

‘Timing Is Everything’

For initial conversations with new vendors, Thornberry said he places a lot of emphasis on timing. The reality is that, as much as the startup may want to move fast, “things have to kind of naturally occur.”

“It's all about the trust and relationships that they build,” he said. “A relationship isn't typically built overnight or over the course of a quarter. It's through several repeated, consistent interactions.”

Many of GuidePoint’s salespeople have decades-long relationships with CISOs and are not going to push a new product on their customers before understanding the technology and the team behind it, Thornberry said. “The timing is everything,” he said.

The ideal approach for an emerging vendor is to be patient, but persistent.

“If it's a good technology, the [total addressable market] is there, and the timing is right — you'll kill it with us,” Thornberry said. “We have countless use cases of that over the years.”

Ultimately, for the team at GuidePoint Security, the key to growth has been to always remember that building relationships with people is paramount, he noted.

Even in the era of AI and other mind-bending technological advancements, selling products and services is “a relationship business,” Thornberry said. “And I think that our success speaks to that in a major way.”