Daniel Dines: From a Dollar a Day to Romania's Richest Man| Happiness, Wealth, Risk and more | E1143

1. 0:00 – 1:07

   Intro

   1. DDDaniel Dines0:00

      I was, uh, living on, like, $30 (cash register dings) a month. That's $1 a day, right? (cash register dings) At times, I, I didn't have money to eat properly. I knew I (cash register dings) had to make this decision to find my financial freedom, to get this (beep) money. It was almost like a prison. I behaved like a prisoner, just waiting to get out of the prison. Raising the first, uh, money was giving me such a freedom of mind. It was freedom to go big.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings0:28

      Ready to go? (upbeat music plays) Daniel, I am so excited for this. I've wanted to do this for a long time. Uh, I had a great chat to Brandon yesterday, who gave me so many tips. So thank you so much for joining me today.

   3. DDDaniel Dines0:50

      Well, Harry, thank you so much for having me. It's always fun to see you. (laughs)

   4. HSHarry Stebbings0:53

      Yeah.

   5. DDDaniel Dines0:54

      Especially this is a little bit unusual because-

   6. HSHarry Stebbings0:56

      (laughs)

   7. DDDaniel Dines0:56

      ... as you know, we met a lot more often in the gym of our-

   8. HSHarry Stebbings1:00

      (laughs)

   9. DDDaniel Dines1:01

      ... building.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings1:02

       There's, i- it's absolutely true, uh, and you put me to shame in the gym. So I'm quite pleased to be out of

2. 1:07 – 8:53

   Background & Childhood

   1. HSHarry Stebbings1:07

      that, uh, but I would love to start with a little bit on you. I think great entrepreneurs are like shaped in childhood. What were you like as a child, Daniel? And when you think about like what your parents and teachers would have said about you, how would they have described you?

   2. DDDaniel Dines1:19

      Maybe they will say that I was, uh, a little bit of a curious child that, uh, was argumentative, maybe at-

   3. HSHarry Stebbings1:27

      (laughs)

   4. DDDaniel Dines1:27

      ... times too argumentative for, especially for the likes of my parents. So I always like to engage, like, in debates and have my opinion and talk maybe a little bit too much. But, uh, I think I lost it (laughs) -

   5. HSHarry Stebbings1:44

      (laughs)

   6. DDDaniel Dines1:44

      ... with, with time. So now I prefer a lot more to, to listen to people. But curiosity was something that, uh, always, uh, kind of stuck with me.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings1:55

      Were you good in school?

   8. DDDaniel Dines1:57

      Um, in, uh, primary school, I was good.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings2:01

      (laughs)

   10. DDDaniel Dines2:01

       But after that, I discovered, uh, I don't know, other activities like-

   11. HSHarry Stebbings2:05

       (laughs)

   12. DDDaniel Dines2:06

       ... girls and going to pool and hanging out with boys. So I was pretty average except math, where I had like a natural inclination.

   13. HSHarry Stebbings2:17

       (laughs) Uh, th- honestly, I love to hear that 'cause I think you can sometimes hear some stories where it's like, you know, uh, super weird since from like day one and it just feels quite unrelatable. I, I did hear that I had to ask you how you learnt to code. I chatted with Luciana before and she was like, "You have to ask him how he learnt to code." So what was that story?

   14. DDDaniel Dines2:34

       Well, I think it's pretty wild after today's standard. So I am not the typical hacker that started, you know, creating his first game when he was eight or something (laughs) like this. So I, uh, I went to university to math because it was quite easy for me to, to get in really. I, I haven't studied at all really to pass the exam to the university. But I went to computer science. I went to math and computer science, so I have a dual degree. And, uh, look, I went to computer science just because it was a little bit fancy at that time, but I was very disappointed in, uh, in the university. You need to picture like early 1990 Romania, just fall of communism, but all the professor, the atmosphere was still very communist, ugly people with kind of a fixed mindset, uh, so honestly, I, after the first week in, uh, at university, I decided I, I don't wanna go there. So literally, I went only to, like, exams.

   15. HSHarry Stebbings3:51

       (laughs)

   16. DDDaniel Dines3:51

       So that was not, uh, no, it was not my thing. I, I, uh-

   17. HSHarry Stebbings3:56

       Respectfully, how did you pass when you don't attend (laughs) any of the classes and you just go to exams?

   18. DDDaniel Dines4:00

       It was a little bit of the, you know, Wild West at that time. So it was not mandatory to attend actually. So I went it, you know, once in a while. I get to know my colleagues, I learn for exams, but that was it. I, I was... I started to play bridge, so that was a big passion for me in the, in, uh, in university. Maybe you should ask me how, how did I learn English-

   19. HSHarry Stebbings4:30

       (laughs)

   20. DDDaniel Dines4:30

       ... because it's even more interesting than coding. (laughs)

   21. HSHarry Stebbings4:32

       How, how did you learn English?

   22. DDDaniel Dines4:34

       (laughs)

   23. HSHarry Stebbings4:34

       'Cause also you learned quite quickly. Sorry, I'm interrupting you, but I remember, I, when I interviewed Brandon four years ago or something, like respectfully, your English was not nearly as good. Like, it's got so much better.

   24. DDDaniel Dines4:45

       Yeah. I'm an, uh, I'm a total, uh, anti-talent, you know, to foreign languages, especially to English. But, so when I was like, uh, 19, 20 and I started to play bridge, I didn't know any English at all. But the, the only good, uh, books about bridge were in English. So actually I and a friend of mine bought, uh, together, we put... you know, we had very little money, so we put, uh, together money to, to buy a really big, uh, book, an American book, like I re- still remember, it's a guy called Goren and it's called like, uh, American Standard or something-

   25. HSHarry Stebbings5:26

       (laughs)

   26. DDDaniel Dines5:26

       ... talking about bridge. And I had to read the book with a dictionary.

   27. HSHarry Stebbings5:31

       (laughs)

   28. DDDaniel Dines5:31

       So that's basically that I was so passionate about it because this is how I actually learned English. I know a lot of words, but my pronunciation is very bad because it was, you know, the tendency was to pronounce as you read.

   29. HSHarry Stebbings5:46

       Yeah.

   30. DDDaniel Dines5:46

       So and my musical ear, it's not there, so I, uh, in the last four, five years, I worked quite a lot with, uh, with a great, uh, professor, teacher, I would say, of, uh, dialect.She's a great lady. She works actually with, uh, Hollywood actors to teach them different dialects that are required, English dialects that are required when they speak in the movies. So they can speak English with a Russian accent like me. (laughs)
3. 8:53 – 12:51

   Minimal Living Expenses

   1. DDDaniel Dines8:53

   2. HSHarry Stebbings8:53

      (laughs)

   3. DDDaniel Dines8:53

      Because going to my first job, I was, uh, living on, like, $30 a month. I know, it's $1 a day, right?

   4. HSHarry Stebbings9:02

      Yeah.

   5. DDDaniel Dines9:03

      And, uh, it, uh, I meant-

   6. HSHarry Stebbings9:05

      Were you, were you living incredibly frugally? Like was that-

   7. DDDaniel Dines9:08

      Frug- incredibly frugally, yes.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings9:11

      Yeah. Yeah.

