Most companies assume their data is safe because it lives in the cloud. Most engineering teams assume their source code is protected because it’s on GitHub. Most CISOs don’t think about DevOps data until an auditor asks — or until something goes wrong.

Lukasz Jesis thought about it before most people did. And it led him to build two of the most focused data protection companies coming out of Europe today.

Founder Journey

Xopero was founded in 2010 in Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland — a mid-sized industrial city far from any traditional tech hub. The ambition from day one was to build a Polish product company that sold globally in cybersecurity, at a time when almost no one in Poland was doing it.

Lukasz and his team grew Xopero deliberately: targeting the mid-market sweet spot (500–1,000 employees), building a flexible platform that works across hardware appliances, SaaS, and software — all with the same experience. No specialist required to deploy it.

The real turning point came from an internal question. What would happen if Xopero lost its own source code? The team said it was “protected somehow.” That answer wasn’t good enough. Digging deeper revealed a gap no one was properly addressing: the backup and security of DevOps ecosystems — GitHub repositories, Azure DevOps pipelines, CI/CD metadata, intellectual property.

GitProtect was born.

The Key Insights

SaaS ≠ Security. Cloud vendors provide services, not data protection guarantees. The shared responsibility model puts full accountability for data recovery on the customer — but most organizations haven’t internalized this. GitProtect exists to close that gap.

Category creation requires education. When GitProtect launched, the market didn’t know it needed the product. Early conversations were met with “why would I back up GitHub?” Today, the inbound has flipped: customers arrive already convinced, looking for the best solution — not a reason to buy.

Two products, two strategies. Xopero competes in a known market (backup and recovery) against funded giants like Veeam and Acronis — as a disciplined challenger focused on European mid-market. GitProtect creates a niche and leads it globally, with the US as the primary growth market. Both lines are growing at 100%+ year over year.

Certifications are GTM accelerators. ISO 27001, SOC 2, and similar attestations are not just compliance exercises. They shorten procurement cycles — especially in the US — and signal that a cybersecurity vendor can be trusted to protect others.

Why It Matters

Poland’s IT market spends over $50 billion annually. Almost none of it goes to Polish companies. Lukasz calls this “the trap” — a market large enough to seed serious growth, but historically captured almost entirely by US vendors.

That’s changing. Digital sovereignty awareness is rising across Europe. And companies like Xopero and GitProtect are proving that innovation in cybersecurity doesn’t require a Silicon Valley zip code or a Tel Aviv address.

Scaling Lessons

* Define your target group precisely. You cannot build the best product for everyone. Win on the battlefield you define.

* Follow your customers, not the full market. Xopero protects 80–90% of critical assets — at the highest possible quality — rather than chasing 100% coverage at lower depth.

* Go where your talent leads you. Lukasz’s first international hire for the DACH region was an experienced, hungry leader — someone whose drive matched the company’s pace.

* Build culture before scale demands it. At 120 people growing toward 170, the hardest challenge is not product or sales — it’s transmitting core values through layers of new hires.

* Governance is the next frontier. Auditors are no longer asking “do you have backups?” They’re asking which data is backed up, how, and who verified it.

Key Takeaways for Cyber Founders & Leaders

* SaaS services are not data protection. The shared responsibility model places full ownership of data recovery on the customer.

* Category creation requires patience. GitProtect spent years educating the market before inbound demand flipped.

* Certifications (ISO, SOC 2) are not just compliance — they are competitive advantages in enterprise procurement, especially in the US.

* The fastest deals often come after incidents. Be ready to move quickly when a customer has a live problem.

* Poland and Central Europe are serious cybersecurity markets — both as talent pools and as emerging ecosystems worth watching.

About the Guest

Lukasz Jesis is Co-Founder and CEO of Xopero Software and GitProtect.io, headquartered in Gorzów Wielkopolski, Poland. Xopero is a unified backup and disaster recovery platform for mid-market enterprises, and GitProtect is the leading DevOps data protection platform focused on source code, repositories, and the broader engineering ecosystem.

About Scaling Cyber

Scaling Cyber spotlights cybersecurity founders and ecosystem leaders outside the traditional US/Israel hubs — surfacing the real stories behind building global cyber companies.

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