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

Daniel Dines 0:00 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.

Harry Stebbings 0:28 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.

Daniel Dines 0:50 Well, Harry, thank you so much for having me. It's always fun to see you. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 0:53 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 0:54 Especially this is a little bit unusual because-

Harry Stebbings 0:56 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 0:56 ... as you know, we met a lot more often in the gym of our-

Harry Stebbings 1:00 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:01 ... building.

Harry Stebbings 1:02 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

Harry Stebbings 1:07 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?

Daniel Dines 1:19 Maybe they will say that I was, uh, a little bit of a curious child that, uh, was argumentative, maybe at-

Harry Stebbings 1:27 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:27 ... 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) -

Harry Stebbings 1:44 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:44 ... 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.

Harry Stebbings 1:55 Were you good in school?

Daniel Dines 1:57 Um, in, uh, primary school, I was good.

Harry Stebbings 2:01 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 2:01 But after that, I discovered, uh, I don't know, other activities like-

Harry Stebbings 2:05 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 2:06 ... girls and going to pool and hanging out with boys. So I was pretty average except math, where I had like a natural inclination.

Harry Stebbings 2:17 (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?

Daniel Dines 2:34 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.

Harry Stebbings 3:51 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 3:51 So that was not, uh, no, it was not my thing. I, I, uh-

Harry Stebbings 3:56 Respectfully, how did you pass when you don't attend (laughs) any of the classes and you just go to exams?

Daniel Dines 4:00 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-

Harry Stebbings 4:30 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 4:30 ... because it's even more interesting than coding. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 4:32 How, how did you learn English?

Daniel Dines 4:34 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 4:34 '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.

Daniel Dines 4:45 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-

Harry Stebbings 5:26 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 5:26 ... talking about bridge. And I had to read the book with a dictionary.

Harry Stebbings 5:31 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 5:31 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.

Harry Stebbings 5:46 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 5:46 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)

Harry Stebbings 6:16 So if I ask you for an Arnold Schwarzenegger, like, "I'll be back," I should go and see her? (laughs)

Daniel Dines 6:20 Yeah. Yeah. Actually it's funny, I, um, she introduced once to Nicole Kidman. And I, I talked with her, like, five minutes because Nicole was doing a movie in Australia where she played someone with a Russian accent.

Harry Stebbings 6:35 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 6:37 And, uh, (laughs) she thought that listening to me would help her. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 6:41 (laughs) And so you just had to talk to her for five minutes just to see-

Daniel Dines 6:44 Yeah. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 6:44 You can talk about anything, just this-

Daniel Dines 6:45 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 6:45 ... w- the weather, the shopping, whatever.

Daniel Dines 6:47 So if you learn Russian, might, maybe you will be good to act like a Russian in London. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 6:52 Uh, I mean, there, there we go, that's-

Daniel Dines 6:53 If you talk too much with me. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 6:54 (laughs) Do you know I love imitating people, and so I can imitate pretty well. Um, okay. So we learn English by playing bridge with the dictionary there. I love that. What was the first job? You come out of university where you didn't really intend.

Daniel Dines 7:08 Yeah. So I had to, I had to learn coding before getting ... because my first job, uh, was in, uh, you know, as a programmer. Actually, not really, because I, I had to do, I, I had to sustain myself since I was 19. My... It was a tough family situation, but, uh, so basically my family couldn't support me any longer.

Harry Stebbings 7:34 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Dines 7:34 So I had to do all sorts of gigs. Like, at some point I was buying, like, doing some kind of currency arbitrage, I was buying dollars in Bucharest, and I was selling, you know, I went to some other town when I wo- where I was born, and selling to the people that I know them for a little bit of a margin. So I had to do all sorts of thing. I even, uh, I started actually a company in my early 20, not a software company, but it was something to help a stu- to help, uh, students find jobs. At that time, it was very difficult to... You had to... All the, all the ads were in, like, newspapers, so you have to go and call to pay phones, so talk to a lot of people. So what we did, actually we centralize all the jobs, call them, understand all the requirements, and even booked our people. So it was like a marketplace. So it helped me, you know, live for, like, comfortably for, like, a year, until, uh, I got bored (laughs) by this.

Harry Stebbings 8:40 Did you make money with that?

Daniel Dines 8:41 A little bit.

Harry Stebbings 8:42 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 8:43 Yeah. It's... But money at that standard, probably I made, uh, I don't know, a thousand dollar in that year.

Harry Stebbings 8:49 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 8:49 But it was, it was good money.

Harry Stebbings 8:53 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 8:53 Because going to my first job, I was, uh, living on, like, $30 a month. I know, it's $1 a day, right?

Harry Stebbings 9:02 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 9:03 And, uh, it, uh, I meant-

Harry Stebbings 9:05 Were you, were you living incredibly frugally? Like was that-

Daniel Dines 9:08 Frug- incredibly frugally, yes.

Harry Stebbings 9:11 Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Dines 9:11 And, uh-

Harry Stebbings 9:11 Like, you didn't eat?

Daniel Dines 9:12 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.

Harry Stebbings 9:23 Does it?

Daniel Dines 9:23 For s- Yeah, it does.

Harry Stebbings 9:24 What mark does it leave?

Daniel Dines 9:26 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.

Harry Stebbings 10:10 Mm.

Daniel Dines 10:10 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.

Harry Stebbings 10:30 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 10:31 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-

Harry Stebbings 11:05 What, what was it that-

Daniel Dines 11:05 ... I stopped having any fear.

Harry Stebbings 11:07 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?

Daniel Dines 11:16 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-

Harry Stebbings 11:34 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 11:35 ... Axel, I had to raise a bridge round from my investors.

Harry Stebbings 11:40 Existing.

Daniel Dines 11:40 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 ...

Harry Stebbings 12:06 Wow.

