11 ms·

UiPath on track to be the best-ever European seed investment

71 points by imartin2k 6y ago

ethbr0 6y ago
I've worked in this space for ~10 years at this point, and happened to have a hand in picking UiPath as the RPA solution for a major US company. At the time of the shootout, I'd never heard of it. After testing it (and soliciting test user feedback), their genius is simple -- don't suck in a category of products where everything else sucks. To use an example more might be familiar with, they're the Salesforce, JetBrains, or HashiCorp of RPA. They don't do anything amazing, but they're executing like a modern software company. And all of their competitors (Automation Anywhere, OpenSpan/Pega, etc.) are still in the upjumped-inhouse-ugly-consultant-software mindset. AMA if you're curious. Edit: As to why they're valued at $35B, consider that their customer base is "Every company with IT too screwed up / incompetent to deliver new features in a timely manner."
- staysaasy 6y ago
  That's a very interesting assessment, thanks for typing this up! What are the most important use-cases that you see UIPath solving? I'm familiar with what they do at a high level, but I'm not sure who they're really most useful to in practice. Also curious who their typical buyer is - eg functional heads, IT, eng, or someone else...
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    The typical use case is "As a business user, I want to automate my existing workflow or create new functionality through automation. I have little or no ability to change anything (either due to vendor- or IT-apathy). Therefore my input, output, and applications-used are effectively frozen." Typically, applications will be a mix of web (potentially back to IE-11-only type stuff), Windows (including whatever old UI libs might have been used), and mainframe (via emulator). None of these have modern-style APIs (except for mainframe via the surprisingly foresightful HLLAPI). So tl;dr, "I want to do new things, but can't change anything." An example would be insurance companies having to quickly alter their processing, in a matter of months, due to the Affordable Care Act. Using the med insurance example, an average claims processors will have to interact with a claims system (3rd party Windows app), workflow management / audit system (3rd party Windows app), possibly core data systems (mainframe and/or legacy DB), and 1+ ancillary unsynchronized data systems (e.g. med review, communication portals, external processors for various functions). All of this to do a "pay the claim" process. For 100+ claims a day. So that "stack" is your average automation target, which you typically want 100% automation coverage against, or it isn't viable. The typical buyer is almost always on the business side. Either a business VP or Director, or someone under the CFO. CFO-initiated projects usually focus on cost saving by re-onshoring low-value work previously offshored to India et al. Data entry into legacy systems, etc. Surprisingly, another key reason is usually "increasing ability to own and quickly change processes" (vs simply headcount reduction)! But organizations are waking up to the peril of that's-too-legacy-to-change components.
    - Aeolun 6y ago
      I’m curious how this looks in reality. They install a tiny client on their machine that follows their clicks, evaluates what’s on the screen and then does more clicks? Then once it’s made the first time, it runs on their machine again. Or it runs on some central server?
      - isp 6y ago
        Think about it as a programming language but with integrated support for automating user interfaces. Typical workflow for an "unattended" automation (which runs on a headless VM in a data centre somewhere) would be: - Run "Developer Studio" on a dev machine - Write "code" (in a visual programming language) to tell the software how to interact with other user interfaces (there are various different methods for this: via browser plugin to interact with the DOM in a web browser, or using screenreader APIs for native Windows applications, or even via OCR-like methods if all else fails) - Save the automation "source code" (it's a visual programming language, based on VB.NET/C#, and the underlying source code is XAML files), ideally add to version control - "Publish" the new automation to a central "Orchestrator" server - which is responsible for pushing the new automation code to other headless VMs, and coordinating execution
        ethbr0 6y ago
        To add one addition piece: selectors / match rules. The key to getting automation reliable is being able to reliably identify target objects (e.g. button, grid cell, etc). ... reliably identify it, regardless of what screwed up, unsupported, what-were-these-devs-thinking underlying code. I once had to automate a webpage that was dynamically built, at user runtime, from a mainframe screen. Of course without any classes or id tags anywhere. So if the tool doesn't give you a toolbox big enough to handle pathological cases, it's not really fit for purpose.
      - donarb 6y ago
        It's not always just a screen logging thing. You can automate manual non-computer stuff as well. For example I had a client who had a manual process where a clerk entered info from physical cancelled checks into a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was then fed into their accounting system for balancing. I wrote some Python code that would take a PDF of scanned check images, run the file through Google vision to OCR it, then pull the check info from the scanned data and put it into the spreadsheet. The accuracy is pretty good and any errors are put into a comment column of the spreadsheet where the user can review it. This code runs in a Windows server and becomes a UIPath bot in the system. So the user who is not very technically inclined merely has to log into the system, upload a scanned PDF and will receive the scanned results after the batch runs.
- qeternity 6y ago
  > Edit: As to why they're valued at $3.5B... You’ve got the decimal place wrong. It’s $35 billion
