>> Male: TheCUBE presents, UIPATH, Forward 5
brought to you by, UIPATH.
>> Okay the party has started here at forward 5 UIPATH
big customer event if you're watching the cube.
We're wrapping up day one with the co-CE0 segment.
Daniel Dines is here.
He's the founder and Co-CEO of UIPATH
and Rob Enslin, is co-CEO. Gents, great to see you.
Thanks for spending some time with us.
I know you're super busy.
>> Thanks Dave.
>> So I've been looking forward to this.
Daniel you know I've followed the company for a long time.
The really interesting path you took,
to get to where you are today.
How did you guys meet? And why did you decide to hire Rob?
>> Male: (laughs)
>> Rob: Well let me start.
I uh, I was looking for a partner.
Actually, in our work to your stand here,
we are talking about how,
how you feel in this job.
You feel so alone. Because you are the center
of all pressure points.
And having a partner, having someone that has your back,
it's kind of awesome. So I was looking for a partner.
And our current friend, Carl Escenbach,
he introduced us to each other, and we instantly clicked.
And this is the type of job where
it's uh
either work well or it doesn't.
It cannot be anything in the middle.
>> Right, okay with Carl, we know Carl well.
Awesome operator. Knows the business super well.
So Rob, what attracted you to UIPATH?
You had a great situation at google.
You guys were growing like crazy.
Why did you decide to come here?
What did you see that attracted you?
>> Yeah you know when I, when I went to google,
I went to google because I really believed
that data and AI was necessary for companies.
And business is to be competitive in the future.
And we did some great stuff at google cloud in the 3 years.
But I knew UIPATH from a couple of years ago
when they were mainly a RPA space.
And I just felt that there was a place in time
when automation was going expand.
And as I sat down with Carl a couple of times,
spoke to carl.
And then I sat down with Daniel,
I knew that there was something special with UIPATH,
that could be a generational opportunity.
Not any for myself but for the company in the future.
And then I, you know I got to know Daniel.
And at this stage of my career I was like,
I'm pretty fussy about what I want to do
and what I want and where I want to go.
First of all,
I want to go to a company that had great product,
had a great culture,
and
I wanted to work with somebody that
we could shake the future together and
you know, Daniel and I just hit it off
from the very first time we met.
He got to meet my family, my dogs and we did the whole,
we did the whole courting thing before we actually decided
this was going to be a good thing for both of us.
>> Dave: That's good.
>> Rob: Yeah.
>> Dave: You got to meet the family. That's very good.
>> We just had, John Furrier and I just had,
Mohit Aron and Sanjay Poonen into out studio.
Cause Mohit, you know, formal google. Long time.
And they decided to kind of split duties.
Mohit's going into product, he didn't keep his CEO title.
He walked. How are you guys splitting you time?
What are each of you going to, responsible for?
>> Daniel: Well its, its kind of similar.
On a day by day operation I, I rely heavily on Rob.
We do it together.
Strategic decisions about the company's destiny.
I'm doing mostly the product these days.
Which is a big relief for me.
And I think we also split a bit of customers visit.
Which is great. I still enjoy meeting customers.
I need, customers are food for my cause.
>> Dave: (laughs) yeah and your awesome product visionary.
You've been there since day one.
Now Rob, you said in the key note today that you've
seen around about a hundred customers.
You've transverse the world.
What did you learn from them that informed you?
That gave you confidence that the
the move to the internet platform,
even though you had already started that.
>> Male: Yeah.
>> But you're really doubling down on that
>> Rob: You know when I...
>> from a stand point.
>> Rob: You know Dave, when you think about it,
like I was, I was so impressed that Daniel had the vision
to create a platform 3 years ago.
>> Dave: Yeah.
>> All right. And as we went around the world.
As I went around the world,
and it was one of the very first things I've seen.
I've got to understand how customers see UIPATH,
from their advantage point.
What are they looking for from us?
Why is this company, why doe customers
like this company so much?
And as I went around the world. I went to Asia a couple,
I went to Asia, Australia, Singapore, Japan.
I was in Europe twice. We did the trip together.
We went to visit customers.
And it was very much the same thing.
Helps us expand automation faster.
And we are so surprise, at the break of your platform.
We never knew that. And so it kind of just had,
for me, it was conviction. It's like,
this walls is the right decision you've made.
There's so much opportunity there.
And that's, you know that's kind of what I've learned
through the last four five months.
>> Dave: Now as you know Daniel,
I've written a lot about your company.
One of the things I've said is that,
that start ups, if I can call you that back pre-IPO,
typically don't have as much international exposure
as UIPATH had.
I mean you sort of, you sort of started
as an international company and became more US centric.
You said, in the, in the key note today,
you're talking to Ray Wong about
people may don't understand that challenges of FX.