Daniel Dines 12:06 But I knew that-You know, it's, it's, you have to play-

Harry Stebbings 12:10 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 12:10 ... a little bit this game. And this guy, you know, Dan Lupo, which is great friend of mine, and he was the first investor that, uh, discovered UiPath, came to me and say, "Okay, Daniel. We, we can do unlimited, but it's gonna be 25% discount." I said, "Okay, sure. (laughs) Of course."

Harry Stebbings 12:30 (laughs) .

Daniel Dines 12:30 And they wired the money and everything was fine. But I, the thing is, I had no fear. It never crossed my mind that I might get into troubles and I put the entire company. I, I was completely set to, to go forward. And we went really like-

Harry Stebbings 12:50 So-

Daniel Dines 12:50 ... a rocket.

Harry Stebbings 12:51 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?

Daniel Dines 12:59 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.

Harry Stebbings 13:10 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 13:10 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.

Harry Stebbings 13:42 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-

Daniel Dines 13:50 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 13:50 ... in one's mind. And then you get a first job. Was the first job $200 a day? I'm sorry, $200 a month?

Daniel Dines 13:58 Yes.

Harry Stebbings 13:58 Okay.

Daniel Dines 13:58 That's correct. But first, let's go to, to learning to code.

Harry Stebbings 14:04 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 14:05 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."

Harry Stebbings 14:49 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 14:49 All my gigs and all this, the life, the stupid life that I'm doing, and I just

Daniel Dines 14:55 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.

Harry Stebbings 15:30 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 15:30 You know, so.

Harry Stebbings 15:30 A fax, yeah.

Daniel Dines 15:31 It was, yeah, like a fax.

Harry Stebbings 15:32 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 15:33 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.

Harry Stebbings 16:28 It's pretty extraordinary, though, to learn code without testing. Like, without iteratively doing it. That is pretty exceptional.

Daniel Dines 16:35 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-

Harry Stebbings 17:19 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Dines 17:19 ... 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.

Harry Stebbings 18:24 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?

Daniel Dines 18:31 No, no.

Harry Stebbings 18:32 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 18:33 Not good at all. This is, this is where I really struggle. It's-

Harry Stebbings 18:36 Why, why?

Daniel Dines 18:37 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-

Harry Stebbings 18:54 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 18:54 ... so maybe it's a little bit unintelligible too- (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 18:58 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 18:59 ... 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)

Harry Stebbings 19:41 Sure.

Daniel Dines 19:41 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.

Harry Stebbings 19:53 What do you think you learned?

Daniel Dines 19:55 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-

Harry Stebbings 20:29 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 20:29 ... to-

Harry Stebbings 20:29 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?

Daniel Dines 20:43 It was the most amazing job I, um, I think I had, uh, in my life.

Harry Stebbings 20:49 Why?

Daniel Dines 20:50 So I really like the... My boss that hired me. And, uh, we had a... I think we had an amazing, uh, human connection in a way. He was also... He was, like, I think 10 years older than me. He graduated the same university, so he also had the, like, math background. (sniffs) And, uh, at the interview... So it was my first job. I didn't... He didn't ask me anything to write. It was just a pure discussion, and at the end, he said, "Okay, you can have the job." But it was a catch a little bit with that they didn't have a computer to, to give me to work like a regular job, because they... it was a ve- it was a very small firm. So during day all the computers they had were, you know, occupied by people. (sniffs) So what I, uh, had to do was to work night shifts.

Harry Stebbings 21:54 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 21:54 And that was kind of amazing, because during the night shift, I had access to their most powerful computer. And it was, it, it was very quiet. It was just be there. And it was first time in my life when I had really access to a computer as much as I wanted. So basically, later for the next six month, I went there every day, so I stopped even seeing friends, anybody. I worked literally 12, 14 hours a day, even more. I went home only s- like in the morning when, you know, they open the first, uh... you know, like the metro line was open. I went home, sleep and by, like, 6:00 PM or something, I was back to, to, to just working. And, uh, and I learned. That was, uh... I really... I was transported in another world, so I think I was the happiest, in a way, in my life. I was just doing and seeing, you know, how... It's, it's like building something. I think this is maybe what Michelangelo, you know, felt when he, when he create something, a sculpture, uh, big, because you see it. You see, so... The work of a... Programmers are, uh, in a way, lucky and happy creatures, because they, they build something. They are creators in a way. They are, in a way, artists, so they get the feeling of being completely in the flow. To me, even when in, in my... in the, in the moment of, uh, most anxious to me, if I, if I, if I went front of a computer and I could focus, like, 30 minutes and start to work, after that my anxiety was gone completely and I just got peace.

Harry Stebbings 23:52 Can I ask, when you listen to yourself speak today and you hear yourself speak about going to work night shifts on computers, that no one else was around you and the office was empty, does it feel like a different person? It is, it's such a different life.

Daniel Dines 24:08 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 24:08 How do you feel when you hear yourself say that?

Daniel Dines 24:10 I miss it in a way. I miss the-I miss the times when you learn. It was time of extreme learning and extreme focus. And, you know, single-handed into one direction. So I miss it. Now I don't have this luxury anymore. My, my only moments when I create something when, uh, it's the rare times when maybe I'm in an airplane and I try to write poetry. I do it only for my own sake. I share maybe only with a few friends. But this is the only moment when I feel transported in that state of flow. Otherwise, my days are mostly talking to people, making decisions. And, uh, fun for me is also when, when I start, maybe even in the night, I am, I am reflecting on some kind of, uh, features that we have to build, product roadmap, priorities, discussions with people. But I don't have the sense of intense focus, which I kind of miss. I, I need to find a way to go back to that.

Harry Stebbings 25:24 Do you feel like you're still learning?

Daniel Dines 25:25 Yeah. Yeah. Every, t- to me, to me, you know, the, you know you are dead when you have stopped learning.