   9. DDDaniel Dines9:11

      And, uh-

   10. HSHarry Stebbings9:11

       Like, you didn't eat?

   11. DDDaniel Dines9:12

       But at times, at times I, I didn't have money to eat properly. I, I remember days when I didn't eat at all. That, uh, that, uh, that leaves a mark.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings9:23

       Does it?

   13. DDDaniel Dines9:23

       For s- Yeah, it does.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings9:24

       What mark does it leave?

   15. DDDaniel Dines9:26

       It's a, it's a kind of anxiety that you have in life. So until I, uh, until kind of recently when money didn't matter honestly, I always had this anxiety of the times. It's not clearly internalized that I'm afraid that I am gonna get to a position where I don't have to eat, but the thought can be there, and I think it makes you a little bit more paranoid and afraid. Maybe in a way it's negative and positive obviously. I think it's positive, because it keeps us a little bit grounded to reality. And, uh, but it's negative because I think it's, uh, it can drag you.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings10:10

       Mm.

   17. DDDaniel Dines10:10

       It doesn't let you go as fast as you can. Because somehow in, uh, to me it was a, a very in- a very big change. When I raised the first, uh, money, the first, like, the seed round, because I bootstrapped UiPath for, like, 10 years.

   18. HSHarry Stebbings10:30

       Yeah.

   19. DDDaniel Dines10:31

       And, uh, raising the first, uh, money was giving me such a freedom of mind, because it was freedom and responsibility in the same time. But it was freedom to, to go big, because I, I was completely free of, you know, of my internal brakes related to my upbringing when I had to do everything by myself. And some people trusted me. So then, I don't know, something switch in my head. And I-

   20. HSHarry Stebbings11:05

       What, what was it that-

   21. DDDaniel Dines11:05

       ... I stopped having any fear.

   22. HSHarry Stebbings11:07

       What was it that caused the switch? Was it the fact that people put their faith in you? Was it the fact that you had the money to spend? What was it that caused that switch?

   23. DDDaniel Dines11:16

       Maybe all of them. But it was a clear switch, because I was for quite a few years, like, fearless, just go, spending every single penny. That's an interesting story, because between seed series and series A that we did here in London with-

   24. HSHarry Stebbings11:34

       Yeah.

   25. DDDaniel Dines11:35

       ... Axel, I had to raise a bridge round from my investors.

   26. HSHarry Stebbings11:40

       Existing.

   27. DDDaniel Dines11:40

       From existing investors. And we were negotiating for a long time, like, to do a cap, like, 20% cap, and they wanted the cap, and I wanted to uncap. We haggled until, like, the last day, and I didn't have... I, I, we... Monday we were hit zero in the bank. And it was company, it's a hundred people always, so it was ...

   28. HSHarry Stebbings12:06

       Wow.

   29. DDDaniel Dines12:06

       But I knew that-You know, it's, it's, you have to play-

   30. HSHarry Stebbings12:10

       (laughs)
4. 12:51 – 14:55

   Risk-Taking Mindset

   1. DDDaniel Dines12:51

   2. HSHarry Stebbings12:51

      So the living on a dollar a day and coming from such a frugal background gave you the mindset that you could afford to take massive risk, correct?

   3. DDDaniel Dines12:59

      Maybe. In a way, I knew what is the worst, so I survived the worst. What could've... When, when you have the opportunity, you really wanna go big one the other.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings13:10

      Yeah.

   5. DDDaniel Dines13:10

      There is no point in just getting to where I could've been in the normal situation. So maybe that was, that was the resource that freed me in a way, that I could be... It was a compensation maybe for that frugal days in a way. So I, I really thought that I owe to myself to do it big.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings13:42

      Talk to me about the first job where you got paid $200 a month. 'Cause we're on a dollar a day there, very frugal living, and we get that scar that's very ingrained-

   7. DDDaniel Dines13:50

      Yeah.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings13:50

      ... in one's mind. And then you get a first job. Was the first job $200 a day? I'm sorry, $200 a month?

   9. DDDaniel Dines13:58

      Yes.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings13:58

       Okay.

   11. DDDaniel Dines13:58

       That's correct. But first, let's go to, to learning to code.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings14:04

       Yeah.

   13. DDDaniel Dines14:05

       And, uh, so in university I didn't learn much honestly. I, I learned some basics, like they were teaching Pascal, I think, or something. But, uh, I, uh, so I met this friend of mine when I was living with 30 and he told me... I asked him, "What are you doing?" He says, "I'm fine. I got a new job." Like, uh, "What job?" I ask him. "Like a programmer." I said, "Okay, that's fine. How much money are you making?" He said, "$300 a month." And I was literally shocked, because it was 10 times what I was making and, uh... So I, I thought to myself, "Wow, I'm missing something big here."

   14. HSHarry Stebbings14:49

       (laughs)

   15. DDDaniel Dines14:49

       All my gigs and all this, the life, the stupid life that I'm doing, and I just

5. 14:55 – 30:50

   Learning Programming

   1. DDDaniel Dines14:55

      can learn to program and I can get a nice job. And that was, uh, like summer time. So I got, uh, I got my girlfriend at that time, uh, gave me, uh, a book about programming. It was called Programming C++. A great guy, the invent, written by the inventor of C++, Bjarne Stroustrup. And it was not the original book. It was a book the, you know, that was copied in a x- Xerox machine.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings15:30

      (laughs)

   3. DDDaniel Dines15:30

      You know, so.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings15:30

      A fax, yeah.

   5. DDDaniel Dines15:31

      It was, yeah, like a fax.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings15:32

      Yeah.

   7. DDDaniel Dines15:33

      Yeah. I found, at that time, that book fascinating somehow, because I learned C and C++ from that book. So I really read it like an adventure book. So again, without a computer. So I, I read that programming book and I went through the exercises and how he described the concepts, but without trying on the computer. So I always more... I, I never wrote too much code in, in my life, but I, my specialty was mostly to reason about code and make programs working, to debug, to... That was where I was at my best. But writing code, to me, was always a little bit boring, to write too much. Because once you had the, what you want to program in your mind, many times I thought just putting on piece, you know, piece of code was a little bit boring. But the fun part was always when I made that code that I wrote working.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings16:28

      It's pretty extraordinary, though, to learn code without testing. Like, without iteratively doing it. That is pretty exceptional.

   9. DDDaniel Dines16:35

      I think it was helpful in a way, because I, I, um... I think there are two types of developers that I've seen in my life. Uh, there are the hacker types that learned coding, you know, just tinkering with the computer, and they are very good of finding, you know, different ways to do things that they always know. But when you learn more theoretically, and I had my math, math background, and then reading, you know, learning more theoretical, I think you can have a broader perspective of things. So you can be more of like a software architect and you can understand bigger systems-

   10. HSHarry Stebbings17:19

       Mm-hmm.

   11. DDDaniel Dines17:19

       ... if you have this theoretical background. So it's kind of helped me, because I, to, to me it's, in life I, even today, I really like to read from time to time different programming topics. Nowadays, of course, about AI. But I learn, uh, you know, a lot of programming language just by reading. I don't have to program. I didn't program JavaScript, but I learn, I understand, so I can have a conversation about JavaScript or good systems. Or I learn a language called Erlang, that was like... WhatsApp is written in Erlang, so it's a nice actor-based system that helps, uh, write parallel code. And then I can extrapolate different, uh, ideas to our own system. Like, when we build Serverless, how does it compare to this? So it's a lot of theoretic-... okay, it works. This is my... My mind works by, best by trying to connect, uh, different concepts and try to get the best of them and apply to solve a problem.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings18:24

       Do you think you're good at then telling others what you see in your head or the way that you want systems to be built?