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    Fixed! Thanks. I glanced at the wrong valuation quote when composing: "That means that in six years the three VCs will soon have turned $1.6m into at least $3.5bn" Either seems an astonishing number for "we click things on the screen" software.
    - qeternity 6y ago
      Indeed, a success story of simply "don't suck at thing X". Fortunately Thing X actually has a lot of value to a lot of people. I enjoy seeing this story far more than Facebook et al.
- rubiquity 6y ago
  Sounds like a market begging for more competition.
- cosmie 6y ago
  > Edit: As to why they're valued at $35B, consider that their customer base is "Every company with IT too screwed up / incompetent to deliver new features in a timely manner." And that's not even the totality of their potential customer base. It just happens to be their primary focus (and pricing model) right now. There are a huge number of repetitive processes/workflows that simply don't bubble up to the purview of IT. They either don't directly intersect the systems centrally managed by IT, don't warrant the cost/time/effort required for IT to get involved, aren't formally documented or known by IT in the first place, or IT simply doesn't provide any official channels to engage with them for automation-related support. UIPath's current market positioning and pricing scheme is geared solidly at business cases built off of "ROI of RPA vs. IT modernization efforts". With a focus on automating singular processes occurring at a high frequency. Which alone is enough to support their valuation. But they could also trivially expand their positioning to include "power user" oriented pricing plans and move into that area of the market as well, where singular users (or teams) have a high quantity of low volume workflows.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    I talked with them a bit about it at various times. To me, their core value proposition should be "make IT's life easier." An adversarial relationship with every company's IT department is a rocky road. When with minimal product pivoting, they can be the savior of IT. Don't bill yourself as "replace IT," do so as "rapid prototyping." What's the biggest pain in the ass about internal product development? Getting users to explain what they do and tell you what they want built. By giving them the ability to self-execute, you invert that. "Mock up what you want in UiPath. Run it for 6 months to a year to tweak it how you want it. Then come to us and have it implemented properly." Cleaner, more accurate specs (because they come from actual production); business does value discovery on their own; IT doesn't have to deal with hotball "this needs to be built in the next 14 days" demands trashing their strategic timelines.
    - sokoloff 6y ago
      You might as well ask them to come to you with 6-months perfect Excel sheets for reimplementation. By the time they get there, they’re 98% not interested in switching from something working and they understand/control into something that won’t work for a while, will likely have some bugs, and won’t be in their control at all if they want changes.
- isp 6y ago
  I had a hand in picking UiPath a few years ago for a major UK company. Your comment hits the nail on the head. I like to draw comparisons between UiPath's software and Excel: - Highly underrated by most people in IT - Super fast initial learning curve to start doing something useful - Yet also possible to use for years without learning all aspects - ... and just as easy to make a huge unmaintainable mess in the wrong hands
  - sjs7007 6y ago
    > - ... and just as easy to make a huge unmaintainable mess in the wrong hands Given how well Excel has done this con doesn't matter and might even be a pro I guess.
- hugs 6y ago
  While I got your time, how exactly is RPA different than a UI automation tool like Selenium?
  - Galxeagle 6y ago
    Not the parent commenter, but I've also spent time this space. UIPath and other RPA tools interact with applications in the same way as Selenium, but also provide all the features that make it a 'platform' that enterprise IT folks can understand and approve (if not manage directly). I like to say that it's easy enough to build a Selenium script for something simple like read a dozen PDF's and populate a webform, but when you scale to dozens of PC's running 24/7 (often in a broom closet because the client org hasn't mastered Cloud), then the features RPA tools offer like logging, security (you're using real application credentials to log in), scheduling and load balancing, and workflow management (this one failed, someone manually do it) start becoming useful, and more importantly, accessible to someone who doesn't necessarily have a developer background.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    For web-only, it's worse. For most enterprises, it provides a unified flow across the variety of technologies their core applications are built in: heavyweight Windows, mainframe, Java, etc. (Thanks for all your work building awesome things!)
    - hugs 6y ago
      Thanks. I remember reading several blog posts by RPA vendors how RPA is totally not like Selenium... and the more I read the more suspicious I got.
      - ethbr0 6y ago
        Does it use anchor rules to identify target controls? Yes. Does it provide actions one can execute against those controls? Yes. Most RPA vendors are cross-trained from the business side, rather than having a background in tech. So they're generally not very familiar with the broader tech world. (Their dev teams are, but those aren't the folks writing blog posts)
- secondcoming 6y ago
  RPA?
  - pjgalbraith 6y ago
    Robotic Process Automation. Basically tools to automate processes via UI interactions.
  - ragebol 6y ago
    Robotic Process Automation. I just don't understand that term though. There are no robots involved. As a robotics dude working with actual physical robots, that have wheels and arms etc, I got a bunch of recruiters for RPA roles recently. Why the confusing name for RPA?