Harry Stebbings 25:33 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 25:34 This is what I tell, you know, everybody, "If you feel like you didn't change considerably in the last six month, that's means you, you did something wrong." So for me, all the years are kind of in an accelerating, I mean, an accelerating learning mode. Definitely in the last, uh, 12 to 18 month, I think I learn more than it, the past five years combined. And the last five years were amazing by any metric. So I, I feel, yeah, I, I feel right now I'm actually in my prime of learning.

Harry Stebbings 26:10 Has there ever been a time when you felt stagnant or like you weren't learning at that rate?

Daniel Dines 26:15 Yeah. When I was working in Microsoft in my early 30s, I, um, I was also stuck in my mind a little bit. I, I was very unhappy being there, not necessarily in Microsoft or in US, but being removed from my comfortable life that I had in, uh, Romania. And I kind of forced myself. It was my decision. You know, somehow, in me, I know what is the right thing to do. And it, I have to push and force myself to do the right things, but hating myself in the same time. I didn't have the peace of mind to accept that the right decision can be actually the happy one. I think I could have done a much better time there. I could have learned more. I could have done a lot. Look, gym, for instance, I could have worked with the trainer, right? Because I went to gym quite a bit when I was there, but I always doing things, you know, in a light way, not pushing. You know what, you know what I mean?

Harry Stebbings 27:28 Yeah, I do too.

Daniel Dines 27:28 You have to push yourself. I didn't push myself there too much. And I didn't-

Harry Stebbings 27:33 Why, why... I'm just trying to understand why not though, because you did push yourself when you were going night shifts and you were living right.

Daniel Dines 27:39 I was in a negative state of mind. I knew I had to make this decision to find my financial freedom.

Harry Stebbings 27:45 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Dines 27:46 Because I was, you know, I always have... that was my biggest desire in life, to get this fuck you money, my financial freedom.

Harry Stebbings 27:54 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 27:54 I never wanted to be in a situation to just work for money. That was, to me, that was very stressful. And, uh, so that was the, it was the thing, you have to work, get your financial freedom. But in the, in the same time that made me extremely unhappy. But it shouldn't be. It was, again, it, it should have been a switch. It's a simple switch. I could go back to myself and explain to myself a very simple switch and you have to do it. Okay, we all agree that's the right thing to do. But what's, uh, preferable can also be pleasurable. This is also one of the biggest wisdom piece that I heard in life. For the wise man, what's preferable is pleasurable. It's very powerful. So I, the switch I would have, uh, made in my mind was to enjoy the preferable things. And I would have done a lot of things better, get, learning to ski better, learning to go to gym, learning to play tennis better, learning English, meeting more people. But being stuck, I was almost like a prisoner. I behave like a prisoner just waiting to get out of the prison. Even in a prison, you can have the mentality, "I have to stay five years in a prison." And be totally unhappy with yourself and say, "Okay, this is what it is but I will become, uh, I will learn philosophy. I will do this and this." It's a switch. It's, we, uh, we exist only in our mind. The external factors are not that important as the running of our own thoughts.

Harry Stebbings 29:32 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Dines 29:33 If you change them a little bit, you climb mountains, you climb Everest.

Harry Stebbings 29:39 So what allowed you to change your own perceptions to climb Everest? What was that switch that unlocked in that period of unhappiness when you were a prisoner?

Daniel Dines 29:48 I wanted to break out of prison.

Harry Stebbings 29:51 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 29:52 (laughs) So I finally, I, I took all the courage that I had and, you know, none, none of my friends at that time believed that I'm gonna leave Microsoft and US and go back to Romania with very little money. So in five years working in Microsoft, my all savings were like $150,000.... were just not really, not even enough to buy a nice apartment in Bucharest. But it was fuck-you money in a way for being. I could have lived for a while without doing s- something that I don't wanna do. But going back to Romania, the only chance for me was to, um, basically build a, build something, build a company. This is why I, I wanted to,

Daniel Dines 30:50 to go back.

Harry Stebbings 30:51 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.

Daniel Dines 31:27 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 31:27 How do you think about that? And how would you advise me who actually struggles with that, honestly?

Daniel Dines 31:33 In a weird way, even I s- I have some, uh, remaining fear of this struggle and it's just completely stupid for me.

Harry Stebbings 31:48 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 31:48 And, uh-

Harry Stebbings 31:49 But it makes me feel better that you say that.

Daniel Dines 31:51 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-

Harry Stebbings 32:21 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Dines 32:21 ... 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.

Harry Stebbings 33:04 Do you enjoy what you're doing now?

Daniel Dines 33:06 I do. I, I talk-

Harry Stebbings 33:08 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 33:08 ... 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."

Harry Stebbings 34:05 Mm.

Daniel Dines 34:05 Because eventually all the shit, you know, you know c- goes-

Harry Stebbings 34:12 Creeps up to you.

Daniel Dines 34:13 ... creeps up to you. Yeah. Exactly.

Harry Stebbings 34:15 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.

Daniel Dines 34:29 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.

Harry Stebbings 34:46 Mm.

Daniel Dines 34:47 I have the empathy, but I don't feel your pain.

Harry Stebbings 34:50 Mm.

Daniel Dines 34:50 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.

Harry Stebbings 35:00 Did you ever have self-doubt? You mentioned there about doubting yourself. Did you ever have self-doubt?

Daniel Dines 35:07 Yeah, I think I always had the imposter syndrome. And th-

Harry Stebbings 35:10 You did?

Daniel Dines 35:11 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-

Harry Stebbings 35:23 Why is that?

Daniel Dines 35:24 ... 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.

Harry Stebbings 36:14 Did you correct it quick enough?

Daniel Dines 36:16 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.

Harry Stebbings 36:35 I prefer hire fast, fire fast. (laughs)

Daniel Dines 36:38 In a way it's easier.