   13. DDDaniel Dines18:31

       No, no.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings18:32

       (laughs)

   15. DDDaniel Dines18:33

       Not good at all. This is, this is where I really struggle. It's-

   16. HSHarry Stebbings18:36

       Why, why?

   17. DDDaniel Dines18:37

       It's hard. Some... The- there are some... My, my mind speaks, well, faster. My thoughts are, well, faster, go, well, faster than my speaking rhythm. So sometimes I'm trying to keep up pace with my thoughts-

   18. HSHarry Stebbings18:54

       (laughs)

   19. DDDaniel Dines18:54

       ... so maybe it's a little bit unintelligible too- (laughs)

   20. HSHarry Stebbings18:58

       (laughs)

   21. DDDaniel Dines18:59

       ... to people in front of me. So it took... I had to develop these skills to kind of, uh, explain more what I think in, uh, a little bit in frameworks, okay? What are the principles and then how you can fill in the blanks in... Actually, it's, uh, it was, um... Being the CEO of a public company was, uh, instructive to me in, uh, in a way. Because you have to talk to investors and y- you don't... Y- you need to clearly explain, you know, your business, but you cannot go, you know, off the record. (laughs)

   22. HSHarry Stebbings19:41

       Sure.

   23. DDDaniel Dines19:41

       There's no such a thing, right? So you have to be pretty precise. So I work a lot with our IR person, Kelsey. I think I, I learned quite a bit from her.

   24. HSHarry Stebbings19:53

       What do you think you learned?

   25. DDDaniel Dines19:55

       I think I learned, uh, a very simple trick. Actually two. When you explain something, go first and tell what you in, uh, in high level terms what you are gonna talk about it and then drill down each of the items. And this is kind of a framework to explain. So I'm gonna talk about 1, 2, 3. And then 1, and this is... And then you can ask, "Do you want, do you wanted me to drill down in one of these points?" It's a little bit easier-

   26. HSHarry Stebbings20:29

       Yeah.

   27. DDDaniel Dines20:29

       ... to-

   28. HSHarry Stebbings20:29

       I totally get that. Uh, okay. So if we go back, 'cause I wanna kind of unpack it chronologically. So we go back, we learn programming through this wonderful book thanks to that current girlfriend, C++. You owe her a lot. Um, how was the job?

   29. DDDaniel Dines20:43

       It was the most amazing job I, um, I think I had, uh, in my life.

   30. HSHarry Stebbings20:49

       Why?
6. 30:50 – 35:24

   Navigating Wealth Milestones & Satisfaction

   1. DDDaniel Dines30:50

      to go back.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings30:51

      Before we move to kind of going back and, and kinda building UiPath, I have to ask, on the prison element, if we carry on that analogy, you can always extend your sentence. And what I mean by that is, you can always be on the treadmill. I remember when I started, it's like, "When you make a million pounds, that is like, that's fuck-you money," t- when I started. And then it's like, I got to a million and it's like, "Well, it's not actually, you can't buy an apartment with a million." If it's in a nice area in London, uh, it's probably five million. And then you get to five million and you're like, "Well, I can probably buy an apartment now, but then I have no money at all." And so you can always push it.

   3. DDDaniel Dines31:27

      Yeah.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings31:27

      How do you think about that? And how would you advise me who actually struggles with that, honestly?

   5. DDDaniel Dines31:33

      In a weird way, even I s- I have some, uh, remaining fear of this struggle and it's just completely stupid for me.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings31:48

      (laughs)

   7. DDDaniel Dines31:48

      And, uh-

   8. HSHarry Stebbings31:49

      But it makes me feel better that you say that.

   9. DDDaniel Dines31:51

      The way, the way to, the way to deal with this is to, is to realize that, uh, you are a valuable, uh, professional and human being. When I struggled the most, I was actually not in the, i- in, in the medium that, uh, put me, you know, put me in the spotlight somehow. And you are, when you are in the wrong medium, you start to doubt yourself-

   10. HSHarry Stebbings32:21

       Mm-hmm.

   11. DDDaniel Dines32:21

       ... quite a bit. When you don't doubt yourself and you go to work and meet the people that appreciate you, this problem with money disappears. You'll always make money, Harry, and you'll always make good money. It's just, it's just getting to the right people. Get, get, get, getting your people. I think once you understand that you have an intrinsic value and it's not only to go and find the right timing and, you know, assemble yourself maybe 10, 20, 100, you will, you'll be f- more, you'll be free and you can enjoy what you are doing better.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings33:04

       Do you enjoy what you're doing now?

   13. DDDaniel Dines33:06

       I do. I, I talk-

   14. HSHarry Stebbings33:08

       (laughs)

   15. DDDaniel Dines33:08

       ... and, uh, and I don't (laughs) and, uh, I, I feel I, uh, I am, uh, an, uh, empathic type of person, so I read the emotions in people. And in, in my position, you know, you get to know all the shit that happens here, most of the shit that happens in the company and all the bad rumors, "Oh no, this guy did this, and this is not good for our culture," everything. It comes and many times, you don't even, cannot even action, but it, it, uh, poisons your mind somehow. So all this, you have to deal with all this negativity. And, and in the end, being the, this is why when someone says, "It's lonely to be the CEO of the company."

   16. HSHarry Stebbings34:05

       Mm.

   17. DDDaniel Dines34:05

       Because eventually all the shit, you know, you know c- goes-

   18. HSHarry Stebbings34:12

       Creeps up to you.

   19. DDDaniel Dines34:13

       ... creeps up to you. Yeah. Exactly.

   20. HSHarry Stebbings34:15

       Yeah. Uh, I totally get that and it, it definitely does. And it is 'cause you can't talk to anyone else because you can't be distasteful to other team members. Do you know what I mean? You can't say or speak badly of someone to someone else and unload that burden.

   21. DDDaniel Dines34:29

       Even if you speak to them and unload, and I have some good friends and I, I worked with people for many years, it's not kind of the same. It's not the same position where it's like you cannot put yourself completely in the shoes of the other.

   22. HSHarry Stebbings34:46

       Mm.

   23. DDDaniel Dines34:47

       I have the empathy, but I don't feel your pain.

   24. HSHarry Stebbings34:50

       Mm.

   25. DDDaniel Dines34:50

       All right? And I, I have a f- sense of the pain. They can understand that it's negative for me, but they don't understand how much it affects me.

   26. HSHarry Stebbings35:00

       Did you ever have self-doubt? You mentioned there about doubting yourself. Did you ever have self-doubt?

   27. DDDaniel Dines35:07

       Yeah, I think I always had the imposter syndrome. And th-

   28. HSHarry Stebbings35:10

       You did?

   29. DDDaniel Dines35:11

       Yeah. And that, uh, that's, uh, that's actually, that causes me to make the biggest mistakes as a, as the CEO and, uh, you know, in my professional-

   30. HSHarry Stebbings35:23

       Why is that?