    - pjgalbraith 6y ago
      I'm not sure myself but I wonder if it is more common to use robot to refer to a crawler/scraper in this space. These tools are basically screen scrapers. I have seen web crawlers referred to as robots (robots.txt files are used to configure crawlers). These days we tend to shorten "web robot" and use "bot" to refer to these programs. It kind of makes sense if you look at it from the perspective of it being a "machine that resembles a human". Not that I agree with it.
      - ethbr0 6y ago
        Because some jackass hype VP coined the term, and by the time anyone with technical knowledge opined there had already been a bunch of ad fluff and mindshare pieces using it. It's a terrible name and a terrible acronym, superceded only by the absurdity of the "post-RPA" terms that companies are now trying to differentiate themselves via (e.g. "intelligent process automation").
- yourapostasy 6y ago
  > After testing it (and soliciting test user feedback), their genius is simple -- don't suck in a category of products where everything else sucks. If you are a non-technical user, they will look like magic. But there were still lots of cases (lots of government sites, integrating with custom programs to pass areas of the screen into so I could run a captcha solver against it, React-heavy sites were the edge cases I ran into) where I could not get UiPath to work for me when I tried it a couple years ago. If they've changed a lot since then, then I'll give them another shot. At the time, I gave up, buckled down and scraped the cursed sites using a variety of means. I really, really wanted to champion them for the solution at the time. It would have drastically increased the value-add of my deliverable, as the subject-to-change web GUI part that we simply could not get around for the client other than scraping could be updated by the client themselves instead of looping me in for another custom coding session simply because some intern decided it would be cool to change the field names at the same time they added the nifty new UI animation/widget du jour.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    Most of the tools were late to the game on supporting React: or really, virtual DOM. They're gradually catching up as more sites are written in modern web tech. But it can still be a pain in the ass.
- stevegalla 6y ago
  How is the offering from companies like UiPath any different from “macros”, such as AutoHotKeys or Macro Express?
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    Userbase scale, supported technologies, and integrated platform vs single-purpose tool. When you don't have the luxury of picking and choosing opportunities, or not automating part of a workflow, compatibility matters.
- sjs7007 6y ago
  How does Blue Prism compare? From my understanding it seemed like UI path is the #1 player here but I was looking for an investment opportunity before the IPO into RPA sector so ended up getting some Blue Prism till UI Path can IPO
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    This is UiPath's IDE UI: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lgiChrgzzoU&t=2m28s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lgiChrgzzoU&t=2m28s This is Blue Prism's (new!) IDE UI: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KIaPsr0U_sU&t=5m23s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KIaPsr0U_sU&t=5m23s IMHO, Blue Prism feels a lot like a product of IBM. A tool where inefficiency and steep learning curve matter less than guardrails to be able to staff 100 minimally educated "developers" on a project and get something the client will sign off on. There's a reason UiPath's target customer is "everyone." Blue Prism's target customer is "automation consultancies." And I can say this for certainty, because when we tried to buy Blue Prism, we had to convince them to think about selling to us. They know their UX is terrible.
    - sjs7007 6y ago
      I see. UX aside though, is there any advantage to Blue Prism? Just wondering if there's room for both here. Also what are your thoughts on the Microsoft offering?
      - ethbr0 6y ago
        Blue Prism makes it almost impossible not to bash out something resembling proper, abstracted object oriented design (reusable objects, methods on those objects, etc). Unfortunately, it does this in a hamfisted way that makes the product harder to learn and use than it needs to be. It's fine if that's all you use, but you're not going to be able to quickly crosstrain / ramp someone up on it. IMHO, that defeats a core value proposition: enable non-developers to develop. I've demo'd the MS offering (Power Automate), but haven't daily driven it. It's slick. The question I have is where MS is positioning it. I don't think it's an independent product, so I think they might see it as filling in a gap in the O365 offering? I don't think legacy support is a major point for them, which will probably be good enough for most people.
dang 6y ago
Interesting - although there have been 20+ submissions about UiPath: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=UiPath&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... the current thread is the only one with any comments: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=comments%3E0%20UiPath&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
- ethbr0 6y ago
  It's a pretty frothy / hype-driven area, so astroturf makes sense. Now you've got me curious about the submitters...
  - dang 6y ago
    Oh I didn't mean to insinuate that! (which would be against the site guidelines btw: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) I was just curious about a $35B company, arguably the most successful European tech investment of all time, never having been discussed on HN before. There have been comments though: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=uipath&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
    - swyx 6y ago