Harry Stebbings 36:40 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 36:40 And, uh, but fire fast is not so easy applicable.

Harry Stebbings 36:45 Huh.

Daniel Dines 36:46 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.

Harry Stebbings 37:19 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 37:19 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-

Harry Stebbings 37:30 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.

Daniel Dines 37:36 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?"

Harry Stebbings 37:50 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Dines 37:51 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.

Harry Stebbings 38:00 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 38:00 But I'm telling you this time. It's kind of hard to go, "Man, don't look, you look like a clown."

Harry Stebbings 38:05 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 38:06 "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 ...

Harry Stebbings 38:25 Why is it not easy for you to give negative feedback?

Daniel Dines 38:28 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.

Harry Stebbings 39:04 Sure.

Daniel Dines 39:04 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-

Harry Stebbings 39:50 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 39:50 ... 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."

Harry Stebbings 40:17 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 40:17 "You will not be a good CEO."

Harry Stebbings 40:19 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-

Daniel Dines 40:40 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 40:40 How would you respond to that? Do you think you give too much freedom and too much ...

Daniel Dines 40:44 Yeah. Yeah. I think, um, maybe because also maybe I have the wrong impression about giving freedom to people. Uh, I think it's important to give them freedom, but also to inspect what they are doing. Inspecting what someone is doing, it's not, uh, necessarily an, uh, interfering with their freedom. So this is, I think, where, uh, I think where I'm bad is inspecting what people are doing. And I've seen actually to some other executives as well.

Harry Stebbings 41:25 Is inspecting not just micromanagement?

Daniel Dines 41:28 No, I don't think so. And I'm not a micromanager. It's far, it's far f- from me to be. But my style is to, to go pretty deep in some point and test and assess. Because you will, uh, you have to understand that area, but especially in the product and engineering when, uh, when I ... This is where I do actually a lot of inspecting. And, uh, my technique is to prove and go, like, with this Socratean approach, "Why? Why? Why? Why did you choose this? Why?" And I don't accept, like, "This is what it is." Or, "We made this decision a long time ago." Well, "Let's, let's understand why we made this." And you go to a point where they say, "Okay, we have to change." And it's fine. Sometimes you find, uh, you find, uh, early signs of cancer and it's much easier to kill it ...... from the, from the beginning. But, you know, it was always a little bit easier for me to work with, uh, product and engineers than to, I think, to work in the other sides.

Harry Stebbings 42:46 Because it's not a language you spoke?

Daniel Dines 42:48 It's not a native language to me. It's a language that I learn, so I'm conversational and go-to market, finance, HR, marketing, but it's not my mother tongue.

Harry Stebbings 43:03 (laughs) The investor base also said, you know, the exact team has churned a couple of times, maybe more, so than other companies. What are some of your big lessons from that? And Aaron Levie, actually, at Box, a famous enterprise-

Daniel Dines 43:16 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 43:16 ... software founder says, "It takes actually five exact teams churning to go to a public company," I think is his-

Daniel Dines 43:23 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 43:23 ... statement. How do you feel about the exact churn and lessons learned?

Daniel Dines 43:27 I think it's kind of easy to explain because most people will have a range where they can operate well. And in a hyper-growth startup, the company grows faster than their range, right? It happens. So what can you do? You ... Usually, you hire more experienced people and you put them in command. You cannot keep those people. And, uh, at times, these people feel that they are entitled to, to get that position and they leave. At times, they feel this is an opportunity to, to grow and learn, and they stay there and they earn their, their position there. But it's normal and it's, it ... Maybe it's five. I don't know. Maybe five it was in my ... It was four or five probably, yes, until we

Daniel Dines 44:31 went public.

Harry Stebbings 44:31 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.

Daniel Dines 44:42 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 44:43 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.

Daniel Dines 45:02 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-

Harry Stebbings 45:28 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Dines 45:28 ... 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.

Harry Stebbings 46:02 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 46:03 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.

Harry Stebbings 47:04 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 47:04 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.

Harry Stebbings 47:28 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.

Daniel Dines 47:57 Yeah. And the abundance creates monsters.

Harry Stebbings 48:01 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 48:03 (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.

Harry Stebbings 48:21 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 48:22 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.

Harry Stebbings 48:59 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 48:59 Don't you agree with me as an investor it's-

Harry Stebbings 49:01 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.

Daniel Dines 49:21 It's a long time, yeah.

Harry Stebbings 49:21 Like, and I learned so much about it. I did every part of this business. I remember googling how to create an invoice-

Daniel Dines 49:29 Yeah, exactly.

Harry Stebbings 49:29 ... because I, I didn't know. (laughs)

Daniel Dines 49:30 I recognize myself in this. Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 49:33 (laughs) And I was 19, 20 and I was like-

Daniel Dines 49:34 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 49:35 ... "What the fuck is an IO?"

Daniel Dines 49:36 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 49:36 I've got no idea. (laughs)

Daniel Dines 49:38 Exactly. I didn't... I, (laughs) I had to do... I, I used to pay the salaries to go into-

Harry Stebbings 49:44 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 49:44 ... the banking software and I, I created bots to p- to pay

Daniel Dines 49:49 the salaries. So...

Harry Stebbings 49:50 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?

Daniel Dines 49:58 So we raised the first money in, uh, 2015.

Harry Stebbings 50:01 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 50:03 Uh, we finished the year with, like, uh, half a million in revenue.

Harry Stebbings 50:08 So 10 years to half a million in revenue?

Daniel Dines 50:10 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 50:12 Phew.

Daniel Dines 50:12 But it was an acceleration since 2014, 15. We already... we found the, the product market fit in RPA.

Harry Stebbings 50:21 Okay.

Daniel Dines 50:22 So-

Harry Stebbings 50:22 In 2014?

Daniel Dines 50:23 In 2014, yes. 10 years.

