The Exchanges

Q But do you have them? Because you have them in a rule-based environment and rule-based processes, and now we're moving into a completely different universe of non-rule-based ambiguity.

A Well, it's not, it's not a completely different universe. You know what's the, what's the common denominator? Both RPA and Agentic actually Imitates people. And when you imitate people doing a process, there are slightly different ways in order to deploy and manage, because it's more fragile. You need to have a lot of exception handling into places. You need to have a lot of retries of different things. Maybe, think about, you load a website. It's variable until it responds back, where maybe, you know, it's a big timeline. It's a lot of things that you have to build Within the technology to make it more reliable. We have the experience with robots, and we are taking this experience to the agents. It's not so difficult to build an agent as to make it working reliably thousands of times. You go there, you call it as part of an enterprise workflow, and It has to work. Otherwise, enterprises are not gonna deliver them in an autonomous fashion in production. Look, one story that I keep hearing from our customers is they prefer our workflows to fail than to be too smart. Because their risk appetite for this type of workloads, it's low. This is the mentality of our customers. That will be the same mentality with delivering agents. Agents will make recommendations. Agents are not gonna take actions directly. There will be a progression from agents making recommendations, going to a hum…

AI assessment note: “We have the experience with robots, and we are taking this experience to the agents.”

Q Can we just go into just, like, a little bit on the task side, because we mentioned Benioff and fantastic show and loved having Ben on the show, but stayed at a certain level. What tasks are we like we will meaningfully see game-changing results in the next one to three years, and where will we not?

A Instead of going to see what kind of roles do you have in your company, like you have a BDR person and so on, We go and ask, what kind of processes do you run today? How does your procure to pay process look like? What are the rule-based parts? What are the parts that are non-deterministic, that are good use cases for agents? And let's go and deliver those. It's the same approach that we did with RPA. And I think that, that can Lead to immediate successes. Because you actually look to smaller tasks. In a, in a healthcare system, you are doing something small like, ah, processing denials, or prior authorization. We'll focus on this type of tasks, and we'll create agents specifically for this, and we'll connect them with the robots that do the The rule-based task in the, in this orchestration layer.

AI assessment note: “In a, in a healthcare system, you are doing something small like, ah, processing denials”

Q 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 attend.

A So I had to, I had to learn coding before getting, because my first job 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. It was a tough family situation. But, uh, so basically my family couldn't support me any longer, 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, 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 things. I haven't, I started actually a company in my early 20, not a software company, but it was something to help, to help 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 paid phones, so talk to a lot of people. So what we did, actually, we centralized all the jobs, called 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 I got bored by this.

AI assessment note: “I had to do all sorts of gigs, like at some point I was buying”

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

A I don't know, I have this, uh, it's a, it's a little bit like, uh, I have a construct, a defect in my brain. I can, uh, I can give, uh, easily negative, it's a way of saying, but I can easily point people that I like and I enjoy to some of their negative, uh, treats. 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 causes pain to give feedback to anyone. It's impossible for someone to receive negative feedback without pain. 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, ah, 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.

AI assessment note: “when I don't feel love for them, I don't have this trait, so I feel only their pain”

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

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

AI assessment note: “It's like an inner force.”

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

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

AI assessment note: “It's like an inner force... I call it a demon, but it's a force.”

Q Dude, honestly, our first show did so well. I got so many emails from young entrepreneurs so inspired by your journey, and so I thought I would capitalize on the success of the first show, and I wanted to start with something that you said to me before, which is at this stage of kind of the AI cycle, product matters more than innovation. Can you unpack that for me?

A Yeah, actually I was thinking a lot lately. What's, you know, our story in, you know, in, within the AI narrative, where we can really bring a lot of value. So over the last two years, we, um, we've spent a lot of time really trying to fine tune LLMs, build around them, and certain degree of success. But I've got really inspired by stories like, uh, Cursor AI. And my development team loves that product. It's a beautiful product built on the top of multiple LLMs, but just, it just works. And I, uh, I recall actually how we started UiPath. Maybe there is a, this is a story that I never told anyone. And so, In the beginning, we, uh, so we were always based on AI in a way, but we were using a library called OpenCV, which among many other things provided a really cool feature to find a smaller image within a bigger image. So, and we repurposed that library for the sake of automation. So we can take a screenshot of an application, and if you want to click on a button, we can take an image of that button, and then find it, you know, during, uh, during replay, just Call, you know, function, find this image of the button. I will get the coordinates and I will click on the button. But that was not the only thing that we did. We created, I think, a magical experience. So we let someone to basically record flow on the screen. Just show, I need to click this button, indicate on the screen, …

AI assessment note: “Cursor AI... beautiful product built on the top of multiple LLMs, but just, it just works.”

Q 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?

A I wanted to break out of prison. So I finally, I, I took all the courage that I had and You know, not, none of my friends at that time believed that I'm gonna leave Microsoft and U.S. and go back to Romania with very little money. So in five years working in Microsoft, my old savings were like a 150,000 dollars. It was not really, not even enough to buy a nice apartment in Bucarist. But it was Fuck you money, in a way for me. I could have lived for a while without doing something that I don't want to do. But going back to Romania, the only chance for me was to, um, basically build, build something, build a company. This is why I, I wanted to, to go back.

AI assessment note: “It was Fuck you money, in a way for me.”

Q What does that mean? That you, you weren't happy doing what you were doing?