      i think maybe because it doesnt target developers - it can often replace them, or at least primarily interface with crappy legacy systems that developers are completely uninterested in. but yeah i'd expect more discussion for how unique a story this is, esp with the Europe angle.
      - ethbr0 6y ago
        Absolutely! Here's how conversations typically go -- Dev: "Why are you using this? Why don't you use X?" Business: "Are you willing to write interface code to {legacy system}?" Dev: {crickets} Business: "Well, RPA it is then." To dang's point, apologies for the insinuation, which doesn't seem to be borne out by the submitters' post histories anyway. A more supported hypothesis is as you said: "This isn't something that a lot of HN-type devs care about or see." In the same way we don't get many posts about Oracle, VMware, or SAP here, relative to their actual deployments.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/dnJax https://archive.is/dnJax
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  Also possible to Command + . to prevent the popup from the loading.
  - throwawaysea 6y ago
    Is there a way to do this on a phone?
loandigger 6y ago
Asshole design on sifted, can't read the article without joining.
- sammm 6y ago
  The pop-up is a little sneaky to be honest. I am quite enjoying the content sifted has been putting out recently so I decided in this instance I would create an account. I then tried to view the article again and then the pop-up appears again with different wording, letting you know it is actually a paywall, so creating an account isn't enough.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    I just used Firefox's reader mode. Half the time it cuts through modal paywalls, if they loaded the content behind.
    - bballer 6y ago
      Yeah can also just inspect, delete a few overlays, and then remove the overflow from the body element and your in.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  Command + . after it is mostly loaded before the popup comes ujp.
- ivanche 6y ago
  https://www.outline.com/MGNcMU https://www.outline.com/MGNcMU
dicomdan 6y ago
Wikipedia says it’s headquartered in New York City.
johnnycerberus 6y ago
Moreover, I think this is also the first unicorn ever in post-communist Romania. Tells much about the advantages of a free market over a planned one.
- pavlov 6y ago
  The Soviets invented Tetris though. If I had to choose between Tetris and UiPath...
walshemj 6y ago
You not counting that bank manager in Cambridge that funded Acorn (aka ARM)
flyinglizard 6y ago
I have to say that the homepage of UiPath is pretty dystopian, from the mechanical birds which took over the office in the video on top, to the automation process which rejects the candidate "Peter The Farmer" in the animation below.
Galxeagle 6y ago
I'm surprised to see such an optimistic outlook for UIPath; Microsoft has started encroaching on the space with their Power Automate platform and their desktop automation flows. They use similar-looking UIs (I believe it's Windows Workflow Foundation) and given that Power Automate has the added bonus of natively integrated connections with the rest of the O365 suite, I expected UIPath's outlook to take a hit like Slack did when MS Teams was rolled out.
snidane 6y ago
UiPath and RPA in general seems to be a great complement to no-code IT systems. What you'd normally glue together using code, in no-code environment you just emulate a human clicking at things. I guess the more no-code startups we see out there, the more stuff for gluing by RPA in the future.
nickpp 6y ago
There is little surprise this best ever European investment comes from the edge of the EU, from Romania. A corrupt country with plenty of laws but which are laxly applied, it offers enough freedom and opportunity to still allow innovation and creation. While the old, Western Europe is busy making up rules and barriers against much envied high-tech US successes, in Romania the American dream is still alive. While unions and never ending worker rights suffocate private initiative in the West, in the East meritocracy is still a thing (when not subsumed by corruption). And while the West sees the Internet as a dangerous medium that must be reined and brought under control, at the edge of the Empire it is still seen as a Wild West, a land of opportunity where anybody can stake his ground and make his money. Sometimes that means scams and malware but sometimes something good may come up. Because you can't have one without the other - you can't have reward without the risk. The more you try to control, the more you try to pacify, the less success and peaks you have. The more rules and regulations you impose, the less innovation and creation you get.
- justusw 6y ago
  And what exactly are those rules that Western Europe is coming up with?
  - blub 6y ago
    To give one example: building has become very expensive because of all sorts of regulation, climate-support actions, etc. Taxes are so heavy in Germany, it makes more sense to not work under a certain income limit than have a small side-business if you can afford it.
- alexdumitru 6y ago
  You described really well the advantages of Romania's lack of regulation. I think that's also part of the reason we have high quality gigabit internet connections for just 8 euro. Of course, there are also a lot of disadvantages of living here, but it seems like while we're getting closer to Western Europe's standards of living, we also lose the advantages you speak of. And about freedom, I also think you're right. I've travelled a lot and I'm pretty sure we have much more freedoms in Romania compared to the western part of Europe and most of the other developed countries outside Europe. This also comes with its ups and down though.
freshetmusky 6y ago
They tried to get me to use it at work instead of ansible. It seem like an overengineered mess in comparison to anything in opensource devops, but I'm not sure who they are trying to appeal to.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  Not you. If you can use ansible, for God's sake use ansible.
ur-whale 6y ago
https://archive.is/dnJax https://archive.is/dnJax