Harry Stebbings 50:25 What changed?

Daniel Dines 50:26 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.

Harry Stebbings 52:11 Wow.

Daniel Dines 52:11 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.

Harry Stebbings 52:30 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 52:30 And it didn't have any traction. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 52:34 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 52:35 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.

Harry Stebbings 53:07 Okay. Yeah.

Daniel Dines 53:07 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-

Harry Stebbings 54:23 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 54:24 ... 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."

Harry Stebbings 55:27 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 55:27 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.

Harry Stebbings 56:24 And so you said yes?

Daniel Dines 56:26 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-

Harry Stebbings 57:11 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 57:12 ... to build the... because we had-

Harry Stebbings 57:13 And three out of seven.

Daniel Dines 57:15 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 57:15 (laughs) It's like half a team.

Daniel Dines 57:17 Exactly. Yeah. But it was, it was very... we, we, we understood-

Harry Stebbings 57:21 What, what happened?

Daniel Dines 57:21 ... the mar- We, we understood this is a big market, first of all. And we understood the requirements of what... how to... what, what they expect us to build, because we, we were, we were, we were building a good demo, because we... At that time, we used, uh, so use our software to build automations, and we used the Microsoft product called, like, I think Orchestrator or something, and we create some integration with Microsoft product to, to deploy our bots and monitor. Well, it was pretty nice. It was a cool solution, and they liked it,

Daniel Dines 58:00 that one.

Harry Stebbings 58:00 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?

Daniel Dines 58:06 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-

Harry Stebbings 59:10 So many.

Daniel Dines 59:11 So many. And our technology works brilliantly. We just need to build a nice orchestrator.

Harry Stebbings 59:19 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.

Daniel Dines 59:29 Yes.

Harry Stebbings 59:29 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.

Daniel Dines 59:39 That's true. Yeah, it's totally... it's not typical.

Harry Stebbings 59:43 No, it-

Daniel Dines 59:44 No, because we built-

Harry Stebbings 59:45 ... because the best stories never are.

Daniel Dines 59:46 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.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:28 I know it's hard to say, but if you hadn't have got that email from that Indian person in that company-

Daniel Dines 1:00:34 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:34 ... do you think you would have found the market?

Daniel Dines 1:00:36 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.

Harry Stebbings 1:00:59 What was the price and size of the seed round?

Daniel Dines 1:01:02 1.6 million to, I think, 8.1 post.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:09 1.6 to 8.1 post. Okay.

Daniel Dines 1:01:12 That was not that bad, 2015.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:14 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.

Daniel Dines 1:01:19 Yeah. But we, we had half a million in revenue. For a company having half a million revenues, maybe-

Harry Stebbings 1:01:26 A little bit cheap.

Daniel Dines 1:01:27 A little bit cheap. But we were a company in Romania.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:30 So what was happe-

Daniel Dines 1:01:30 Seriously.

Harry Stebbings 1:01:32 (laughs) But what was-

Daniel Dines 1:01:33 And it was very interesting because we negotiated for such a long time. (laughs) Actually, that was the funniest thing with-

Harry Stebbings 1:01:41 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:01:43 I knew that I won something big, so that was ... I met this guy, Dan Lupu, in March 2014, right? This is when. And it was kind of funny (laughs) because it ... I, I asked him to come to, to my office, and the first time, I dressed up. You know, I had (laughs) like a jacket on me.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:05 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:02:05 And he came with a hoodie.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:08 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:02:09 It was, uh, it was funny when, uh, when I saw him. That was a better way to get my trust because I was very skeptical-

Harry Stebbings 1:02:17 Sure.

Daniel Dines 1:02:17 ... at that time of people putting money in the company. And they came initially with some, uh, outrageous terms, you know?

Harry Stebbings 1:02:29 Like what?

Daniel Dines 1:02:30 I don't know, all sorts of drag along and all. I don't remember, but it was awful.

Harry Stebbings 1:02:36 Terms that weren't great at the time.

Daniel Dines 1:02:37 Yeah, terms were not great, really. And, uh, um, but I engage in the discussion with him, so we signed the term sheet, but, uh, then we had to ... A, it was a long process to ... Actually, no, they gave me a term sheet in August, I think, 2014, and we signed the, actually the deal, they wired the money in July '15, so it was such a long time.

Harry Stebbings 1:03:08 Whoa.

Daniel Dines 1:03:10 But eventually they invested in common stock (laughs) so the, the negotiation went to all this drag. In the end, discussion was, "Man, if you wanna invest, that's fine." And then so they invest in common stock, but he, he, his only ask was, he, "Look, we are growing. At this point, it's, it looks like the interest ... We are talking with big companies." Like Kaiser Permanente left a voicemail to us asking, "Guys, let's connect." That's kind of unheard of-

Harry Stebbings 1:03:43 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 1:03:43 ... small startup. RPA started to get traction. So they invested in common stock, but with, uh, having, uh, a pari-passu with the next round.

Harry Stebbings 1:03:54 Got you.

Daniel Dines 1:03:54 That was their term, which is, uh, they made billions, so that's, uh, they did well. (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:04:01 Sure, I met them and they're very happy about that investment. Yeah. It's, uh-

Daniel Dines 1:04:04 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:04:04 ... made their funds. Um, how did you feel going into Excel? Respectfully, that was in Romania, and as great as, you know, they are, it's still a, a more local firm. When you come to Excel in London, and we've both been to their offices, the beautiful offices-

Daniel Dines 1:04:22 Yeah. That conveys me-

Harry Stebbings 1:04:24 ... the partnerships.

