In January 2019, “Raising the next Romanian Unicorn” beneficiated of three awesome speakers: James Clark – Head of Tech and Lifesciences, Primary Markets, London Stock Exchange Group, Alex Mihailciuc – Global Head of Pre-sales at UiPath – Robotic Process Automation and Gabi Pralea, Regional Corporate Director at BCR, Senior Corporate Banker. Here are some highlights of the event:
How do you develop a unicorn company? You have to think beyond this desideratum and have a real and impacting mission in mind. “UiPath’s ambition was not to become a unicorn. Our mission is to restore people’s dignity to their job. People are not made for copy-paste. “a valuable advice offered by Alex Mihailciuc, Global Head of Pre-sales at UiPath, to all participants at the Startup Grind Bucharest. #StartupGrind.
“You need to be a unicorn to IPO. You need $100m ARR to IPO. You need to be a household name to IPO. Myth, myth, myth. The tech industry tells itself a lot of myths about IPOs.” At Startup Grind, James Clark – Head of Tech and Lifesciences, Primary Markets, London Stock Exchange Group, demolished those myths and many others.
“Consultancy program focused on education and scaling the business, preparing them for a large spectrum of funding opportunities (banks, private equity investors, EU programs etc).” The new BCR initiative, detailed by Gabi Pralea, Regional Corporate Director at BCR aims to encourage innovation, facilitate the exchange of ideas, and foster networks that might be the beginning of strategic opportunities and long-term partnerships for start-ups and SMEs.
About our speakers:
James joined the London Stock Exchange in January 2016 in Business Development with a sector focus on the Technology and Lifesciences industries. James brings this sector focus to help startups and investors by demolishing the myths around public markets. James is based in London but integrates with colleagues across Europe, Israel, Asia and the rest of the world. Over nearly 20 years, James has developed a broad range of experience in marketing, policy and deep industry knowledge around venture funding and tech startups. In recent years, as a “one-man think tank” at the British Venture Capital Association, James published policy research into the role of technology and innovation. His three major research papers Tech Country, The Missing Piece, and VC Evolved, looked at how early-stage entrepreneurship interacts with sources of growth funding. Alongside this work, James is a member of the Tech Nation Future Fifty judging panel, is a judge for Diversity UK’s 100 Asian Tech Stars, as well as the founder of TLA Triage, a free advice service for startups under the auspices of Tech London Advocates. James has an MBA from Cass Business School in London and a BA in Political Science from Macquarie University in Sydney.
Alex Mihailciuc – UiPath is a highly motivated and goal-oriented leader with exceptional leadership and demonstrated experience in planning, developing and implementing IT solutions that support the business strategy and increase business capabilities. From 2017, Alexandru Mihailciuc joined UiPath as Global Head of Pre-sales. UiPath, the leading enterprise Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software company, was co-founded by Romanian entrepreneurs Daniel Dines and Marius Tirca. Having emerged out of Bucharest in 2015, the startup saw an accelerated growth, triggered by the market’s appetite for UiPath’s first-in-class RPA platform. By the end of 2017, the company already counted around 600 employees and a customer base of 700 clients and had moved its HQ to New York. In March 2018, following a Series-B financing round, UiPath reached a valuation of USD 1 billion and received unicorn status. Later in the year, its valuation shot up to USD 3 billion. Having already automated millions of repetitive, mind-numbing tasks for business and government organizations all over the world, the UiPath platform improves productivity, customer experience, and employee job satisfaction. A global company today, UiPath employs over 2,000 people across 16 countries that serve its over 2,000 customers and is considered to be the fastest-growing enterprise software company in history. To date the company has attracted over USD 400 million in funding from Accel, CapitalG, Credo Ventures, Earlybird’s Digital East Fund, IVP, Kleiner Perkins, Madrona Venture Group, Meritech Capital, Seedcamp and Sequoia.