71 points by imartin2k 6y ago

I've worked in this space for ~10 years at this point, and happened to have a hand in picking UiPath as the RPA solution for a major US company. At the time of the shootout, I'd never heard of it. After testing it (and soliciting test user feedback), their genius is simple -- don't suck in a category of products where everything else sucks. To use an example more might be familiar with, they're the Salesforce, JetBrains, or HashiCorp of RPA. They don't do anything amazing, but they're executing like a modern software company. And all of their competitors (Automation Anywhere, OpenSpan/Pega, etc.) are still in the upjumped-inhouse-ugly-consultant-software mindset. AMA if you're curious. Edit: As to why they're valued at $35B, consider that their customer base is "Every company with IT too screwed up / incompetent to deliver new features in a timely manner."

staysaasy 6y ago
That's a very interesting assessment, thanks for typing this up! What are the most important use-cases that you see UIPath solving? I'm familiar with what they do at a high level, but I'm not sure who they're really most useful to in practice. Also curious who their typical buyer is - eg functional heads, IT, eng, or someone else...
- ethbr0 6y ago
  The typical use case is "As a business user, I want to automate my existing workflow or create new functionality through automation. I have little or no ability to change anything (either due to vendor- or IT-apathy). Therefore my input, output, and applications-used are effectively frozen." Typically, applications will be a mix of web (potentially back to IE-11-only type stuff), Windows (including whatever old UI libs might have been used), and mainframe (via emulator). None of these have modern-style APIs (except for mainframe via the surprisingly foresightful HLLAPI). So tl;dr, "I want to do new things, but can't change anything." An example would be insurance companies having to quickly alter their processing, in a matter of months, due to the Affordable Care Act. Using the med insurance example, an average claims processors will have to interact with a claims system (3rd party Windows app), workflow management / audit system (3rd party Windows app), possibly core data systems (mainframe and/or legacy DB), and 1+ ancillary unsynchronized data systems (e.g. med review, communication portals, external processors for various functions). All of this to do a "pay the claim" process. For 100+ claims a day. So that "stack" is your average automation target, which you typically want 100% automation coverage against, or it isn't viable. The typical buyer is almost always on the business side. Either a business VP or Director, or someone under the CFO. CFO-initiated projects usually focus on cost saving by re-onshoring low-value work previously offshored to India et al. Data entry into legacy systems, etc. Surprisingly, another key reason is usually "increasing ability to own and quickly change processes" (vs simply headcount reduction)! But organizations are waking up to the peril of that's-too-legacy-to-change components.
  - Aeolun 6y ago
    I’m curious how this looks in reality. They install a tiny client on their machine that follows their clicks, evaluates what’s on the screen and then does more clicks? Then once it’s made the first time, it runs on their machine again. Or it runs on some central server?
    - isp 6y ago
      Think about it as a programming language but with integrated support for automating user interfaces. Typical workflow for an "unattended" automation (which runs on a headless VM in a data centre somewhere) would be: - Run "Developer Studio" on a dev machine - Write "code" (in a visual programming language) to tell the software how to interact with other user interfaces (there are various different methods for this: via browser plugin to interact with the DOM in a web browser, or using screenreader APIs for native Windows applications, or even via OCR-like methods if all else fails) - Save the automation "source code" (it's a visual programming language, based on VB.NET/C#, and the underlying source code is XAML files), ideally add to version control - "Publish" the new automation to a central "Orchestrator" server - which is responsible for pushing the new automation code to other headless VMs, and coordinating execution
      - ethbr0 6y ago
        To add one addition piece: selectors / match rules. The key to getting automation reliable is being able to reliably identify target objects (e.g. button, grid cell, etc). ... reliably identify it, regardless of what screwed up, unsupported, what-were-these-devs-thinking underlying code. I once had to automate a webpage that was dynamically built, at user runtime, from a mainframe screen. Of course without any classes or id tags anywhere. So if the tool doesn't give you a toolbox big enough to handle pathological cases, it's not really fit for purpose.
    - donarb 6y ago
      It's not always just a screen logging thing. You can automate manual non-computer stuff as well. For example I had a client who had a manual process where a clerk entered info from physical cancelled checks into a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet was then fed into their accounting system for balancing. I wrote some Python code that would take a PDF of scanned check images, run the file through Google vision to OCR it, then pull the check info from the scanned data and put it into the spreadsheet. The accuracy is pretty good and any errors are put into a comment column of the spreadsheet where the user can review it. This code runs in a Windows server and becomes a UIPath bot in the system. So the user who is not very technically inclined merely has to log into the system, upload a scanned PDF and will receive the scanned results after the batch runs.
qeternity 6y ago
> Edit: As to why they're valued at $3.5B... You’ve got the decimal place wrong. It’s $35 billion
- ethbr0 6y ago
  Fixed! Thanks. I glanced at the wrong valuation quote when composing: "That means that in six years the three VCs will soon have turned $1.6m into at least $3.5bn" Either seems an astonishing number for "we click things on the screen" software.
  - qeternity 6y ago
    Indeed, a success story of simply "don't suck at thing X". Fortunately Thing X actually has a lot of value to a lot of people. I enjoy seeing this story far more than Facebook et al.
rubiquity 6y ago
Sounds like a market begging for more competition.
cosmie 6y ago
> Edit: As to why they're valued at $35B, consider that their customer base is "Every company with IT too screwed up / incompetent to deliver new features in a timely manner." And that's not even the totality of their potential customer base. It just happens to be their primary focus (and pricing model) right now. There are a huge number of repetitive processes/workflows that simply don't bubble up to the purview of IT. They either don't directly intersect the systems centrally managed by IT, don't warrant the cost/time/effort required for IT to get involved, aren't formally documented or known by IT in the first place, or IT simply doesn't provide any official channels to engage with them for automation-related support. UIPath's current market positioning and pricing scheme is geared solidly at business cases built off of "ROI of RPA vs. IT modernization efforts". With a focus on automating singular processes occurring at a high frequency. Which alone is enough to support their valuation. But they could also trivially expand their positioning to include "power user" oriented pricing plans and move into that area of the market as well, where singular users (or teams) have a high quantity of low volume workflows.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  I talked with them a bit about it at various times. To me, their core value proposition should be "make IT's life easier." An adversarial relationship with every company's IT department is a rocky road. When with minimal product pivoting, they can be the savior of IT. Don't bill yourself as "replace IT," do so as "rapid prototyping." What's the biggest pain in the ass about internal product development? Getting users to explain what they do and tell you what they want built. By giving them the ability to self-execute, you invert that. "Mock up what you want in UiPath. Run it for 6 months to a year to tweak it how you want it. Then come to us and have it implemented properly." Cleaner, more accurate specs (because they come from actual production); business does value discovery on their own; IT doesn't have to deal with hotball "this needs to be built in the next 14 days" demands trashing their strategic timelines.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    You might as well ask them to come to you with 6-months perfect Excel sheets for reimplementation. By the time they get there, they’re 98% not interested in switching from something working and they understand/control into something that won’t work for a while, will likely have some bugs, and won’t be in their control at all if they want changes.