A I didn't live, like, a hedonistic life. And for many reasons. Not necessarily that I didn't want, and I have a fantastic ethic about it. But it just happened that I didn't. So, I had, uh, many years of anxiety. It was hard, you know. And, uh, fighting with myself. Fighting, you know, my way. So, I, I am wondering how it would have been to, you know, try to have fun in my twenties, in my thirties. And, um, and even today I still, you know, I can go, I can give up on everything I do and I can just go, you know, for a life of much, a lot more pleasurable things, but I don't do it. And I feel there is something inside me. There are always like...

AI assessment note: “I had, uh, many years of anxiety. It was hard, you know.”

Q 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 attend.

A So I had to, I had to learn coding before getting, because my first job 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. It was a tough family situation. But, uh, so basically my family couldn't support me any longer, 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, 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 things. I haven't, I started actually a company in my early 20, not a software company, but it was something to help, to help 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 paid phones, so talk to a lot of people. So what we did, actually, we centralized all the jobs, called 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 I got bored by this.

AI assessment note: “at some point I was buying, like, doing some kind of currency arbitrage”

Q 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?

A 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 Axel, I had to raise a bridge round from my investors, 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, uh, uncapped. 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 with a hundred people always, so it was, but I knew that You know, it's, it's, you have to play 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, of course, 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 was completely set to, to go forward, and we went really like a rocket.

AI assessment note: “Maybe all of them, but it was a clear switch because I was... fearless”

Q Both of us are not very good at fluff. I, I hate empowerment, I hate alignment, I hate all the bullshit corporate words that people use which mean awful. Um, How do you re-energize the team? How do you say, hey, like, oh, you know, kind of Wolf of Wall Street style?

A My way is to, to speak really very Um, transparent to, to the teams. And, uh, this is where we are, guys. And, uh, it's a lot of work ahead of us. We made these mistakes. We have to fix these things. And, uh, it's not easy. It's gonna, it's gonna require a serious, serious work. And maybe there's not a way to energize them, but it's a way to, To make them hurt. I think one of the, Things that, as you grow bigger, it's that people feel smaller and smaller. I don't want, this is, this is hard. I don't, I wanna work in a company where people have joy. People feel that they are empowered to do things. Not in the bullshit alignment. But it's very important that, look, if you wanna, if you wanna make a big change, go and drive a big change. And, uh, and have the voice to fight for it. If you are shut down, then it affects the moral more than the stock price, I think.

AI assessment note: “My way is to, to speak really very Um, transparent to, to the teams.”

Q love to hear that because I think you can sometimes hear some stories where it's like, you know, uh, super whiz from like day one, and it just feels quite unrelatable. I, I did hear that I had to ask you how you learned to code. I chatted with Luciana before, and she was like, you have to ask him how he learned to code. So what was that story?

A Well, I think it's pretty wild after today's standards. So I am not the typical hacker that started, you know, creating his first game when he was eight or something 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, 19, 90, Romania, just full of communism, but all the professors, the atmosphere was still very communist, ugly, people with kind of a fixed mindset. So, honestly, after the first week In, uh, at university, I decided I, I don't want to go there. So literally, I went only to, like, exams. So that was not, uh, no, it was not my thing. I, I, uh.

AI assessment note: “after the first week In, uh, at university, I decided I, I don't want to go”

Q 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?

A 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 Axel, I had to raise a bridge round from my investors, 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, uh, uncapped. 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 with a hundred people always, so it was, but I knew that You know, it's, it's, you have to play 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, of course, 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 was completely set to, to go forward, and we went really like a rocket.

AI assessment note: “Maybe all of them, but it was a clear switch”

Q What does that mean? That you, you weren't happy doing what you were doing?

A I didn't live, like, a hedonistic life. And for many reasons. Not necessarily that I didn't want, and I have a fantastic ethic about it. But it just happened that I didn't. So, I had, uh, many years of anxiety. It was hard, you know. And, uh, fighting with myself. Fighting, you know, my way. So, I, I am wondering how it would have been to, you know, try to have fun in my twenties, in my thirties. And, um, and even today I still, you know, I can go, I can give up on everything I do and I can just go, you know, for a life of much, a lot more pleasurable things, but I don't do it. And I feel there is something inside me. There are always like...

AI assessment note: “So, I had, uh, many years of anxiety. It was hard, you know.”

Q Will we see the size of companies reduce in the future? You mentioned that we'll move to a more verification approvals based, uh, function for humans. That could also mean that you need less.

A Jobs are, jobs are changing over time. We are seeing, uh, in agriculture, and if, if you think about a hundred years ago, 50% of, you know, UK or US population work in agriculture. Nowadays, it's only two percent, and they, they are actually, it's a good example. They are mostly people that supervise machines doing their work. Yes, you know, many of the jobs today will change, but they will be new jobs. They will be, you know, society evolves. It's, you don't want to be stuck in the existing society. This, this thing will create abundance. Man, the only way to To keep with the economical growth is to increase productivity. It's Our, with the population, with population aging, and actually on the verge of starting to reduce, like in many, in many, you know, first, you know, first world countries, it's only increasing the productivity. This tool is essential to increase productivity. Why we are focusing on the doom day scenario when actually We live in, in one of the best world possible when it's the, you know, the rate of unemployment is the lowest in, I don't know, ever maybe.

AI assessment note: “many of the jobs today will change, but they will be new jobs.”