Daniel Dines 1:04:24 ... the beautiful office had an impact on me. It's-

Harry Stebbings 1:04:28 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:04:28 You feel it in the stomach a little bit, because you are not ... At that time I was not used to go in such a amazing places. They were like in the movies for me. In all fairness, Microsoft Office don't compare (laughs) with Excel office in London. And you feel a little bit, it's, uh, yeah, it's, it's-

Harry Stebbings 1:04:50 So you, uh-

Daniel Dines 1:04:50 ... easy to be impressed when you are young and you are not experienced.

Harry Stebbings 1:04:55 I keep-

Daniel Dines 1:04:56 But not, it's not in a bad way.

Harry Stebbings 1:04:57 Okay. But it's so interesting. So you liked it and you were impressed by it. I have other founders, not talking about the Excel office, but I had a founder this morning who spoke about offices in VC.

Daniel Dines 1:05:07 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:07 And they said, "Eh, I hate it. Because it's paid for from the blood and sweat and tears of entrepreneurs like me."

Daniel Dines 1:05:15 I can understand that angle, but I wanted, at that time, to associate with something that looks successful, it's good. Excel, it's one of the top firms in the world.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:28 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 1:05:28 I think it's kind of normal to-

Harry Stebbings 1:05:31 Hundred percent.

Daniel Dines 1:05:31 ... get. We have an amazing office in New York right now. Google inspired me. So wh- when I was in Microsoft, that was an inter- that's a, that's an interesting story. When I think a corporation is losing its way, and yet they don't understand where they are in terms of like competition, it's ... I talk about Microsoft 2004 or something, like not Microsoft today.

Harry Stebbings 1:05:55 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Dines 1:05:55 So I receive an email about some cost reductions, and Google was, they, I think they just IPO'd. We knew about their, or we knew about their, how they treat employees with Michelin star chefs and massages-

Harry Stebbings 1:06:14 (laughs) Yeah.

Daniel Dines 1:06:14 ... and all this stuff, right?

Harry Stebbings 1:06:16 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Dines 1:06:17 And Microsoft, in that cost-cutting email, sent to everyone in Microsoft, they ... One of the point that I still remember was that in some buildings in the basement had some showers, so if you go with the bicycle, and they said they are removing the towels in the showers. Well, when I read this, I, I said to myself, "This company has lost it."

Harry Stebbings 1:06:43 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:06:43 No, serious. It's a company who run a company that you send an email to everybody. What's the psychological impact?

Harry Stebbings 1:06:52 We don't matter. Like, I, I would feel like, seriously-

Daniel Dines 1:06:55 Maybe, I don't know. They would save some money but does, does it matter for the psychological impact for ... What, what message do you send?

Harry Stebbings 1:07:06 Do you think about that today when you're communicating to the team? Do you think, "What message am I sending?"

Daniel Dines 1:07:12 I do.

Harry Stebbings 1:07:13 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Dines 1:07:13 I do all the time. And, uh, what I'm trying to ... The message that I'm trying to send them, it's always authentic. I, uh, I cannot be anything else. You know, I hardly speak. (laughs) So if I try to pretend and I try to make up the truth and the reality, I think I will always fail. I connect with people but by speaking my mind.

Harry Stebbings 1:07:46 (laughs) Do you ever get in trouble for speaking your mind? And what I mean by that is, like, people here say that I'm too direct. I'll say, "Daniel, that was shit." Uh, that's really annoyed me.

Daniel Dines 1:07:58 Not necessarily really. Maybe sometimes I tend to use, uh, maybe metaphors when describing, uh, stuff. I like analogies. And it's a funny one. Once I, I had this speech to my entire leadership team and it was a big moment when I, uh, I wanted to announce then that Rob will become the sole CEO.

Harry Stebbings 1:08:27 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Dines 1:08:27 So I wanted to give, like, a nice speech. But so I, I told them about some kind of my biggest, uh, learnings in, uh, leadership. And, uh, I told them, uh, clarity. A leader is, uh, is one that should bring clarity to people and explain. This is, to me, one of the, the biggest trait of a leader. And I explained, uh, the concept of clarity using, like, a Biblical analogy, like the creation of the God and Adam, and how, uh, how God told Adam, "Do everything you want but don't eat from this tree." And I said that in a way that's, uh, bad leadership.

Harry Stebbings 1:09:25 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:09:25 It's good and bad, but it's ... Because God created clarity to Adam, very clear rules, but, uh, what God didn't do was, uh, uh, He didn't explain clearly to Adam why the rules are there. So God created temptation in Adam to eat from that tree. A good, uh, good lea- a better message, so this is was ... Leaders should communicate well, for sure. So it's, it's an interesting analogy to me. So a good message would be, "I charted all the universe since the creation up to this point, so you are safe here following the rules that I gave you, because I discovered them and this is why you have to behave in a certain way. But this is uncharted territory, and this is be careful, and we have to go together in that uncharted and find new rules." To me, that would've been a better leadership message in a way. But I think, uh, in a way when, when you use too colorful metaphors, people are taken aback. So it was kind of a lesson maybe to use something more palatable to people. And it's easy to explain that clarity metaphor in, in other terms, because I still believe as a leadership lesson, this is my biggest lesson. Provide clarity to people, explain the rules, explain, basically explain your decisions. You don't have to say, "This is ... We decided this and this," because it will always create interpretations-

Harry Stebbings 1:11:11 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Dines 1:11:11 ... temptations. Explain them clearly and explain what is uncharted territory. It's very important so they understand it, their ... They have, they have no compass, so it's, it's a different

Daniel Dines 1:11:29 ...

Harry Stebbings 1:11:29 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.

Daniel Dines 1:11:51 It was 2019.

Harry Stebbings 1:11:52 2019. Take me to that moment 'cause that's a, that's an oh shit moment.

Daniel Dines 1:11:58 Well, I remember it very well.

Harry Stebbings 1:12:01 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:12:02 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.

Harry Stebbings 1:14:28 Yeah. (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:14:28 It's not, it's not, uh, it's... And it's much easier to control costs than growth.