isp 6y ago
I had a hand in picking UiPath a few years ago for a major UK company. Your comment hits the nail on the head. I like to draw comparisons between UiPath's software and Excel: - Highly underrated by most people in IT - Super fast initial learning curve to start doing something useful - Yet also possible to use for years without learning all aspects - ... and just as easy to make a huge unmaintainable mess in the wrong hands
- sjs7007 6y ago
  > - ... and just as easy to make a huge unmaintainable mess in the wrong hands Given how well Excel has done this con doesn't matter and might even be a pro I guess.
hugs 6y ago
While I got your time, how exactly is RPA different than a UI automation tool like Selenium?
- Galxeagle 6y ago
  Not the parent commenter, but I've also spent time this space. UIPath and other RPA tools interact with applications in the same way as Selenium, but also provide all the features that make it a 'platform' that enterprise IT folks can understand and approve (if not manage directly). I like to say that it's easy enough to build a Selenium script for something simple like read a dozen PDF's and populate a webform, but when you scale to dozens of PC's running 24/7 (often in a broom closet because the client org hasn't mastered Cloud), then the features RPA tools offer like logging, security (you're using real application credentials to log in), scheduling and load balancing, and workflow management (this one failed, someone manually do it) start becoming useful, and more importantly, accessible to someone who doesn't necessarily have a developer background.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  For web-only, it's worse. For most enterprises, it provides a unified flow across the variety of technologies their core applications are built in: heavyweight Windows, mainframe, Java, etc. (Thanks for all your work building awesome things!)
  - hugs 6y ago
    Thanks. I remember reading several blog posts by RPA vendors how RPA is totally not like Selenium... and the more I read the more suspicious I got.
    - ethbr0 6y ago
      Does it use anchor rules to identify target controls? Yes. Does it provide actions one can execute against those controls? Yes. Most RPA vendors are cross-trained from the business side, rather than having a background in tech. So they're generally not very familiar with the broader tech world. (Their dev teams are, but those aren't the folks writing blog posts)
secondcoming 6y ago
RPA?
- pjgalbraith 6y ago
  Robotic Process Automation. Basically tools to automate processes via UI interactions.
- ragebol 6y ago
  Robotic Process Automation. I just don't understand that term though. There are no robots involved. As a robotics dude working with actual physical robots, that have wheels and arms etc, I got a bunch of recruiters for RPA roles recently. Why the confusing name for RPA?
  - pjgalbraith 6y ago
    I'm not sure myself but I wonder if it is more common to use robot to refer to a crawler/scraper in this space. These tools are basically screen scrapers. I have seen web crawlers referred to as robots (robots.txt files are used to configure crawlers). These days we tend to shorten "web robot" and use "bot" to refer to these programs. It kind of makes sense if you look at it from the perspective of it being a "machine that resembles a human". Not that I agree with it.
    - ethbr0 6y ago
      Because some jackass hype VP coined the term, and by the time anyone with technical knowledge opined there had already been a bunch of ad fluff and mindshare pieces using it. It's a terrible name and a terrible acronym, superceded only by the absurdity of the "post-RPA" terms that companies are now trying to differentiate themselves via (e.g. "intelligent process automation").
yourapostasy 6y ago
> After testing it (and soliciting test user feedback), their genius is simple -- don't suck in a category of products where everything else sucks. If you are a non-technical user, they will look like magic. But there were still lots of cases (lots of government sites, integrating with custom programs to pass areas of the screen into so I could run a captcha solver against it, React-heavy sites were the edge cases I ran into) where I could not get UiPath to work for me when I tried it a couple years ago. If they've changed a lot since then, then I'll give them another shot. At the time, I gave up, buckled down and scraped the cursed sites using a variety of means. I really, really wanted to champion them for the solution at the time. It would have drastically increased the value-add of my deliverable, as the subject-to-change web GUI part that we simply could not get around for the client other than scraping could be updated by the client themselves instead of looping me in for another custom coding session simply because some intern decided it would be cool to change the field names at the same time they added the nifty new UI animation/widget du jour.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  Most of the tools were late to the game on supporting React: or really, virtual DOM. They're gradually catching up as more sites are written in modern web tech. But it can still be a pain in the ass.
stevegalla 6y ago
How is the offering from companies like UiPath any different from “macros”, such as AutoHotKeys or Macro Express?
- ethbr0 6y ago
  Userbase scale, supported technologies, and integrated platform vs single-purpose tool. When you don't have the luxury of picking and choosing opportunities, or not automating part of a workflow, compatibility matters.
sjs7007 6y ago
How does Blue Prism compare? From my understanding it seemed like UI path is the #1 player here but I was looking for an investment opportunity before the IPO into RPA sector so ended up getting some Blue Prism till UI Path can IPO
- ethbr0 6y ago
  This is UiPath's IDE UI: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lgiChrgzzoU&t=2m28s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lgiChrgzzoU&t=2m28s This is Blue Prism's (new!) IDE UI: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KIaPsr0U_sU&t=5m23s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KIaPsr0U_sU&t=5m23s IMHO, Blue Prism feels a lot like a product of IBM. A tool where inefficiency and steep learning curve matter less than guardrails to be able to staff 100 minimally educated "developers" on a project and get something the client will sign off on. There's a reason UiPath's target customer is "everyone." Blue Prism's target customer is "automation consultancies." And I can say this for certainty, because when we tried to buy Blue Prism, we had to convince them to think about selling to us. They know their UX is terrible.
  - sjs7007 6y ago
    I see. UX aside though, is there any advantage to Blue Prism? Just wondering if there's room for both here. Also what are your thoughts on the Microsoft offering?
    - ethbr0 6y ago
      Blue Prism makes it almost impossible not to bash out something resembling proper, abstracted object oriented design (reusable objects, methods on those objects, etc). Unfortunately, it does this in a hamfisted way that makes the product harder to learn and use than it needs to be. It's fine if that's all you use, but you're not going to be able to quickly crosstrain / ramp someone up on it. IMHO, that defeats a core value proposition: enable non-developers to develop. I've demo'd the MS offering (Power Automate), but haven't daily driven it. It's slick. The question I have is where MS is positioning it. I don't think it's an independent product, so I think they might see it as filling in a gap in the O365 offering? I don't think legacy support is a major point for them, which will probably be good enough for most people.

