HYCU is a company that has built a data protection as a service platform that makes it easier for you to move your data freely, easily, and safely without the burden of managing and scaling backup infrastructure. Pulse 2.0 interviewed HYCU founder and CEO Simon Taylor to learn more about the company.
Simon Taylor’s Background
As founder and CEO of HYCU, Simon Taylor creates and executes the vision and strategy for one of the world’s leading multi-cloud and SaaS backup and recovery software businesses. A serial entrepreneur prior to HYCU, Taylor led Comtrade Software, an infrastructure monitoring business (sold to Citrix). Taylor has more than 20 years of experience in go-to-market strategy development, product marketing and channel sales management for high-growth tech companies. The author of the best-selling book, Averting the SaaS Data Apocalypse, Simon is an Instituto de Empresa (Madrid) MBA graduate and Boston College Cybersecurity Studies Research Fellow. He has worked with leading companies such as Comtrade Group, Forrester Research, Putnam Investments, and Omgeo.
Taylor said: “I’m a serial entrepreneur, not a coder. I started my career at Forrester Research and Putnam Investments and realized at an early stage that I wanted to start my own business. I love the startup game and was enamored with the idea at an early age. In the early 2000s, I sold what little I had, wrote a business plan, and moved to Prague in the Czech Republic. At the time, I built an algorithmic matching engine that was designed to help match developers in Europe with buyers and customers in the United States.”
“At the time, it was one of its kind. It was almost like a dating app that connected software engineers and potential customers. It was a lot of fun and I ended up selling that business a couple of years later. Comtrade then went on to hire me and I helped set up their US operations. Several years later, I went to Spain, earned my MBA from IE Business School in Madrid, and then built a business within Comtrade Software with Veselin Jevrosimović that developed Citrix monitoring tools.”
“We went from zero to 2,000 customers and sold that company to Citrix in 2016. The rest, as they say, is history. From there, I was in Las Vegas while we were celebrating the success of that exit, and I bumped into Goran Garevski. After a long night of looking at what we could do next together to change the industry, we founded what is now HYCU.”
Formation Of HYCU
How did the idea for HYCU come together? So, when you met with Goran, sort of how did the idea for HYCU come together? Taylor shared:
“You know, it was interesting. I assumed that after selling to Citrix that I would probably go into the monitoring business again or somewhere else in infrastructure. But I bumped into the now co-founder, Goran Garevski, and he made the case to me that was simply this. He said, ‘Listen, Simon. You know that data protection is ubiquitous, but nobody has disrupted the industry the way that let’s say someone like Uber has to taxi cabs.’”
“I really thought about that, and I thought about the fact that people think that disruption can be a pretty sexy, interesting thing. But really when you think about it, disruption only occurs when you take something that is highly commoditized. What makes something truly disruptive is when you put a twist on something, make it more accessible, more approachable, and easier to use. If you look at the technology space, you could argue data protection was potentially the last bastion of undisrupted technology that fit the disruptive criteria. We went on to break down that problem statement into two categories.”
“The first challenge was to say that there was a SaaS problem. At the time, everything was downloaded. Everything was on prem. Everything was in an appliance. We felt that needed to change. The way we’re going to do that is by making data protection deployable as a service. Make it consumable as a service and make it economically viable as a service.”
“The second challenge that we identified is what I now call the equivalency problem. If you look at the history of data protection, going all the way back to UNIX and mainframes, there was a company that had a solution to protect UNIX. There was a company to protect Windows. There was a company to protect VMware. But what we were seeing was the emergence of a true kind of hybrid multi-cloud model in which customers were using not one, not five, not ten, but dozens of platforms and hundreds of different data sources. This was creating an enormous challenge in managing all their data across a variety of applications.”
“The problem we saw was that if we didn’t disrupt the data protection industry, you would end up needing to buy a separate backup and recovery tool for every single application or workload you were running. To us, that just seemed ridiculous. If you think about the iPhone, the analogy I use is, there isn’t a backup product for every application on your phone. You simply go to iCloud backup. You swipe the screen and then it protects everything that’s on your phone. But there was no iCloud backup for business. So essentially, that’s what we set out to build. One, easy-to-use, simple service that provided equivalent levels of data protection support across on-prem, public cloud and SaaS.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory or most memorable thing about establishing and leading HYCU so far? Taylor reflected:
“There are many memories, and some of them are about milestones. It’s great to raise money. It’s great to see your name up in lights. It’s great to see the HYCU logo and brand in Fenway Park when I take my son to see a baseball game. But, for me, nothing beats the moments when the entire company is together, celebrating what we are doing to revolutionize data protection. We run something called HYCU Summit every other year. At Summit, we try to bring together all of – not just the leaders – but everybody in the business under one roof to celebrate, learn, and drive purple power, as we call it. It’s a way to celebrate and learn together.”