Point being, when you convert international dollars
into US dollars there are less of them
cause the dollars stronger.
But still, I've always felt like
that international footprint is an advantage.
Rob you came from SAP, you know, again
European based company.
I don't, (stutters), do you regret that? Now?
I mean I know it's technical, I'm sure you don't,
but talk about that sort of international exposure?
Why that's a long term benefit.
>> Well, you, first of all, you expand faster.
I think we expanded faster than our competition
because our global footprint was larger.
And we had the courage.
Go in Japan, for instance.
Everybody told me,
it's impossible to make for such a small starter.
It's impossible to make a business in Japan.
But we didn't believe it.
We're just crazy and we went there,
and be built a very sizable business in Japan.
Fifty-five percent of our revenue, even today,
it's outside U.S.
Now of course that has a down side.
When uh,
When the local currencies, you know,
are losing the value compared to the dollars,
we're impacted.
As we go to...
to investors, until now,
so we are seeing like a (indistinct)
in terms of ARI. It's huge.
Only because (indistinct) and losing the business in Russia.
But it still, it's the strength of our company.
Things will come back.
And then, you know, the growth engine
will re-accelerate again.
>> Dave: Yeah but when the dollars weakens
that'll be in your favor.
Rob I want to pick up on something
you said today in your keynote.
You went back and started, you know the cycles of ERP
and you know, internet, et cetera.
I kind of have a love hate with ERP.
I have to be honest.
>> Male: (laughing)
>> But it, but but (chuckles)
but if I go back to that. Late eighties nineties,
you wouldn't have be able to pick SAP as the winner.
And then SAP emerged. You know, very clearly.
But the more interesting thing,
is that the customers who are implementing ERP well.
The practitioners did better than their peers,
and dominated their industries.
And their stocks went up. Their evaluations went up.
Different worlds obviously but,
do you see the same thing happening with RPA and automation?
What gives you confidence that that's the case?
>> I absolutely do see the same thing happening
with automation and RPA being a part of,
in being a part of that.
The reason, the reason I believe that is
speed is so critical. (stutters) And if you think about
how hard it is for a CIO or a c level executive
to consume the technology coming at them,
plus all the changes in the world being thrown at them.
It's compiling and compiling and compiling.
We have an incredible solution, that can help companies.
And there comes certain times,
the love outcomes to the business.
Like no one else gets. And when I see that,
I view that as just like the beginning
of what's going to happen in the future so,
in many ways, and I've said this to many of my friends,
it feels like 1992, 1993 to me.
And it's interesting because
no one really understood then why
SAP would be great in 1992 and 93.
And they got a couple of things right.
They got the eco system right.
Their new partners were important.
And the knew they needed to drive business outcome
for companies, in which they did.
And so I feel like we are in a very similar place.
Very different technology obviously.
And the speed of change now is so dramatic,
compared to what it was.
And there's very few technology that can provide
that level of speed and accomodation to their customers.
>> All right, let's talk about priorities.
You guys got a lot of work to do
and you've, you've laid it out to the financial community.
You've got to have profitable growth,
because of FX, it part, you've lowered your forecast.
But I think there's some conservative in their as well.
Um, but you got to do that balance.
You've given some guidance on gross margins.
Cloud maybe brings that down a little bit.
RnD I saw wide range. Thirteen to seventeen percent.
I hope you keep spending on RnD. Big fan of that.
You know stock buybacks and,
RnD if in your position are going to be better.
And the product priorities, continue to build that out.
But question, let's start with the product.
So you've got an on-prem stack and
you've got a cloud stack that's emerging,
how do you balance those out?
How do you do the integration?
You've done a great job with the integration.
Does it, are you concerned about your ability to continue
to work at that speed with two code bases?
I wonder if you could address that?
>> Daniel: We've become a cloud first company.
We deliver all of our products first in the cloud.
We've deliver on the two week (indistinct) in the cloud.
So that helps us integrate quite fast.
I think we made a very good business decision
to build our cloud team in Seattle.
In Bellevue to be specific.
And we have access to great talent
that knows how to build serious cloud service.
Which is hard to find dollar.
And uh, so,
and also we, we have, we benef-
one of our only benefits was,
we have the really good architecture.
We have an architecture that work easily on-prem
and on the cloud.
And even today, our work flow foundation,
our local designers, were easy to modernize.
So right now we are launching studio weapon.
But behind the scene, it's the same workflow engine.
Our customers don't have to rewrite anything. It just works.
And it does the same to take our own brand product
and brand it in the multicloud.
So, it's, there is no friction at all.
Actually cloud is just helping us accelerate.
But we benefit then again of a really solid
architectural foundation.