dang 6y ago

Interesting - although there have been 20+ submissions about UiPath: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=UiPath&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... the current thread is the only one with any comments: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=comments%3E0%20UiPath&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

ethbr0 6y ago
It's a pretty frothy / hype-driven area, so astroturf makes sense. Now you've got me curious about the submitters...
- dang 6y ago
  Oh I didn't mean to insinuate that! (which would be against the site guidelines btw: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) I was just curious about a $35B company, arguably the most successful European tech investment of all time, never having been discussed on HN before. There have been comments though: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=uipath&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
  - swyx 6y ago
    i think maybe because it doesnt target developers - it can often replace them, or at least primarily interface with crappy legacy systems that developers are completely uninterested in. but yeah i'd expect more discussion for how unique a story this is, esp with the Europe angle.
    - ethbr0 6y ago
      Absolutely! Here's how conversations typically go -- Dev: "Why are you using this? Why don't you use X?" Business: "Are you willing to write interface code to {legacy system}?" Dev: {crickets} Business: "Well, RPA it is then." To dang's point, apologies for the insinuation, which doesn't seem to be borne out by the submitters' post histories anyway. A more supported hypothesis is as you said: "This isn't something that a lot of HN-type devs care about or see." In the same way we don't get many posts about Oracle, VMware, or SAP here, relative to their actual deployments.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/dnJax https://archive.is/dnJax

ketamine__ 6y ago
Also possible to Command + . to prevent the popup from the loading.
- throwawaysea 6y ago
  Is there a way to do this on a phone?