Harry Stebbings 1:14:32 I literally got goosebumps. (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:14:34 Yeah. And, so it was-

Harry Stebbings 1:14:36 How did you feel?

Daniel Dines 1:14:38 Well, it feel terrible because you might, you might lose the company. It's, uh, it's, it's fucking terrible.

Harry Stebbings 1:14:45 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Dines 1:14:46 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-

Harry Stebbings 1:15:22 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Dines 1:15:22 ... 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.

Harry Stebbings 1:16:05 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:16:05 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.

Harry Stebbings 1:16:31 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.

Daniel Dines 1:16:42 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:16:42 As Carl Eisenbach said, "You should never lose the empathy of hurting when it hir- when it fires."

Daniel Dines 1:16:46 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.

Harry Stebbings 1:17:17 One-

Daniel Dines 1:17:17 This is what happened.

Harry Stebbings 1:17:18 ... 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-

Daniel Dines 1:17:26 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:17:26 ... but you're never wrong to do the right thing. The only question is, what's the right thing? (laughs) Now, my subsequent question-

Daniel Dines 1:17:32 At that time, it was clear that was the right thing.

Harry Stebbings 1:17:35 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?

Daniel Dines 1:17:55 Depends. There are buckets of risk. Sometimes I very, I'm very fearful and I'm ashamed of myself. But sometimes I, I don't have the same sense of risk as other people. So I can, uh, I can go much faster and bigger, make bigger bets. I don't think of the consequences so much.

Harry Stebbings 1:18:19 Where do you... What is in what bucket? Is it like kill the company in that bucket and everything else fine? How do you categorize it?

Daniel Dines 1:18:28 I don't feel kill the company, in a way, but I, I am more drawn to the upside than to, you know, the downside

Narrator 1:18:42 Of course.

Harry Stebbings 1:18:42 Is that because you have money now, do you think? When you don't have money, you kind of want to-

Daniel Dines 1:18:47 No, I did it the same in, uh, I told you, after the first round of investment, that switch happened in my mind.

Harry Stebbings 1:18:54 In terms of the switch happening, getting Sequoia as an investor-

Daniel Dines 1:18:58 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:18:58 ... is a, a dream for many entrepreneurs. Um-How did that deal come to be?

Daniel Dines 1:19:03 Let me give you one, one piece-

Harry Stebbings 1:19:05 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 1:19:05 ... on this, on this story. So when I, when I met Karl first time, for some reason I didn't feel the most amazing chemistry with him. And, uh, so I said, mm, basically no to Sequoia to our series B. And we, uh ... Series B was, uh, led by Accel US and Capital G, Kleiner Perkins, and some other people participated. And, but I said no to Sequoia. I don't know why. We didn't, we didn't hit it off. But it was based only on one interaction with him. And I actually told him directly. And I got the good advice not to give, to give, to give Karl the bullshit (laughs) answer and reason. And I told him that I didn't feel that was, you know, the best chemistry between us. Then, uh, then was when Karl really impressed me, because I expect, as many people, that will turn them off, and they will never speak with me, and that can actually turn them against the company. And Sequoia can make, can damage a company investing in competitors, helping them-

Harry Stebbings 1:20:28 Sure.

Daniel Dines 1:20:28 ... of course. So I didn't want to create an enemy of Sequoia, of course. But, but it was interesting, because being, uh, being honest, uh, with Karl, creating a little bit of a competitive spirit in him, because he told me later, "I told myself, 'Look, I have so many great relationship with so many people, what was wrong here?'" So made him a little bit curious. So we stayed in touch. And, uh, they also talked to, to competitors of us, but, uh, Karl decided that, uh, uh, if Sequoia's gonna invest in RPA, it's gonna invest only in UiPath. Even before signing with him, he told me up front. Very extreme candor. I really appreciate it. And since then, we build, uh, we build an amazing relationship. But it was, it was built on a great foundation

Daniel Dines 1:21:28 of trust.

Harry Stebbings 1:21:28 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-

Daniel Dines 1:21:39 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-

Harry Stebbings 1:21:52 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 1:21:52 ... and their place. Yes. It's, uh, it's a, it's a, it's a big sign.

Harry Stebbings 1:21:57 Can I ask... Another needle-moving moment is actually when you decided that you would hand over the role of CEO.

Daniel Dines 1:22:03 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:22:04 Can you take me to that decision? Why did you decide to make the decision, and how did that feel?

Daniel Dines 1:22:10 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.

Harry Stebbings 1:22:47 Was it difficult for your ego? Uh, everyone has an ego, and you're, you're the founder.

Daniel Dines 1:22:51 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-

Harry Stebbings 1:22:59 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:23:00 ... 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-

Harry Stebbings 1:23:57 Gelling.

Daniel Dines 1:23:58 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-

Harry Stebbings 1:24:21 What do you mean there's a demon that takes over?

Daniel Dines 1:24:23 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-

Harry Stebbings 1:24:49 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 1:24:49 ... 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.

Harry Stebbings 1:25:01 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 1:25:03 ... 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.

Harry Stebbings 1:25:31 I've seen them. (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:25:33 (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:25:34 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?

Daniel Dines 1:26:03 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.

Harry Stebbings 1:26:21 What are you searching for then?

Daniel Dines 1:26:23 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.

Harry Stebbings 1:26:39 When do you feel your happiest?

Daniel Dines 1:26:41 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-

Harry Stebbings 1:27:14 Yeah. (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:27:15 ... 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.

Harry Stebbings 1:27:26 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)

Daniel Dines 1:27:45 Yeah. I think that's a good tip.

Harry Stebbings 1:27:47 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."

Daniel Dines 1:28:03 Maybe. Maybe.

Harry Stebbings 1:28:03 And I'm, part of me is going maybe-

Daniel Dines 1:28:05 Right.

