Workflows will go from people-centric to AI-centric | Daniel Dines, CEO of UiPath

Cristian (0:07)

Hello, everyone. My name is Cristian. Welcome back to TNW Podcast. Today, our guest is Daniel, the Founder and CEO at UiPath. First of all, I will let you present yourself first, please.

Daniel Dines (0:16)

Well, thank you for inviting me.

It's great to be here in Dubai, great event. I'm Daniel Dines, I'm the CEO and Founder of UiPath.

Cristian (0:26)

Tell us what you like so much about Dubai.

I heard you on stage say about the people that are resilient. Obviously, today it's Fusion Day at Dubai, so I'd like to hear more about that.

Daniel Dines (0:37)

It's a city that always impressed me and I think it impresses everybody.

I keep coming here for the last, like, let's say, 10 years, and you see the pace of development, like almost nowhere in the world. And I'm very impressed of how progressist is the government here. They always want to adopt the newest technology, but it's not only for the sake of technology, it's actually for making people's life more comfortable.

Cristian (1:11)

Efficient.

Daniel Dines (1:12)

Efficient. So I have a few friends here that live in Dubai, and I ask them, you know, why do you live here? They say, look, my life is extremely comfortable. Everything works. Government works. Everything that I order, I can do online, everything. So it's just the level of comfort in life. It's very high. And I think this is the task of every government in the world. They can take an example of what's happening here.

Cristian (1:41)

Yeah, we love Dubai, and also it's a fantastic weather nowadays. I want to share a quick story. You spoke at Stustad London in 2023, and when you got off the stage, 30 people rushed to you to take a picture to talk with you. I was the lucky one to make it. I said, this is my chance. I have to take it. I have to meet Daniel. And I asked him for some advice. I want to thank you for that.

At the stage, at that moment, you said you have a culture that is humble but bold. I want to please explain to our audience how that works, because for me, it stayed with me until this day, to be humble but bold at the same time. Not arrogant, not defensive, but humble and bold.

Daniel Dines (2:17)

Yeah, because I think at first view, it might be a contradiction between humble and bold. But I think most people take humble as being submissive. But that's not true. To me, being humble, it's more like being true to yourself and of our capabilities. Because I think to me, it's how I codify humble.

It's recognized that we have to always be on the learning. It's not that we possess the truth.

We can always improve ourselves. And if you are arrogant, you can't... Yeah, you are stuck in a state of mind where I know everything. And that's not true. So you can always learn. But also, it's very important you can change your ideas.

I always look back in the past. For me, a big moment is when I realize how much I change. Even in the last six months, in the last year, how much my mind has changed. And nowadays, with this AI, the opportunities for learning is so tremendous. So we have to be really humble, but in the same time, you have to be bold because what does it mean? We need to have really courageous goals. Because now we have more means to get there. But the means to get to our goals is to continuously learn and evolve and become a better version of ourselves.

Cristian (3:50)

Absolutely. You mentioned the past, so I want to get a bit into the story of UiPath. You started in 2005, right? Until 2015, you had not great of a result. How did you have that patience when you see today in a couple of months, startups get billions in ARR, founders want to get there, but they have no patience?

Daniel Dines (4:08)

Well, I think I asked myself a lot of times because I didn't know, it was hard. So I had a lot of moments of doubt. And I was telling my friends, guys, I'm ruining my career.

Nobody will hire me right now as a software engineer because I stopped coding for a while. So what I'm doing here, in a way, I cut myself all the ways back. I didn't have a golden parachute.

Cristian (4:44)

So plan B.

Daniel Dines (4:45)

Yeah, no, I'm telling you, I realized, and I had recently a discussion about this. It's when you have a plan B, actually you will go to the plan B. You don't have enough resilience and passion to go for the plan A, because plan A is difficult.