“When I stand back, not even when I’m on stage, but when I’m just standing back, and looking at all the folks engaged in learning about HYCU and enjoying each other’s company, and really digging deep on how we can make customers happy, that is really exciting. The other piece of it I would say, in terms of fond memories, is I love when I sit down with customers. One of our first Jose Bellas comes to mind often especially as we’re in Hurricane season. Jose will tell you the story of why he bought HYCU. At the time, Jose came out and said, ‘You know, I was in the middle of a hurricane, I had all my servers and data in plastic bags. I didn’t know what to do. I hadn’t even bought HYCU yet. But you gave me a license and let me turn it on. I was able to protect all my data before the hurricane struck and the flooding happened.’”
“While that’s obviously not a pleasant memory especially for Jose and what he was dealing with, the fact that HYCU was actually able to make a really substantial impact in a moment of crisis, I’m very proud of that. It drives my motivation to come into work every day and work as hard as possible for our customers worldwide.”
Primary Responsibilities
What are your primary responsibilities at HYCU? Taylor told me:
“As a CEO, you’ve got three major responsibilities. People make the job look like a founder is this ubiquitous hero. But the reality is that we do three things. First, we build a vision. Second, we sell that vision by raising money or being the salesperson in chief. And third, we hire a great team. So, build the vision, sell the vision, and hire a great team. We’ve been fortunate in that building out this vision has made a lot of sense. Selling the vision, we’ve raised $140 million in venture funding over the last three years.”
“Not to mention, we’ve grown a really substantial business with more than 4,200 customers. But that last piece, hiring a great team, is where I would say I dedicate about 50% of my time. You have to make sure that you’ve really got the right players, the right athletes in the right positions. You need to make sure you are always looking honestly and are self-aware enough to look at yourselves in the mirror and say, you know, the chair that I was sitting in yesterday is not the chair I am in today. The company has substantively changed day over day, and I need to get better in order to earn this seat. That is something that I fully believe for myself. I certainly believe that, and my executive team does as well.”
Core Products
What does HYCU do, and what are its core products, services and features? Taylor explained:
“We call HYCU modern data protection or Gen3 data protection. If you think about Gen1, it was, you buy one backup product and it backs up and recovers data for the one silo that you were running. So, you went out, you bought HP Data Protector, or you bought LEGATO or whatever it was, and that would protect all your data. Gen2 was, I’m going to run multiple different data protection products in order to support the different kinds of data I outlined earlier. So, I’m going to backup and recover VMware with Veeam, I’m going to backup and recover Windows with Commvault, etc.”
“Gen3 is bringing it all together under one roof. So that you can provide multi hybrid multi cloud data protection as a service, you can turn it on, you can deploy it as a service, you don’t have to download anything. And you’re able to visualize all of your data across your data state, in what we call our graph. So first, we visualize all the data, then we backup all of your data. And then we help you to make it easy to recover data, whether it’s on prem, public cloud, or SaaS.”
Challenges Faced
What significant challenges have you faced in your, and HYCU’s areas of work recently? And how did you overcome those challenges? Taylor acknowledged:
“I think the markets have changed substantially over the last couple of years. We went from a growth at all costs world to a high interest rates environment. Vendors were buying customers, whether by cost cutting on price, or spending millions and millions of dollars to acquire a single customer.”
“As that economy changed, the market rightly started to look more closely at efficiency scores. When you are spending money, the focus is on if you are actually generating a good return. I think we were fortunate in that we’ve always had an 80% Gross Margin which has been that way since almost two years into starting the business.”
“Our priority was that we wanted to deliver fast and efficiently, really, really great software. I think that the area that we really had to come to terms with was, you can’t be everything to everyone. What I mean by that is, there were those companies that are going to go after the top end of the enterprise. They’re going to spend seven years trying to win over large enterprise companies. They’re going to customize their entire platform to do that. We said, we want to appeal to the 200,000, lower enterprise, and midmarket customers that need one solution to protect everything. I would say that a challenge for us has been saying no, it’s been said, hey, we’re really focused on creating a velocity business. That’s going to bring us to market quickly and efficiently.”
“I would say that has been something that over the last few years, we’ve realized, we cannot be flexible on that. We need to make sure that we stay incredibly focused on that vision, and on that strategy. When we do, when we stay in our ICP, we win. We dominate. I think when we try to go all over the place into the lower SMB market into the top end of the enterprise, all of a sudden, what we find is that we’re a little bit distracted. I think that’s a lesson that I certainly think is very important. To sum all of that up in a word, it’s “focus.” Companies that focus succeed. Companies that become distracted fail. So, making sure that we retain that focus and improve it over time has been incredibly important to us.”