7. 35:24 – 44:31

   Chemistry Over Experience

   1. HSHarry Stebbings35:24

   2. DDDaniel Dines35:24

      ... uh, because I, doubting myself, I, um, my tendency was to search for and hire people with experience, right? That have done this job before. And they are, they should've been way better than me of doing some sort of job. But the problem is then you cannot compromise the affinity between people. If there is no chemistry, this is not gonna work. So because of my imposter syndrome, I tended to trade off chemistry for experience. And with very rare exceptions, it always went bad.

   3. HSHarry Stebbings36:14

      Did you correct it quick enough?

   4. DDDaniel Dines36:16

      Most of the time, yes. Not, I would, it's... This is, uh, the, this idea that hire-Hire slow, fire fast. In a way it's ... Well, it, it's good. It reads good on paper. But it's not applicable in, uh, in real life.

   5. HSHarry Stebbings36:35

      I prefer hire fast, fire fast. (laughs)

   6. DDDaniel Dines36:38

      In a way it's easier.

   7. HSHarry Stebbings36:40

      Yeah.

   8. DDDaniel Dines36:40

      And, uh, but fire fast is not so easy applicable.

   9. HSHarry Stebbings36:45

      Huh.

   10. DDDaniel Dines36:46

       Because it, especially with the senior executives, you need to give them, uh, you know, my ... You need... There is a honeymoon, of course. And you need to give them a lot of freedom to do their job so they, so they start to hire, they build layers. And suddenly when, when you start to understand that something, it's not completely, doesn't work completely, it's a little bit too late and you are in the middle of the process and all you can do is to be hopeful that it's gonna work.

   11. HSHarry Stebbings37:19

       (laughs)

   12. DDDaniel Dines37:19

       And it's very hard to make that decision to fire in the middle when the people are ... But you already see the signs that that might not work, you see the bad traits of them. And usually-

   13. HSHarry Stebbings37:30

       Do you let them, do you let them know at that point or do you not? Because it knocks their confidence just as they're playing the game.

   14. DDDaniel Dines37:36

       Sometimes, uh, sometimes it's not so easy to, to tell them. Because it's more, it's, either there are very little facts that maybe sometimes it sounds ridiculous to me if I go to you and say, "Why did you do this?"

   15. HSHarry Stebbings37:50

       Mm-hmm.

   16. DDDaniel Dines37:51

       And, or even, "Why do you dress like this?" Uh, because let's say if I hire a developer and they come to work in a suit, that's, it doesn't happen.

   17. HSHarry Stebbings38:00

       (laughs)

   18. DDDaniel Dines38:00

       But I'm telling you this time. It's kind of hard to go, "Man, don't look, you look like a clown."

   19. HSHarry Stebbings38:05

       (laughs)

   20. DDDaniel Dines38:06

       "Get, get a nice T-shirt if you want not taken seriously." I'm li- not good of, uh, of giving feedback. Even today, to me I find because of this is where empathy works against you, it's, it's not easy to, for me it's not easy to give negative feedback. I have to trust, uh ...

   21. HSHarry Stebbings38:25

       Why is it not easy for you to give negative feedback?

   22. DDDaniel Dines38:28

       I don't know. I have this, uh, it's a, it's a little bit like, uh, I have a construc- a, a defect (laughs) in my brain. I can, uh, I can give, uh, easily negative feedback, it's a way of saying, but I can easily point people that I like and I enjoy to some of their negative, uh, traits. Because in a way I feel that my love for them compensates the pain that I'm causing them. Because you know, it causes, it's co- it's, it causes pain to give feedback to anyone.

   23. HSHarry Stebbings39:04

       Sure.

   24. DDDaniel Dines39:04

       It's impossible for someone to receive negative feedback without pain. It c- it can be helpful and they can heal, of course, because of the feedback. But it, it's the bout of pain that they feel that turns me ... So I can, I can trade the pain that I feel giving feedback with the love that I give them. But when I don't feel love for them, I don't have this trait, so I feel only their pain, and I feel a little bit like I'm a jerk. And, uh, but it's ... I have to ... It's, it's a lifelong work to, to learn this skill. And, like, uh, you know we talk about Carl Aschenbach-

   25. HSHarry Stebbings39:50

       Yeah.

   26. DDDaniel Dines39:50

       ... you know, before starting this, he told me once something, uh, very profound. He said ... We, we were talking about firing people and, you know, I said that it's so difficult to fire people. And he said, "Daniel, that's normal. The moment, the moment, uh, you will stop feeling difficult to fire people, you become like a monster."

   27. HSHarry Stebbings40:17

       Yeah.

   28. DDDaniel Dines40:17

       "You will not be a good CEO."

   29. HSHarry Stebbings40:19

       I, I think is so true and, uh, and I've, I've heard the same. Uh, you mentioned Carl there, I spoke to several of your investors before and I asked for weaknesses as well out of Daniel. And some of them said combined that you give too much responsibility to people, and you let them have too much freedom. You mentioned they're the execs and that-

   30. DDDaniel Dines40:40

       Yeah.
8. 44:31 – 49:49

   Bootstrapping Journey

   1. DDDaniel Dines44:31

      went public.

   2. HSHarry Stebbings44:31

      In that journey of going public, I, I do wanna slightly go back to the early years of UiPath. It, it's just the most insane story, Daniel, of, as you said, you bootstrapped it for nine and a half years, 10 years.

   3. DDDaniel Dines44:42

      Yeah.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings44:43

      I mean, that, that is so atypical compared to anything else that we see in this, in this industry. Can you just take me to that bootstrapping journey? Why did you not raise money? What did that look like in that journey to the first raise? Did you have product-market fit? Like, help me understand that.

   5. DDDaniel Dines45:02

      Well, so initially, I, I didn't think that was possible for someone to give money to almost nothing. I thought I have to build something, show product, and then, uh, maybe. But it was ... I started, uh, end of, like, 2005. It was, uh, still the winter of, uh, the VC industry-

   6. HSHarry Stebbings45:28

      Mm-hmm.

   7. DDDaniel Dines45:28

      ... even in the Bay Area. I think the signs of flings- ... the spring was just about to. I remember early days of tech crunch. So I started to, to be connected, actually, more with what happened in the Bay Area from Romania than when I was in Seattle, when I was completely isolated in Microsoft world. But still I, I didn't, uh, think that I would be able to convince an investor to put money. That was very remote thought.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings46:02

      (laughs)

   9. DDDaniel Dines46:03

      It was a good learning. I, I, I don't think I was actually ready without this 10 years. Maybe some people learn entrepreneurship, maybe if you are, if you are born and raised in a culture of entrepreneurship, maybe it's easier. So you can drop out from Stanford and you can start a company. But for me, these 10 years were my f- formation years. And I don't regret them because I, I learned actually to go through adversity. I learned, uh, a lot of the treats that I use as the CEO. I learned how to write, uh, a Google Ad copyright, which is ... Actually it's a very valuable thing in itself. I learned how to be succinct with my thoughts because this ... You have to write an ad, so you have to describe the product that you love with hundreds of features in just three lines.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings47:04

       (laughs)

   11. DDDaniel Dines47:04

       Okay. With few words each line. So you need to apply some kind of metaphorical thinking. It's a great learning. I learned software licensing. I had to read ... You know, I took, like, Microsoft Word license and then copy and change it and create a license. It's a lot. Selling, talking to customers, supporting them. I did this.