Harry Stebbings 1:28:05 ... and part of me is going, "You just have to work harder than anyone else."

Daniel Dines 1:28:10 Yeah, part of me would say, "Don't fucking start the company, man."

Harry Stebbings 1:28:15 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:28:15 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...

Harry Stebbings 1:29:23 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:29:24 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

Daniel Dines 1:29:55 thinking."

Harry Stebbings 1:29:56 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-

Daniel Dines 1:30:04 Mm-hmm.

Harry Stebbings 1:30:04 ... 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."

Daniel Dines 1:30:18 Well-

Harry Stebbings 1:30:18 I'm concerned that-

Daniel Dines 1:30:20 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:30:20 ... the incumbents have never been as large as they are, and that leaves little room for startups.

Daniel Dines 1:30:25 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.

Harry Stebbings 1:30:41 Eric?

Daniel Dines 1:30:41 Yeah.

Harry Stebbings 1:30:41 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 1:30:42 Eric and Alex.

Harry Stebbings 1:30:43 Yeah.

Daniel Dines 1:30:43 They live in London.

Harry Stebbings 1:30:44 Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Dines 1:30:45 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-

Harry Stebbings 1:31:21 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:31:21 ... capture it a little bit. And it was-

Harry Stebbings 1:31:25 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:31:25 ... some time until big up Salesforce appear. But it's, I think early years it's more difficult.

Harry Stebbings 1:31:32 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.

Daniel Dines 1:31:40 Yes.

Harry Stebbings 1:31:41 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?

Daniel Dines 1:31:48 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.

Harry Stebbings 1:32:02 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:32:02 And we, we had for many years our slogan was robot for every person. So-

Harry Stebbings 1:32:10 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:32:11 ... 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.

Harry Stebbings 1:32:45 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:32:45 So I, I'm not on the doomed side of the equation. I, I personally feel that, uh, current technology it's in actually the early innings of, uh, applicability. So they will, uh, we need to work quite a bit to find the right use cases in the enterprise space. But I don't see it as challenging to-

Harry Stebbings 1:33:11 Do you not think we overestimate enterprise adoption of AI? I asked Sam this the other day.

Daniel Dines 1:33:17 Up to the day, the adoption I think the most interesting cases that we've seen are in, uh, like coding autocompletion.

Harry Stebbings 1:33:27 Totally.

Daniel Dines 1:33:28 Right. Outside this, I don't think there are a lot of money right now to be made, made already. But many people are trying. It's a lot of POCs. It reminds me a little bit as the early days of RPA, with a lot of POCs. But I think that there will be certain use, especially in understanding documents, reading documents, long documents, summarization of documents. This is gonna be really where we can apply-

Harry Stebbings 1:34:00 Mm-hmm.

Daniel Dines 1:34:01 ... AI as of today. And if we pair it with automations, I think we increase the value of AI. So in, in this way it's, uh, it's helpful for us.

Harry Stebbings 1:34:12 Can I ask you, Daniel, uh, we've gone all over the shop today in terms of questions. Is there anything that I haven't asked that I should've asked?

Daniel Dines 1:34:20 Well, (laughs) it's, uh, probably there are many, but we have time to-

Harry Stebbings 1:34:26 Uh-

Daniel Dines 1:34:26 ... to discover them, right?

Harry Stebbings 1:34:27 What's your most memorable, before we do a quick fire, most memorable moment from the UiPath journey as CEO? The one that you think if I, when I say that to you, you're like (snaps fingers) that moment.

Daniel Dines 1:34:37 When we established in Japan. And it was atypical for a company to, because we started, we, our growth in Japan was for couple of years higher than in the US. So establishing the way in the same time in Japan as in US, so I always fascinated of Japan culture. And, uh, again, really good timing, like this guy that called us in 2013. In 2000, uh, '16, I, uh, a Japanese guy kind of called us. And, uh, he said, "I want to bring RPA to Japan." He was, uh, the CIO of Asia Pacific of, uh, Barclay Bank, I think. And he, very sophisticated Japanese, you know, he worked in New York for Goldman Sachs for a while. He was like the CIO really, but he came to, he came to London actually to, to meet with me and with some other guys. And, uh, he looked a little bit strange to me- (laughs)

Harry Stebbings 1:35:43 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:35:44 ... at that time. And it was after a long flight, and he was, uh, I don't know, tired, but he asked some good questions. I was not sure really what we are gonna do there. But fortunately, I was in Singapore when in, uh, early January he gave me a call and said, "Daniel, we have an opportunity with the big bank in Japan, but you have to come to Japan and meet the person, you know, meet that guy in person, because otherwise they will not trust." And it was again like, uh, this type of seminal moment when I already had plans to go back to Romania to do some other stuff, but I changed my plans and I went to Japan. First time in, uh, my life actually. And, uh, I met, uh, Koichi, it's this guy, our guy. And then I met, uh, you know, uh, another Japanese guy that was very instrumental for our development. His name is, uh, Yamamoto San. He, he worked for, he's still working for SMBC, which is one of the Japanese mega banks. So it was like an immersion into a different culture. And they were started, SMBC at that time had big ambitions. They still have in RPA, I think they have probably to date one of the largest, if not of the largest implementation of RPA. He gave me-You know, you, you meet people that you hit it off from the beginning with them. I felt such a good energy, such a trustable person. We went to have a shabu-shabu. So it ... Shabu-shabu, it's actually a great bonding experience because he was cooking for me.

Harry Stebbings 1:37:41 (laughs)

Daniel Dines 1:37:41 And he puts, you know, the meat on my plate. And it's, it was still an amazing feeling that I, I get it, uh, up-to-date. And, uh, I trust him instinctively. And I, um, I told him, uh, "Yaumoto-san, if you give us a chance, we are gonna invest massively in Japan for us. So I will be ..." So that was, like, mid-January. "I will be back in April and by that time I will have,