Evolution Of HYCU’s Technology
How has HYCU’s technology evolved since the company launched? Taylor noted:
“I think from day one we had a vision that we were going to create a ubiquitous platform that would protect data on prem, public cloud, and SaaS. But, we had to start somewhere. So, the first workload that we actually started with was Nutanix. A number of people said, we were crazy. They said, that’s not the biggest market, why would you do that. But we wanted a real greenfield where we could become well known and expand from there.”
“We needed somewhere we could drive our brand and build a great partnership. Nutanix was that initial success. We’ve been able to ride that a little bit, which has been phenomenal. We went from on-prem Nutanix, VMware, and physical to cloud. And, then we added all the cloud services, Google, Azure, and AWS. I think the big evolution really came when we added what we call R-Graph which was the ability to visualize all that data. We expanded to add over 90 Different SaaS integrations, making us the number one and the world’s leader in SaaS Data Protection. That has been a significant evolution from where we started with one platform and several workloads to more data sources and SaaS integrations than anyone else in the industry. I’m incredibly proud of what we have accomplished in such a short amount of time.”
Significant Milestones
What are HYCU’s most significant milestones to date? Taylor cited:
“I think there are all sorts of different milestones. I think the number of customers is really important. When we hit our first 100 customers, in fact, when we got our first customer, I would say that was probably the biggest milestone. People really don’t talk about that enough. We have more than 4,200 customers today but, waiting for that phone to ring or waiting for that first deal to come in, that is a game changing moment. The moment when you’ve done all this work, and somebody says I’m willing to pay you money for something you’ve built, that is significant. I never really understood why restaurants put that first dollar up in a picture frame before but that is really significant. When we got to our 100th customer then 1,000th customer, and beyond that, that was great.”
“Another milestone I think is under reported is our NPS score. NPS is Net Promoter Score which is a common metric used to measure customer loyalty. Watching our NPS score grow to 90, and then hold there, showing that we had real customer satisfaction was phenomenal for all of us. We’ve been fortunate. We’ve earned and won lots of awards. Awards for our technology, as a best place to work, and for our executive team. All those things are important, and they’re all great. But for me, hearing back from customers, and seeing the delight that they experienced with our products and services, that’s certainly the most meaningful thing in the business.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share some specific customer success stories? What factors figured in, and what were some of your key takeaways from them? Taylor highlighted:
“There are a couple of customer successes that mean a lot to me. The first is Cloud Software Group. Cloud Software Group provides mission-critical software to enterprises at scale. Their roots are from Tibco and Citrix and they are a classic, large, multinational company. Both Tibco and Citrix are very large companies, and Cloud Software Group came together under an excellent management team to build something fundamentally different in the market. When we first spoke with their team, they mentioned they were using multiple backup products. After a number of discussions with their EVP, COO, and CISO Andy Nallappan, they decided to unify their data protection strategy under HYCU.”
“When you think about their roots, they’ve been in the market for more than 20 years and have billions of dollars in revenue. To have a company like that make a strategic decision to choose HYCU was really meaningful personally to me and everyone at HYCU. It says something about the quality of the products, our ability to really execute, and our ability to fundamentally improve the value that our customers are getting from data protection.”
“The other thing I would say, without getting into specifics or names is we have over 150 different customers in the US Federal public sector. I’m always honored and proud when I think about the fact that we protect data across critical agencies and departments. When you can build something that can play even a small part in defending this nation, that is something to be very proud of.”
Total Addressable Market
What is the total addressable market (TAM) size HYCU is pursuing? Taylor assessed:
“It’s funny if you ask our Chairman of the Board Enrique Salem, he’ll tell you that the reason Bain Capital Ventures got involved in HYCU wasn’t just our team or our technology. It was also the enormous TAM that we service. Our TAM is essentially all the data in the world.”
“Because we have a future-proofed, highly extensible platform, we can add additional data protection integrations at scale, in a way that probably nobody else in the market can. That means that our TAM is represented by all of the data that’s in all of the SaaS services in the world. Plus, all of the data in the hyperscalers, plus all the data on prem. It’s a massive TAM that is somewhere around $400 billion-plus and growing every day. Our job is to make sure that we focus on it in the right ways so that we can deliver terrific customer support. But there’s no end to the TAM we are servicing.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What really differentiates HYCU from its competition? Taylor affirmed:
“Number one, it is the fact that we are really focused on hybrid multi-cloud. We are designed from the ground up, architecturally. Instead of protecting one source and then adding another source and having them on different screens, what we do is allow you to integrate across all of your different data sources. Then, you can view it all in a single pane of glass. You don’t need multiple dashboards to see what data sources are protected or unprotected. I think having that one source of truth in which you can navigate and protect and apply policies across on prem, public cloud, and SaaS is incredible.”