   12. HSHarry Stebbings47:28

       I totally agree with you and it kinda makes me think of constraint enforces creativity which is often the saying. My worry today, Daniel, and you know this as an investor too, um, obviously investing in companies, is that you get a five million seed round and come out with a great company. You can hire a great marketing person, you can hire a great salesperson. All of the things that you learnt, you don't need to do from day one. And I worry that we've lost the entrepreneur that you are and were because of the abundance of capital.

   13. DDDaniel Dines47:57

       Yeah. And the abundance creates monsters.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings48:01

       (laughs)

   15. DDDaniel Dines48:03

       (laughs) It's like, you cannot have a tennis player that just go and plays Wimbledon and win Wimbledon. They have to go through junior, they have to ... It's, it's 10 years, right, from maybe seven to 17 that makes a tennis player.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings48:21

       Yeah.

   17. DDDaniel Dines48:22

       I don't think they ... nobody can skip it in tennis. Even in entrepreneurship, I think ... I think many people that get, uh-... obviously very smart people. But, uh, a little bit what I've seen, they are a little bit unidimensional, so they know only their craft. I think when they will be put in difficult situations or to negotiate or to understand, yeah, they will fail. It's very difficult to, to do it without really going through the (laughs) formation years.

   18. HSHarry Stebbings48:59

       (laughs)

   19. DDDaniel Dines48:59

       Don't you agree with me as an investor it's-

   20. HSHarry Stebbings49:01

       I completely agree with you. But again, I just worry that I don't think we see it in entrepreneurs today. Like, I look at, I look at 20VC and it's like, we didn't make money for two and a half years. It was 450 shows before we made any money, 450 recordings before a dollar. It's a long time.

   21. DDDaniel Dines49:21

       It's a long time, yeah.

   22. HSHarry Stebbings49:21

       Like, and I learned so much about it. I did every part of this business. I remember googling how to create an invoice-

   23. DDDaniel Dines49:29

       Yeah, exactly.

   24. HSHarry Stebbings49:29

       ... because I, I didn't know. (laughs)

   25. DDDaniel Dines49:30

       I recognize myself in this. Yeah.

   26. HSHarry Stebbings49:33

       (laughs) And I was 19, 20 and I was like-

   27. DDDaniel Dines49:34

       Yeah.

   28. HSHarry Stebbings49:35

       ... "What the fuck is an IO?"

   29. DDDaniel Dines49:36

       Yeah.

   30. HSHarry Stebbings49:36

       I've got no idea. (laughs)
9. 49:49 – 58:00

   Raising the First Money

   1. DDDaniel Dines49:49

      the salaries. So...

   2. HSHarry Stebbings49:50

      So where was the business at when you raised the first money 10 years in? Like how much revenue did you have? How many customers did you have?

   3. DDDaniel Dines49:58

      So we raised the first money in, uh, 2015.

   4. HSHarry Stebbings50:01

      Yeah.

   5. DDDaniel Dines50:03

      Uh, we finished the year with, like, uh, half a million in revenue.

   6. HSHarry Stebbings50:08

      So 10 years to half a million in revenue?

   7. DDDaniel Dines50:10

      Yeah.

   8. HSHarry Stebbings50:12

      Phew.

   9. DDDaniel Dines50:12

      But it was an acceleration since 2014, 15. We already... we found the, the product market fit in RPA.

   10. HSHarry Stebbings50:21

       Okay.

   11. DDDaniel Dines50:22

       So-

   12. HSHarry Stebbings50:22

       In 2014?

   13. DDDaniel Dines50:23

       In 2014, yes. 10 years.

   14. HSHarry Stebbings50:25

       What changed?

   15. DDDaniel Dines50:26

       It was an incredible (laughs) luck, in a way. It's... well, so I, I think we, we knew so that, w- we built a good product. But we didn't know the market for it. So we, we build a low-code, no-code, uh, you know, en- environment to create automations, right, that kind of emulates people, how they work in front of a computer. So we use the user interface, so you can create automation that click and type like a human use. So it was pretty cool. Very... It was, it was not an end-to-end platform. But for what it did, like giving a developer the ability to create an automation, it was good. It was actually the best in the world in, uh, what we built. So we, we knew we have something valuable, but we didn't know it, uh, it solved such a huge problem. Being an... all of my co-founders are engineers like me. So we were naturally trying to solve more engineering problems, IT problems with our tool. And, and uh, and we worked... we didn't work with really huge companies. We work with mostly small-medium businesses. So I, I didn't see a huge future on, on that approach until, uh, we, um, we were found by a, uh, guy, like middle manager in an Indian company, a BPO company. That was actually in 2013.

   16. HSHarry Stebbings52:11

       Wow.

   17. DDDaniel Dines52:11

       So it's interesting. On the 1st of March, 2013, we launched the version 1.0 of what has become our RPA product. So version 1.0 called UiPath Studio, 1st of March, 2013.

   18. HSHarry Stebbings52:30

       (laughs)

   19. DDDaniel Dines52:30

       And it didn't have any traction. (laughs)

   20. HSHarry Stebbings52:34

       (laughs)

   21. DDDaniel Dines52:35

       Because before that, we were selling like an SDK to software developers, and that was more for less technical people. It was a low-code environment. So our developer base were not interested in what we built. But, uh, this guy found it on the internet. So he worked at that time with a, um, a British company called Blue Prism.

   22. HSHarry Stebbings53:07

       Okay. Yeah.

   23. DDDaniel Dines53:07

       And they invented actually the word, uh, RPA, credit to them. And they had more of an overarching platform, like to create bots, only that our tool was way better than their tool to create one single bot. So that, uh, Indian, uh, guy, for some reason, didn't like Blue Prism because they thought they are a bit arrogant, inflexible. So by himself, he searched on the internet, like, competitor. And Blue Prism, it's also low-code type of environment. So he searched for something that looked nice. So we had like... our low-code was really nice from the beginning. We had like a flowchart engine. You can drag and drop the blocks so you can create easily, visually, you know, an automation. So he liked this and, um, he... it's crazy, he sent us, uh, an email from a, uh, like his personal Yahoo address. And at that time, I was doing all the customer support-

   24. HSHarry Stebbings54:23

       (laughs)

   25. DDDaniel Dines54:24

       ... and queries and everything. So I watched this one, and I had the tendency, "Let's skip this one," because we didn't work with individuals and he wanted the demo of the product.... and, uh, without telling much about it. But I don't know. I, I had some kind of intuition that maybe, maybe I should still give him a demo. So then I ask one of our developer, because we were all developers at that time in the company, like five people maybe, five, seven. And, and I ask, uh, one of our developers to connect with the guy and, uh, give him a demo. After on- on a one hour, she came to me and tell me, "Daniel, this guy is actually from a big company. You should talk to him." And I connected right away on Skype, I think, at that time. And he asked me, first question was, "How do you compare with Blue Prism?" And I told him, "Well, I don't know who Blue Prism is. First of all, let me search on the internet."

