I think RPA can feel a little bit intimidating to newcomers, so I thought I'd put together a super-quick summary of the company.
UiPath in 3 minutes.
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TL;DR
- UiPath sells software "robots"
- It was started 16 years ago in Romania
- Its customers are usually big corporations
- It made $607M last year (+81% YoY)
- Founded in Bucharest by 2005
- CEO was a former Microsoft engineer
- Company was a devshop called "DeskOver"
- Pivoted to true RPA in 2013
- Only started scaling after that point
- Full suite RPA
- Makes it easy for businesses to automate tasks
- Usually boring, mundane stuff (filling in spreadsheets)
- Offers attended and unattended automation*
*Attended: someone has to trigger the bot
*Unattended: bot runs solo
Product differentiation
- Easy to use with a drag-and drop interface
- Good for coders and non-coders
- Free tier and "Academy" let people try before buying
- Truly horizontal platform; useful across sectors
Business model
- Mostly sells B2B2B, using channel partners
- Channel partners are consulting firms and BPOs
- They sell to the end-customer much of the time
Example:
$PATH sells software to Deloitte. Deloitte whitelabels it and sells it to JPM.
What does this all mean? $PATH is a great growth story. Does a good job of upselling. Spends too much on S&M.
Team
- CEO is Daniel Dines
- Dines has 88% voting power (!!)
- Dines has token compensation
- Quirky figure; though apparently highly intelligent
- Senior team has good enterprise software experience
Investing wins
Earlybird
- Owns 10.3%
- Worth ~3.6B based on last round
- 18x fund returner
Accel
- Owns 26%
- Worth ~9B based on last round
- 4.5x fund returner
Competition
- Direct: Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism
- Challengers: WorkFusion, Kofax
- Big Tech: Microsoft (offers RPA for free with Office)
- Insurgents: Alloy, Kissflow, Bryter*
Increasing pressure from verticalized offerings, and startups selling bottom-up.
$PATH threats
- Automation market is changing
- RPA is becoming outdated
- AI, ML, and cloud are more important
- UiPath has *some* offerings here; but limited
- Has made acqs to modernize (e.g.: Cloud Elements)
- Needs to make more
Valuation
- Last round at $35B
- IPO expected to be at $26B
- 43x LTM sales multiple (!!)
- Compare that to $CRM, $MSFT, $ORCL
Check out the full, free report for more:
- Includes +100 hours of summarized research
- Analysis from RPA experts
- More details on valuation
Last night, the $GENERALIST experiment ended. By the numbers:
1. Raised 20 ETH on @viamirror from supporters 2. Shared 10 ETH w @jackbutcher 3. Shared 5 ETH w S-1 Club contributors 4. Released our coverage 5. Minted 3 NFTs 6. Sold 3 NFTs for combined 28.6 ETH
A few thoughts.
This might be the purest multi-dimension win I've been a part of.
- Writers won by earning ETH for their work.
- Artists won by earning ETH for their art.
- Collectors won by buying meaningful work.
- Supporters won by us selling at 30% profit.
Win/win/win/win.
This has made me rethink value.
At current prices, our work sold for +$59K. That is wild to think about for a report that's free.
Has every S-1 Club been "worth" that amount?
No.
There was combinatorial value created by bringing in new stakeholders and artists.