“The second piece is we built an amazing relationship with Anthropic, making us the world’s first true generative AI data protection platform. What we do with them is we automate the process of delivering additional source integrations into HYCU through a low code platform. That’s a really complicated way of saying that if you’ve got a SaaS service or something that we don’t protect today, you can click the AI button, it will spin up a new integration for you in as little as three hours. You now have the ability to turn on base level data protection, and then add additional functionality for things like granular recovery, using our low code development platform. It’s truly extensible. It allows you to have the confidence that you’re purchasing a platform that is going to protect you not just today, but also tomorrow and well into the future.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of HYCU’s future goals for itself? Taylor pointed out:
“We’re continuing to focus on becoming the #1 de facto SaaS data protection platform leader, and aim to serve more than 10,000 customers worldwide, while continuing to work with more partners to support the growing number of SaaS solutions that remain unprotected. At that point, we envision an IPO as the next step.”
Internal Culture
What if anything makes HYCU’s internal culture unique and how does that inform the rest of the company? Taylor replied:
“HYCU’s internal culture is built on three key pillars: Authenticity, Grit, and Empathy. Let me break these down and explain their importance:
1.) Authenticity: This value encourages employees to be genuine and true to themselves. For HYCUers, it means bringing the real you to work each and every day. Being honest, and transparent in all that you do, and staying true to your principles and values.
2.) Grit: Grit means doing what it takes to get the job done. It means always going above and beyond for customers and persevering with passion for long-term goals. For HYCUers, it means being resilient in the face of challenges. It means leaving no stone unturned to solve problems especially for customers.
3.) Empathy: Empathy means being able to put yourself in other people’s shoes. For HYCUers, it involves understanding and sharing the feelings of others. It also means considering a colleagues’ perspectives and experiences and supporting team members through difficulties and challenges, and creating a compassionate work environment.
These Core Corporate Values are the building blocks for our internal corporate culture. They are what have built a strong company identity and help HYCUers differentiate HYCU in the market and attract like-minded talent.”
Funding
Please tell me about HYCU’s funding (to date and future), revenue metrics, and overall roadmap. Taylor revealed:
“To date, HYCU has raised $140 million through two rounds. In our Series A, we raised $87.5 million with Bain Capital Ventures and Acrew Capital. At the time it was the highest Series A for Bain Capital Ventures to date. We are fortunate to have Enrique Salem from Bain Capital Ventures as Chairman of the Board and Theresia Gouw from Acrew Capital on the Board.”
“Both provide an enormous amount of industry knowledge and expertise with companies like HYCU. We raised $53 million in our Series B with both Bain Capital Ventures and Acrew Capital returning and being joined by Atlassian Ventures, Cisco Investments, and Okta Ventures.”
“The new investors provided the catalyst and support with our SaaS data protection focus. To date, we protect more Atlassian Cloud solutions like BitBucket, Confluence, Jira, and Trello than any other enterprise class data protection provider. And the same is true for Okta. Our focus is on making data protection simple and ubiquitous regardless of platform be it on-prem, hybrid multicloud, or SaaS. We continue to work with go-to-market and development partners as well as strategic technology alliance partners to deliver easy to use, modern data protection, that addresses the most challenging and complex data protection challenges.”
“These challenges can be ways to recover from simple human error to the rising threat of ransomware attacks. We measure success on maintaining a high Net Retention Rate as well as maintaining an industry-leading 90+ NPS. We will continue to drive innovation to support each and every one of the on-prem, cloud, and SaaS partners and are as excited about our long-standing partners like Nutanix, Google, AWS as we are about new and emerging partnerships with Dell Technologies, Atlassian, Okta and others.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Taylor concluded:
“It’s almost impossible to talk about anything in technology without mentioning AI or Artificial Intelligence. Our industry is no different. The true power of artificial intelligence lies in its ability to amplify human potential. Our journey with Generative AI at HYCU is helping to redefine the boundaries of data protection. We’re not just adapting to the AI revolution – we’re actively shaping it. We spent time making sure our approach with AI would combine AI’s efficiency with our deep understanding of data, security, compliance, and resilience. That’s how we’re creating a future where data protection is powerful, responsive, and intuitive.”
“That’s also why, for all of us at HYCU, our work with AI is about more than innovation; it’s a new standard for the entire industry. Our AI-driven development process, powered by Anthropic’s Claude model, is transforming weeks of work into hours. We’re not only accelerating development but also ensuring that every AI-driven integration adheres to stringent security standards.”
“Moreover, we’re extending our protection to the very infrastructure that powers AI, safeguarding critical vector databases like PineCone and Redis Cloud. This holistic approach – protecting both traditional data and the building blocks of AI – is how we’re preparing for the next frontier of data protection.”
“We recognized early on the power of harness AI’s power to create a safer, more efficient digital world for tomorrow. This is the future of data protection as we see it, and at HYCU, we’re proud to be pioneering AI this way.”