   26. HSHarry Stebbings55:27

       (laughs)

   27. DDDaniel Dines55:27

       So I searched Blue Prism, and, uh, it was funny, because, uh, they had this typical, at that time, typical corporate boring page with, you know, saying basically nothing, and with career investors. And, and I told him, "Well, it looks like the (laughs) place is a big company, so we cannot compare. We are just a small startup." This is what I told him, you know, very frankly. But he liked it. And, um, he talked to his upper management, and they actually invited us to, to go there to India and, uh, build, uh, uh... help them to kind of automate the same type of processes that Blue Prism, just to see how our software is.

   28. HSHarry Stebbings56:24

       And so you said yes?

   29. DDDaniel Dines56:26

       And even more, he said, uh, "I give you a chance, but you have... it's gonna be at cost." So I... But, oh, sometimes you need to... There are astral moments in life, and you need to seize them, and you need to feel them. So I knew that was one of that moment. And they, uh... So I sent, uh, three people, including, you know, my CTO at that time and two, two, two girls, actually, that were... One that was the... she talked to, and another. So they are good friends. They went, they went there. They spent like three months in Chennai. So I took people out of the programming job to-

   30. HSHarry Stebbings57:11

       Yeah.
10. 58:00 – 1:11:29

    Understanding Market Needs

    1. DDDaniel Dines58:00

       that one.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings58:00

       And what happened, sorry, to that client? I just have to finish. I'm sorry. So, you do it, you do it at cost. They love it. What happens?

    3. DDDaniel Dines58:06

       They become our client, and that's... I think it was, uh, the biggest, uh, single invoice that we sent. That was in 2014. I think we got like 100K revenue only from, uh, that client, which was huge from us. But, Harry, most important was that we, we understood that this is a huge market. So that was a BPO company, but they were doing some work for, uh, like, a huge American computer manufacturing company at that time. So, we, we didn't understand. Actually, these big companies are flooded in manual repetitive work, and they don't know what to do with them. It's so, it's so much. Despite all the advances in APIs, in ERPs, in CRMs, there are so many inefficiencies. And people use-

    4. HSHarry Stebbings59:10

       So many.

    5. DDDaniel Dines59:11

       So many. And our technology works brilliantly. We just need to build a nice orchestrator.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings59:19

       The thing I find so funny about hearing this, Daniel, is like what you hear and what you tell every founder is, you need to know what problem you are solving for what customer.

    7. DDDaniel Dines59:29

       Yes.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings59:29

       And they should know that early on. And respectfully, nine years into your journey is when you actually realized what problem you were solving for what customer.

    9. DDDaniel Dines59:39

       That's true. Yeah, it's totally... it's not typical.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings59:43

        No, it-

    11. DDDaniel Dines59:44

        No, because we built-

    12. HSHarry Stebbings59:45

        ... because the best stories never are.

    13. DDDaniel Dines59:46

        Yeah, because we built the... we built our software sort of because we like it. It was really an interesting, uh, engineering problem to solve, so we did it. I don't advise anyone to do this. It was amazing that it worked in our case. But if you do this, and you build, uh, and you build a piece of engineering that you really like, and you become a specialist, and you become the best in the world in it, if it happens later on to find a great use case and a great market for this, it's hard for someone to stop you.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:28

        I know it's hard to say, but if you hadn't have got that email from that Indian person in that company-

    15. DDDaniel Dines1:00:34

        Yeah.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:34

        ... do you think you would have found the market?

    17. DDDaniel Dines1:00:36

        Yes, for sure, because RPA has become significant market. We also, we contributed-... quite a bit for RPA to become good market. But it's possible that I would've lost one or two years, and, uh, we would never be at that size.

    18. HSHarry Stebbings1:00:59

        What was the price and size of the seed round?

    19. DDDaniel Dines1:01:02

        1.6 million to, I think, 8.1 post.

    20. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:09

        1.6 to 8.1 post. Okay.

    21. DDDaniel Dines1:01:12

        That was not that bad, 2015.

    22. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:14

        No, I think that's like a ... It's like a middle of the range. I wouldn't say it's expensive and I wouldn't say it's cheap.

    23. DDDaniel Dines1:01:19

        Yeah. But we, we had half a million in revenue. For a company having half a million revenues, maybe-

    24. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:26

        A little bit cheap.

    25. DDDaniel Dines1:01:27

        A little bit cheap. But we were a company in Romania.

    26. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:30

        So what was happe-

    27. DDDaniel Dines1:01:30

        Seriously.

    28. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:32

        (laughs) But what was-

    29. DDDaniel Dines1:01:33

        And it was very interesting because we negotiated for such a long time. (laughs) Actually, that was the funniest thing with-

    30. HSHarry Stebbings1:01:41

        (laughs)
11. 1:11:29 – 1:21:28

    Learning from Adversity

    1. DDDaniel Dines1:11:29

       ...

    2. HSHarry Stebbings1:11:29

       You mentioned uncharted territory there. I heard there was a rather interesting period of the company, and I think it was 2020, when the company was actually pretty developed at this stage, but you'd spent, bluntly, a lot of money quite quickly. I think it was 400 million in a year, whatever that number may be, um, and it was more than planned.

    3. DDDaniel Dines1:11:51

       It was 2019.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings1:11:52

       2019. Take me to that moment 'cause that's a, that's an oh shit moment.

    5. DDDaniel Dines1:11:58

       Well, I remember it very well.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings1:12:01

       (laughs)

    7. DDDaniel Dines1:12:02

       Because in, uh, it was like in the middle of the, still middle of the summer. I think beginning of August. And, uh, my plan for that year, '19, was that, uh, I will burn maximum $150 million, which was fine. We had really enough money. We had, I think, like, 500, 600 million in the bank. So we plan, I plan to burn, uh, 150. I had a very rough, simple plan in, uh ... So we finished 2018, like, with 175 million in, uh, ARR, something like this. And I said to my team, "Guys, we will capacitate this company to get 600 million next year. I know it sounds crazy-"... but I will accept, I will give you a buffer of $150 million. So, if we, if we do only 450, I think we are still fine. I'm, I'm okay to invest, to burn 150 for... Well, reality is more complicated than this. But high level, the math stands. In long term, it doesn't stand because you can ask, "But next year, if we start with 150." That grow- at that time, we were growing more than, you know, 150% or 100. Growth can, can, uh, help with all the diseases of small company. We grow fast, it doesn't matter. And, so I was all into growth, but... So in beginning of August, we, uh, we, Ashim transition from like, uh, customer success lead into, Ashim is our current CFO, into leading FP&A. And he casually told me (laughs) in a meeting that, "Daniel, whatever we do, we will burn, uh, 300." He said, and I said, "No, this is impossible." Because all the time, we were working in the, in this exception. We are getting the 450, we are getting 150. It's a huge difference.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings1:14:28

       Yeah. (laughs)

    9. DDDaniel Dines1:14:28

       It's not, it's not, uh, it's... And it's much easier to control costs than growth.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings1:14:32

        I literally got goosebumps. (laughs)

    11. DDDaniel Dines1:14:34

        Yeah. And, so it was-

    12. HSHarry Stebbings1:14:36

        How did you feel?

    13. DDDaniel Dines1:14:38

        Well, it feel terrible because you might, you might lose the company. It's, uh, it's, it's fucking terrible.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings1:14:45

        Mm-hmm.

