Last spring, UiPath completed its fourth funding round, worth USD 568 million, an amount that took the company’s valuation to no less than USD 7 billion. The level is astounding, not even taking into account the fact that we are talking about a relatively new company in the global business landscape.
The story of the first Romanian unicorn begins in 2005, when Daniel Dines and Marius Tîrcă set up DeskOver, in an apartment on Delea Veche street in Bucharest. For a long time, they developed automated libraries and software kits for giant companies such as IBM, Google or Microsoft.
However, in 2012, the shareholders chose to reset the business and update to a new field: robotic automation. They were convinced that it was an interesting market, with a lot of potential, so they started to build a software robot operating platform.
At that time, they also made a series of mistakes, as the team of ten developers worked on the new project while also providing consulting and outsourcing services.
“We failed several times during that period. In fact, UiPath is the result of all the mistakes an entrepreneur can make,” Daniel Dines explains why attracting investors from the beginning would have been the right strategy.
But in the end, there were no regrets. Although they had wasted some time, the platform was ready at just the right time. In 2013 they had their first customer, an Indian company, but the concept still needed some adjustments.
The collaboration was very important as it not only validated their product, but it also helped them understand how they could make it even better. In 2015, DeskOver became UiPath, and the company opened its first offices in the US. Everyone knows what followed.
Investors have been fighting to be part of the UiPath story, the number of employees has exceeded the 3,000 threshold, and the company is a leader of the global market.
UiPath shopping on the global market
He developed the most valuable Romanian company. This performance says a lot about Daniel Dines, an entrepreneur who is convinced that passion is an ingredient that guarantees success in business. And considering his achievements, one cannot contradict him.
UiPath was launched on a market that was under construction, came up with a good product, knew how to respond to its partners’ needs, and that’s how it quickly became a unicorn. Now, after the last round of funding, the company’s valuation has reached USD 7 billion.
This value makes it one of the largest global technology players, so its business model has gone through a major update. Aiming for faster development, UiPath has begun to take over high-potential businesses – at the end of last year, they announced the acquisition of companies ProcessGold from the Netherlands and StepShot from Estonia.
And that wasn’t the only surprising news to come from UiPath. Having reached 3,300 employees, the company announced it would lay off about 400 of them. The decision was not related to financial stability, but to internal process efficiency.
