j-labs case study

Business background j-labs, a company whose origins date back to 2008, was found- ed by Jan Orzechowski and Piotr Bucki, experienced specialists working in the IT industry. When they were working on their first big project as a newly founded company, Jan was in charge of business analytics and management and Piotr had written over a million lines of code in Java, one of the essential programming languages. When the several-month-long project was finished, the partners came to the conclusion that the number of custom- ers willing to outsource programming services would only grow. On the other hand, the majority of software engineers, especially those who had or thought about having a family or buying a home, needed stable employment. So, they put the two pieces of the puz- zle together and started a business specialising in ‘IT body leas- ing’: they were hiring out programmers for specific tasks, initially just coding in Java. The idea was a success. One year later, the ‘company created by engineers for engineers’, as the partners call it, had already 20 IT professionals. In 2010, the name j-labs was officially adopted. This was the beginning of branding, but also scaling and diversification of services (new programming languages). Three years later, Jan and Piotr were employing 50 specialists, and another three years later – already a hundred. In the meantime, they opened a branch in Warsaw, and then a sales office in Munich. Their dynamic de- velopment was appreciated by the Forbes magazine whose ex- perts awarded j-labs the famous and prestigious Diamond title in 2017. But the company did not have the slightest intention of slowing down. Last year, it reached a turnover of PLN 50 million and had more than 250 employees, serving 40 customers in sev- eral countries. From an attic to a Forbes Diamond Jan Orzechowski CEO Piotr Bucki Deputy CEO, CTO — What is j-labs? — How has the company grown? 06