    15. DDDaniel Dines1:14:46

        And, uh, and, uh, so we had an emergency meeting. I th- I think Luciana was there. So we met 15 of August in New York, and, uh, that was the moment we, we, we decided. It's, uh, we have to stop the train, on hiring, and we were hiring on all cylinders. So we have to stop the train. We had to do a reduction in force. And it was the first... And think about, it was 2019. Everything was going well in the economy, and we announced a reduction in force. It was terrible moment-

    16. HSHarry Stebbings1:15:22

        Mm-hmm.

    17. DDDaniel Dines1:15:22

        ... for us. It was, I think it was extraordinarily difficult for me, and talking to the company, and we had to fire, we fire, I think, like, 10% of the, or more, 15%, something like this, 400 people probably, out of a three hund- 3,000. It was very difficult, but, um, and our, one of our, I think the second-biggest competitor of ours at the time behave, uh, very nasty. So they were celebrating. They send messages on LinkedIn, "This is what's happened. This, this company is just, you know, has like clay legs," all this, in a very celebratory way.

    18. HSHarry Stebbings1:16:05

        (laughs)

    19. DDDaniel Dines1:16:05

        But the best thing for them, they continued to, (laughs) to hire right into the COVID. And we've become a, a much better, leaner company. So we entered COVID as leaner company. Actually, my recollection of all of our reduction in forces, after, it's like a surgery. After the initial shock, we become a better company.

    20. HSHarry Stebbings1:16:31

        What did you learn from that? 'Cause it's really hard, as you said, 400 out of 3,000 is, whatever that is, 12%. Um, no one else was doing it. It's not a great signal for the company. It's tough to do as a leader. It sucks.

    21. DDDaniel Dines1:16:42

        Yeah.

    22. HSHarry Stebbings1:16:42

        As Carl Eisenbach said, "You should never lose the empathy of hurting when it hir- when it fires."

    23. DDDaniel Dines1:16:46

        Yeah. Our rating on Glassdoors on this, you know, plummeted and all. It's, the learning is that, uh, in life you have to do what is the right thing. And you just g- have to swallow the pain and the cost. And if you do the right thing, uh, the right thing, think, thing, you know, company will heal and will become better.

    24. HSHarry Stebbings1:17:17

        One-

    25. DDDaniel Dines1:17:17

        This is what happened.

    26. HSHarry Stebbings1:17:18

        ... one of my closest friends, mentors, LPs just taught me one thing. He said, "You're never wrong to do the right thing." May be hard-

    27. DDDaniel Dines1:17:26

        Yeah.

    28. HSHarry Stebbings1:17:26

        ... but you're never wrong to do the right thing. The only question is, what's the right thing? (laughs) Now, my subsequent question-

    29. DDDaniel Dines1:17:32

        At that time, it was clear that was the right thing.

    30. HSHarry Stebbings1:17:35

        I mean, absolutely. The question that I have associated to that is, again, (laughs) speaking to many of your investors, they said, "Well, Daniel's approach to risk on the back of that is a little bit different to how most people think about risk." How do you feel about how you think about risk today and in the past?
12. 1:21:28 – 1:25:34

    Sequoia’s Impact

    1. DDDaniel Dines1:21:28

       of trust.

    2. HSHarry Stebbings1:21:28

       When Sequoia invest in your business, does it change overnight? Entrepreneurs think that it does. You can get talent that you could never get. Everyone wants to invest in you. Does it actually or-

    3. DDDaniel Dines1:21:39

       It, it's, it has, it has a significant effect. Yeah. For sure. I think there are people that, uh, follow Sequoia, and they go only to Sequoia companies-

    4. HSHarry Stebbings1:21:52

       Yeah.

    5. DDDaniel Dines1:21:52

       ... and their place. Yes. It's, uh, it's a, it's a, it's a big sign.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings1:21:57

       Can I ask... Another needle-moving moment is actually when you decided that you would hand over the role of CEO.

    7. DDDaniel Dines1:22:03

       Yeah.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings1:22:04

       Can you take me to that decision? Why did you decide to make the decision, and how did that feel?

    9. DDDaniel Dines1:22:10

       Look, I always wanted what's best for the company. And, uh, I never felt that, uh, we, we are doing justing, justice to this company on go-to-market leadership. And, uh, I got the opportunity to meet Rob, that actually Karl introduced the two of us. I realized that Rob probably is the best kind of go-to-market leader that we can have. But the only way to get him was to give him the CEO title.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings1:22:47

        Was it difficult for your ego? Uh, everyone has an ego, and you're, you're the founder.

    11. DDDaniel Dines1:22:51

        Well, but it's ... Think about, I build this company from nothing to more than a billion, like the CEO of the company. It's, it's enough-

    12. HSHarry Stebbings1:22:59

        (laughs)

    13. DDDaniel Dines1:23:00

        ... to feed my ego (laughs) in, uh ... So, no, I, uh ... Even in the beginning, you know, another funny story. In, uh, in 2014, when I was talking to early board, so they consider me like an engineer founder, like more like a CTO profile than a CEO. And they told me also, "You know, Kalender, Daniel, let me introduce someone that might be a better CEO." And I said, "Sure, yes." So I met the guy, and, uh, just a nice guy. And I even introduced him, "Look, guys, this is gonna be our new CEO." And, uh, so I was always open a little bit to do what's the best for the company. With this guy, it didn't work, so we went to pitch early board, and I think they realized that it's, it's not working. The pitch together was not really-

    14. HSHarry Stebbings1:23:57

        Gelling.

    15. DDDaniel Dines1:23:58

        Yeah, it was not gelling. And then they asked me to go again to just pitch myself, and then was, because sometimes it's ... Hey, there is a transformation in me, and people, uh ... There is kind of a demon that takes over sometimes. It's, I just have to access it somehow. And-

    16. HSHarry Stebbings1:24:21

        What do you mean there's a demon that takes over?

    17. DDDaniel Dines1:24:23

        It's like an inner force. That it's not ... It can do damage, but if you can control it ... When I speak in public, like, I used to have a lot of stage fright. And until I realize that this is actually not about me, not about my ego, but it's about my duty to the company-

    18. HSHarry Stebbings1:24:49

        Yeah.

    19. DDDaniel Dines1:24:49

        ... and to the people I work, that change everything. And instead of this force, this ... I call it the demon, but it's a force, it's a, it's an inner force that I think all of us have.

    20. HSHarry Stebbings1:25:01

        Yeah.

    21. DDDaniel Dines1:25:03

        ... I, instead of canalizing it against me, creating the stage fright because it was feeding my ego, I canalize it towards I, I am a messenger, so you deliver. And you should see my, my speeches. Even in my early days, I always start, uh, in a rusty way, but then when I get the rhythm, I, I gather myself, so I deliver the message.

    22. HSHarry Stebbings1:25:31

        I've seen them. (laughs)

    23. DDDaniel Dines1:25:33

        (laughs)

13. 1:25:34 – 1:29:55

    Detaching Happiness from Company Performance

    1. DDDaniel Dines1:25:34

    2. HSHarry Stebbings1:25:34

       Uh, yeah, no, I have and, uh, you've got incredibly better. Uh, you've definitely progressed in terms of the ability to captivate an audience. I think one thing that I would love your advice on is, like, I always align my happiness to the success of my company or my funds, and that's not a great way to live life, 'cause you'll permanently be happy, unhappy, happy, unhappy. If you apply it to your bad quarter, you're really... How do you detach your happiness from the state of your company?

