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

Daniel Dines is the Co-Founder @ UiPath, one of the most incredible journeys in startups. For 10 years, UiPath was a bootstrapped company that scaled to just $500K in revenue. Then it all changed, product market fit became obvious and the rest is history. The company went on to raise funding from Sequoia, Accel, Kleiner Perkins and more. Today, the company is worth over $10BN, listed on the NASDAQ and does $1BN+ in revenue.
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(01:07) Background & Childhood
(08:53) Minimal Living Expenses
(12:51) Risk-Taking Mindset
(14:55) Learning Programming
(30:50) Navigating Wealth Milestones & Satisfaction
(35:24) Chemistry Over Experience
(44:31) Bootstrapping Journey
(49:49) Raising the First Money
(58:00) Understanding Market Needs
(01:11:29) Learning from Adversity
(01:21:28) Sequoia’s Impact
(01:25:34) Detaching Happiness from Company Performance
(01:29:55) Incumbent Challenges
(01:39:23) Quick-Fire Round
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In Today’s Episode with Daniel Dines We Discuss:
1. From a Dollar a Day to Romania’s Richest Man:
How would Daniel’s parents and teachers have described the young Daniel?
How did Daniel first learn to code? Why was his first programming job on $300 per month the best?
How did Daniel learn English by playing bridge with his friends?
What was the a-ha moment for Daniel with UiPath?
2. Becoming a Billionaire: The Mental Journey:
What does Daniel mean when he says everyone is a prisoner of their own mind?
How does Daniel reflect on his own relationship to money?
How did having absolutely nothing impact Daniel’s relationship to risk?
Why does Daniel think that he does not really experience or feel happiness?
3. 10 Years to $500K ARR: The Miracle Bootstrapping Journey:
After 10 years, UiPath had just $500K in ARR, what was the one single moment that changed everything in 2014?
How did raising the seed round change everything for Daniel? How did it change his approach to operating?
What was the impact of having Sequoia invest? Does it change the game? Why did Daniel say no to them the first time they tried for the Series B?
4. Journey to a $10BN Public Company: The Crucible Moments:
How did the company almost go bust when it spent $400M against a plan of $150M in 2021?
What is the single proudest moment Daniel has of the 19 year journey with UiPath?
What have been Daniel’s biggest management lessons in scaling UiPath to $1BN in ARR?
Knowing all that Daniel does today, what would he have done differently about the UiPath journey?
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[@billy-bund]

Great founding story- really shows you how long it can take to build something big

[@cjdch6604]

Why does he only own 30m shares for founder? Sub 1%… why are VCs and PE selling. Stock screens well but something is amiss.

[@deja00]

1:24:06 "There is a kind of demon that takes over sometimes..." Interesting talk. Great interview.

[@simonnilsson5356]

Very cool and insightful. I liked his approach on 9 formative years. Really helpful to me 🙏🏼

[@churamontgomery6063]

Thank you for sharing

[@barriehep1759]

Wonderful.

[@Cygx]

He has sold as lot of shares when they ipoed, it’s true that he doesn’t own that many common shares, but he has super shares that have 35 times the number of votes compared to common shares.

[@XShollaj]

What a cool guy

[@20VC]

Subscribe to the 20VC KZbin channel for more great interviews: www.youtube.com/@20VC?sub_confirmation=1

[@MostAlpha]

Made in Romania.

[@germank7924]

I have $250B but they told me I need $500B to buy California, so I'll keep grinding

[@christopherwillson]

Can we talk about Harry's new chad state

[@mariojohnson4695]

He is worth 2 billion dollars and the companies market cap is a bit below 11 billion, so it’s likely he owns a bit more than 1% of the company. Maybe he has other investments.

[@paulinoneeto]

Lol, more than 10% at least. Not 1%