20VC: Inside UiPath, The World's Fastest Growing Startup, How The Best Leaders Approach Decision-Making & WhY Vulnerability Is Central To SuccessFul Leadership Today with Brandon Deer, VP of Operations & Strategy @ UiPath
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 20 December 2019
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Brandon Deer is VP of Operations & Strategy @ UiPath, one of the world's fastest-growing companies providing a complete software platform to help organizations efficiently automate business processes through robotic process automation. To date, UiPath has raised over $977m in funding from some of the best in the world including Sequoia, Accel, Meritech, IVP, CapitalG, Kleiner Perkins, Coatue and more. As for Brandon, prior to UiPath he spent 4 years as Vice President @ OpenView Partners where he made investments in Expensify, Logz.io, VTS and Pipefy to name a couple. Before OpenView, Brandon spent close to 4 years at Intuit in Strategy and Business Development.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Brandon made his way from being a rising star in the world of venture with Openview to leading one of the fastest-growing companies in history in UiPath? What has been the most surprising element in making the transition from investor to operator?
2.) How does Brandon think about decision-making today? How does he determine what to spend time on vs what to delegate? What does he mean when he says, "you have to think whether it is rubber or crystal?" How does that ultimately guide decision-making?
3.) What does the UiPath software actually do? What is the relationship between RPA and AI? Where do they differ? Where do they intersect? Recently, RPA has seen a meteoric rise, is this sustainable over the long term? How does Brandon respond to the suggestion that RPA is replacing human jobs? What is the human and societal impact?
4.) How does Brandon think about vulnerability in leadership? Why does Daniel and Brandon's relationship work so well today? What has Daniel (Founder) taught Brandon about communicating that vulnerability the right way and authentically? What does Brandon advise founders in terms of being open to their vulnerabilities?
5.) What are the biggest challenges in scaling an organisation to the 1,000+ person organisation that UiPath is today? What breaks When does it break? How does one maintain culture wit such scale? What have been the challenges of building a truly global business from Day 1? How do they look to mitigate them?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Brandon’s Fave Book: The Five Temptations of a CEO: A Leadership Fable
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Brandon on Twitter here!
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the 20 minute VC and Founders Friday with me, Harry Stebbings. |
| 0:03.0 | We have some fun behind the scenes stuff planned for Christmas. |
| 0:05.6 | And so if you want to see that, head over to Instagram and we're at H. Stebbings, 1996 with two bees. |
| 0:10.7 | But to the show's day, and I'm slightly cheating here on the Founder Friday episode. |
| 0:14.3 | He's not exactly a founder, but he's like the rock star operator of 2019. |
| 0:18.6 | He's an incredible friend and phenomenal talent, and I'm just super |
| 0:21.5 | excited to welcome him on the show. And so with that, I'm very excited to welcome Brandon Deer, |
| 0:25.6 | VP of Operations and Strategy at UiPath, one of the world's fastest growing companies in history, |
| 0:30.8 | providing a complete software platform to help organizations efficiently automate business processes |
| 0:35.3 | through robotic process automation. |
| 0:43.1 | To date, the UiPath has raised over $977 million in funding from some of the very best in the world, |
| 0:49.2 | including Sequoia, Excel, Meritech, IVP, Capital G, Kleiner, Co2 and more. As for Brandon, prior to UiPath, he spent four years as vice president at Open View Partners, |
| 0:53.9 | where he made investments in Expensify, Log.io, VTS, and pipefi, just to name a few. |
| 0:59.4 | Before OpenView, Brandon spent close to four years at Intuit in strategy and business development. |
| 1:04.1 | And today really was a team effort. I had help from the likes of Carl at Sequoia, Alex at Maritech, Layila at Capital G, Luciana at Excel, Dan at Earlybird, |
| 1:12.0 | Andre at Crado. I basically came up with no questions by myself. They did all the work. I really do |
| 1:16.8 | so appreciate it. It was a team effort and an exciting episode to come. But before we dive into |
| 1:21.5 | the show today, my word, Christmas is less than three weeks away, but the question is, |
| 1:25.5 | will you have the marketing budget to boost your |
| 1:27.5 | best ads? Can your inventory supply? Keep up with shopper demand. Are you starting to sweat? Well, |
| 1:32.5 | Clearbank's here to help. They offer fast, affordable investments for online businesses. Fill out a 20-minute |
| 1:37.6 | term sheet today, and within 24 hours, you could be approved for $10,000 to $10 million in funding. And the best part, they can top you up |
... |
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