loandigger 6y ago

Asshole design on sifted, can't read the article without joining.

sammm 6y ago
The pop-up is a little sneaky to be honest. I am quite enjoying the content sifted has been putting out recently so I decided in this instance I would create an account. I then tried to view the article again and then the pop-up appears again with different wording, letting you know it is actually a paywall, so creating an account isn't enough.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  I just used Firefox's reader mode. Half the time it cuts through modal paywalls, if they loaded the content behind.
  - bballer 6y ago
    Yeah can also just inspect, delete a few overlays, and then remove the overflow from the body element and your in.
ketamine__ 6y ago
Command + . after it is mostly loaded before the popup comes ujp.
ivanche 6y ago
https://www.outline.com/MGNcMU https://www.outline.com/MGNcMU

dicomdan 6y ago

Wikipedia says it’s headquartered in New York City.

johnnycerberus 6y ago

Moreover, I think this is also the first unicorn ever in post-communist Romania. Tells much about the advantages of a free market over a planned one.

pavlov 6y ago
The Soviets invented Tetris though. If I had to choose between Tetris and UiPath...

walshemj 6y ago

You not counting that bank manager in Cambridge that funded Acorn (aka ARM)

flyinglizard 6y ago

I have to say that the homepage of UiPath is pretty dystopian, from the mechanical birds which took over the office in the video on top, to the automation process which rejects the candidate "Peter The Farmer" in the animation below.

Galxeagle 6y ago

I'm surprised to see such an optimistic outlook for UIPath; Microsoft has started encroaching on the space with their Power Automate platform and their desktop automation flows. They use similar-looking UIs (I believe it's Windows Workflow Foundation) and given that Power Automate has the added bonus of natively integrated connections with the rest of the O365 suite, I expected UIPath's outlook to take a hit like Slack did when MS Teams was rolled out.

snidane 6y ago

UiPath and RPA in general seems to be a great complement to no-code IT systems. What you'd normally glue together using code, in no-code environment you just emulate a human clicking at things. I guess the more no-code startups we see out there, the more stuff for gluing by RPA in the future.

nickpp 6y ago

There is little surprise this best ever European investment comes from the edge of the EU, from Romania. A corrupt country with plenty of laws but which are laxly applied, it offers enough freedom and opportunity to still allow innovation and creation. While the old, Western Europe is busy making up rules and barriers against much envied high-tech US successes, in Romania the American dream is still alive. While unions and never ending worker rights suffocate private initiative in the West, in the East meritocracy is still a thing (when not subsumed by corruption). And while the West sees the Internet as a dangerous medium that must be reined and brought under control, at the edge of the Empire it is still seen as a Wild West, a land of opportunity where anybody can stake his ground and make his money. Sometimes that means scams and malware but sometimes something good may come up. Because you can't have one without the other - you can't have reward without the risk. The more you try to control, the more you try to pacify, the less success and peaks you have. The more rules and regulations you impose, the less innovation and creation you get.

justusw 6y ago
And what exactly are those rules that Western Europe is coming up with?
- blub 6y ago
  To give one example: building has become very expensive because of all sorts of regulation, climate-support actions, etc. Taxes are so heavy in Germany, it makes more sense to not work under a certain income limit than have a small side-business if you can afford it.
alexdumitru 6y ago
You described really well the advantages of Romania's lack of regulation. I think that's also part of the reason we have high quality gigabit internet connections for just 8 euro. Of course, there are also a lot of disadvantages of living here, but it seems like while we're getting closer to Western Europe's standards of living, we also lose the advantages you speak of. And about freedom, I also think you're right. I've travelled a lot and I'm pretty sure we have much more freedoms in Romania compared to the western part of Europe and most of the other developed countries outside Europe. This also comes with its ups and down though.

freshetmusky 6y ago

They tried to get me to use it at work instead of ansible. It seem like an overengineered mess in comparison to anything in opensource devops, but I'm not sure who they are trying to appeal to.

ethbr0 6y ago
Not you. If you can use ansible, for God's sake use ansible.

ur-whale 6y ago

https://archive.is/dnJax https://archive.is/dnJax