>> Daniel: Architecture matters. We've seen that
in this industry.
We got the B52s rocking out in the background, I love it,
but I've got so many questions for you guys.
I want to talk about the go to market.
Because Rob, it's obviously a strength of yours.
You've come in. You've communicated to the street,
that you're reshaping the sales floors.
Are they lowering the ratios of sales?
People, the customers at the high end,
mid range as well, using digital.
I mean the numbers are one to ten now. At the top.
One to maybe fifty at the mid range.
Where are you in terms of that journey?
You've got to find people, you got to train them,
how do you get the productivity out of those guys?
Take us through your thinking there?
>> Rob: Yeah firstly, I think we have enough resources.
Having resources is not an issue.
Um, we have an incredible vehicle to acquire customers
inside the company.
Our digital sales motion, it's probably the best I've seen.
And so we have the ability to acquire customers really fast.
And we get the first workload in really fast.
The challenge is we need to,
we need to be able to drive a (indistinct) model
and we graduate customs when we acquire them
into the direct sales floors.
And then direct sales floors,
we're not going to go one to thirty,
we're talking one to ten for the direct sales floor.
And even the high up in the pyramid,
we want to have an even denser model than that.
And the whole purpose is to drive
the time to consumption much quicker, much faster.
So we know exactly if we acquire a customer,
will they spend? Do they have a (indistinct) spend?
On what level do they have a (indistinct) spend?
And therefore when we capture them,
we can immediately surround them,
and put the right resources so we can grow faster.
We think this will have a significant impact
on the organization.
We'll start to implement certain pieces in the next quarter.
Um, things like packaging solutions.
Putting them in, enabling the sales organization.
And buy the beginning of next year,
we'll be ready to actually go full board, globally.
We already put some pieces in place when I joined.
Chris Weber, my chief business officer, did a great job
doing some of those pieces.
So we're on the journey already.
>> Dave: Yeah and even before you guys were public
and you weren't publishing your NRR numbers.
Our ETR survey partner, we, we always thought you had
very low churn.
And I think you broke out just yesterday.
The, the NRR for overseas vs U.S,
U.S I think was 140 plus percent.
>> Male: Yeah
>> Very very strong.
A little, a little less overseas
but the churn is still very low.
>> Male: Yep.
>> Okay so that's super positive.
Customer affinity, I was wanted to code these events.
I listen to the key notes very carefully,
and then interview customers on the cube,
and I try to identify, is there alignment there?
And I see very strong alignment, I have to say,
and strong customer affinity.
So that's in your favor.
I have, Daniel, I got another question for you on product.
What is Symantec automation?
What the heck is that? Can you explain that?
I don't understand
>> Dave, have you seen the demo in my (indistinct)?
>> Dave: You know, I had to leave and do interviews,
so I, uh, I missed it.
>> I think, I think that demo answer complete your question.
So in the s-,
you know there saying that
great, you can not distinguish great technology by magic.
I think technology should be simple.
And we, we show today, one of the simplest demo
that you can imagine.
But it's so, such a complex technology behind the scene,
that you also can not imagine.
So what was demo?
We show how one business user,
without any technical skills,
can build any type of document.
Can be a passport, can be an invoice,
can be a legal (indistinct), and just go,
"I want to copy data from here,
and I want to paste data there".
Can be a spreadsheet, can be another obligation,
and like a human user, without understanding,
without having prior knowledge about data, document layout,
about screens, screens layouts, nothing,
we analyze real time. Document.
We discover, we discover the meaning
of the information. We analyze the screen.
We understand the screen
but we understand the meaning of the screen.
And we understand how the information in one side
relate to the other side.
And we just connects the dots
and we copy the information and we paste it.
A job that you'll do as a human user, maybe three minutes,
is done in ten seconds.
This is powerful.
>> Yeah that is powerful. Thank you for that.
I mean, and you take the date, whether it's transaction data
or unstructured data and
and and bring meaning out of it. That's powerful.
Last question and I'll let you guys go.
Rob, you got traders,
and you've got long term investors.
All right traders going to be defensive, today.
I get that.
Make the case for UIPATH, for long term investors.
>> Rob: I think we're going to be a multi-gern-
multi-billion company and we're going to be
a generational company of our time.
And we will define enterprise automation.
And it's going to be a long term game
and we feel like really strong
that we'll be the lead in that game.
>> Dave: Guys, thanks so much for coming to the cube.
Great show. Always fun at UiPath Forward.
Really appreciate your time. Thank you.
>> Thanks dave.
>> Appreciate it as well.
>> Okay wrap it up, day one, we're here tomorrow,
first thing, Dave Vellante and Dave Nicholson.
Thanks for watching, forward 5, Uipath big customer event,
we'll see you tomorrow.
(music)