    3. DDDaniel Dines1:26:03

       I'm not a happy person. I don't think that, uh, maybe, maybe this is my way to s- to say the grapes are sour. But I am not, uh, I'm not searching happiness in life.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings1:26:21

       What are you searching for then?

    5. DDDaniel Dines1:26:23

       I think I'm searching maybe peace of mind, and impact, and, uh, giving my mind the, the, you know, framework and environment where to work the best and do its best.

    6. HSHarry Stebbings1:26:39

       When do you feel your happiest?

    7. DDDaniel Dines1:26:41

       There are bouts of happiness, but I don't have it long. It's not long. It's like for every person. It's, it's nothing, uh... But when I feel at peace, it's, uh, it's more when I, um, I, I, I can, uh, it's more when I can focus. It's like, uh, it's like the story, the initial story I told you when I started programming-

    8. HSHarry Stebbings1:27:14

       Yeah. (laughs)

    9. DDDaniel Dines1:27:15

       ... that this is when I... And it's, I've... Even meditating, even saying a, a prayer gives a little bit of peace, but this is what I'm trying.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings1:27:26

        Can I ask your advice on something? I, I was walking with a founder in a park this morning who, uh, contemplating leading their series A. And we were talking about work ethic, and he was like, "Half the year I work 50 hours a week, and the other half of the year I work 70 hours a week." And I was like, "Well, I'll give you a tip, work 80 hours a week all year." (laughs)

    11. DDDaniel Dines1:27:45

        Yeah. I think that's a good tip.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings1:27:47

        And he said, "No, you don't get it. If I did that, my support structures, my relationship with my wife, my family, my friends would break down. And then in the hours that I worked, I would be unhappy, I would be stressed."

    13. DDDaniel Dines1:28:03

        Maybe. Maybe.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings1:28:03

        And I'm, part of me is going maybe-

    15. DDDaniel Dines1:28:05

        Right.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings1:28:05

        ... and part of me is going, "You just have to work harder than anyone else."

    17. DDDaniel Dines1:28:10

        Yeah, part of me would say, "Don't fucking start the company, man."

    18. HSHarry Stebbings1:28:15

        (laughs)

    19. DDDaniel Dines1:28:15

        Get a nice job and have fun. And, uh, because I don't believe in, uh, in work-life balance. And, uh, because in a way, building a company is gonna suck you into building the company. I don't think you can really put, uh, barriers, "Now I'm working, now I go home and I relax and the kids are around me and my mind stops thinking of the shit and I just go and play with my kids." It's not working. No, it's obvious it's not working. So you are, to me, to me, you are kind of connected all the time. I, what does it mean to... w- when I don't work? It's very rare actually, because I'm thinking all the time to, to the company's problem. And to me it's work. If I, if I wake up in the middle of the night and I'm thinking how we bui- build better computer vision, or how we can collect more data to build models, I call it work, right? It's...

    20. HSHarry Stebbings1:29:23

        (laughs)

    21. DDDaniel Dines1:29:24

        Because I'm not thinking, "Where is my next vacation, and how can I book the trip?" I'm thinking on the... So it's, you always... But my mind is obsessive. So in a way it's very hard when I get into something to take off that something. This is why, this is where I work, because a lot of time I think I'm overthinking and I go in the circles. When I feel, uh, every time, I tell myself, "This is not working. Let's, let's give up on this

14. 1:29:55 – 1:39:23

    Incumbent Challenges

    1. DDDaniel Dines1:29:55

       thinking."

    2. HSHarry Stebbings1:29:56

       Can I ask you one final one before we do a quick fire, which is just, I'm worried today more and more about the size of incumbents when you look at, you mentioned Microsoft a few times-

    3. DDDaniel Dines1:30:04

       Mm-hmm.

    4. HSHarry Stebbings1:30:04

       ... since you worked at Microsoft. Microsoft throw off 330 million in free cashflow per day. You know, I just interviewed Sam at OpenAI where he openly said, "If you're in the application layer in AI startups, we will steamroll you."

    5. DDDaniel Dines1:30:18

       Well-

    6. HSHarry Stebbings1:30:18

       I'm concerned that-

    7. DDDaniel Dines1:30:20

       Yeah.

    8. HSHarry Stebbings1:30:20

       ... the incumbents have never been as large as they are, and that leaves little room for startups.

    9. DDDaniel Dines1:30:25

       It's possible. Yeah. Actually, I, uh, I had a discussion yesterday with two, two friends of mine from IVP. They are also an early investor. They invested along with Sequoia in our work.

    10. HSHarry Stebbings1:30:41

        Eric?

    11. DDDaniel Dines1:30:41

        Yeah.

    12. HSHarry Stebbings1:30:41

        Yeah.

    13. DDDaniel Dines1:30:42

        Eric and Alex.

    14. HSHarry Stebbings1:30:43

        Yeah.

    15. DDDaniel Dines1:30:43

        They live in London.

    16. HSHarry Stebbings1:30:44

        Yeah, yeah.

    17. DDDaniel Dines1:30:45

        And, uh, so we were talking exactly this thing, is it there a space in the application, in application AI? They felt, uh, there is, in kind of vertical AI, and probably it should be. OpenAI cannot go after all the domains. But I am more with you. I think it's gonna be harder and harder to-... to find it's, I think maybe it's more like in the beginning of the, of the internet when the big companies, uh-

    18. HSHarry Stebbings1:31:21

        (laughs)

    19. DDDaniel Dines1:31:21

        ... capture it a little bit. And it was-

    20. HSHarry Stebbings1:31:25

        (laughs)

    21. DDDaniel Dines1:31:25

        ... some time until big up Salesforce appear. But it's, I think early years it's more difficult.

    22. HSHarry Stebbings1:31:32

        Is it difficult for you now that agents are more, uh, Luciana asked this, but you know, you've been h- a proponent for agents for years.

    23. DDDaniel Dines1:31:40

        Yes.

    24. HSHarry Stebbings1:31:41

        And now it's, everyone's excited by agents. And everyone wants to talk about agents. Does that make life easier or harder for you?

    25. DDDaniel Dines1:31:48

        Well it's both because it's (laughs) funny enough I read yesterday that Microsoft is with their new AI for a consumer, they are thinking to call it like, uh, AI for every person.

    26. HSHarry Stebbings1:32:02

        (laughs)

    27. DDDaniel Dines1:32:02

        And we, we had for many years our slogan was robot for every person. So-

    28. HSHarry Stebbings1:32:10

        (laughs)

    29. DDDaniel Dines1:32:11

        ... it's helping. AI, it's helping us because it, it surfaces more automation opportunities. And it helps us m- and more with, uh, completing an end-to-end process automation. But also creates a lot of narratives is, is gonna AI completely replace automation? What if we build AGI that will do everything better than a human user? But then we are gonna fall doomed, right? So we'll have two AIs speaking here with each other.

    30. HSHarry Stebbings1:32:45

        (laughs)

Episode duration: 1:44:48