1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ondrej Bartos of Credo Ventures (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: But that’s not the basis of the Indian BPO industry. Indian BPO industry has to do exactly what you’re doing with technology – to automate how to outsource all these routine mundane tasks.

Ondrej Bartos: I do agree. Also, BPO is already not among the top verticals that UiPath is going after. But I still believe that it’s an interesting proposition to the BPO industry as well.

Sramana Mitra: I have a lot of thoughts on this because I’ve long believed that the entire BPO industry is going to disappear because of automation. I think UiPath is a very good example of a company that’s going to enable that transition. Sooner or later it will happen. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ondrej Bartos of Credo Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What’s been UiPath’s strategy? Have they set up in Silicon Valley very early on? What is their geographical location and headquarters? How was the company’s run from a scaling perspective?

Ondrej Bartos: The truth is that they started expanding fairly early on. They started with two territories. One is the US. It’s not the Silicon Valley but New York. It’s the East Coast. For a company like UiPath, it may make sense because they focus on the big Fortune 500 companies as potential customers. The East Coast is a good option. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ondrej Bartos of Credo Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Where are they getting traction in terms of customers? I assume they’re going after enterprise customers. Where? What segment? What kind of use cases are they getting the most traction in?

Ondrej Bartos: This is very different from then and now. UiPath is now is a company with over 2,000 employees with nine-digit recurring revenues. I believe it’s around $180 million ARR these days. Back then, we thought that the most logical way to start would be financial services and BPO’s. Those were the segment that we went after. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ondrej Bartos of Credo Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: If you can get a concept validated and moving to some extent, you can sort of do the very early stage in Central Europe. You can always raise more money and set up a second headquarters here in Silicon Valley and get that access. The bridge between India and Silicon Valley has become really powerful.

There are a lot of companies who are operating in this mode. I just don’t see any reason why Europe can’t do that or replicate that. It’s not as solid. The European connection to Silicon Valley isn’t as solid as the Indian connection, but it should be.

Ondrej Bartos: I agree with what you said. Truth is that globalization is progressing. In some places, startups are more likely to be a successful enterprise software company. In some other places, it’s more likely to build a successful consumer play. I totally agree that it’s possible. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ondrej Bartos of Credo Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What is the geographical boundary? When you say Central European investments, how far do you go? What are the four regions? Obviously you have Prague and surroundings. But what else?

Ondrej Bartos: So when we talk about Central Europe, it’s basically the region between Germany and, sort of, Ukraine with those two excluded. So it’s countries like Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Slovenia. This is the space that we operate in.

Sramana Mitra: The 42 that you’ve done so far, what is the bulk? Is it 50% Prague? 70% Prague? What’s the distribution? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ondrej Bartos of Credo Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Ondrej Bartos was recorded in January 2019.

Ondrej Bartos, General Partner at Prague-based Credo Ventures, focuses on investing in Central European startups. Their major success story is UiPath in robotics processes automation that has raised $265 million at a $3 billion valuation. UiPath has over 2,100 customers and claims to have annual revenues of $150 million. We discuss the Romanian company in some detail.

Sramana Mitra: I heard about your firm from your friends from Czech Republic or Czechia now. You may have seen the stories we’ve done on some of your local colleagues. I’m really looking forward to getting acquainted with you. I would like to start by having you introduce yourself and Credo Ventures to our audience here. Then we’ll discuss what you’re up to out there. What are the trends in your space? >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Daniel Keiper-Knorr of Speedinvest (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: There’s one topic that I want to explore with you which is very much in line with what you’re saying about the European market in a relative fragmentation due to language, culture, country boundaries, and so forth. In Silicon Valley or in the US market, in the Chinese Market, and even in India right now, there’s this kind of traditional venture capital. Every deal has to be a billion-dollar TAM. Every investment has to go from zero to $100 million in five to seven years. The unicorn thinking is prevalent.

Given the fragmentation that you’re describing in Europe, I imagine there are lots of opportunities for smaller TAM, more niche deals where you can invest and you can still make very good revenues and very good businesses. Except that there are certain dynamics that are a bit different, right? They have to be built more capital efficiently. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Daniel Keiper-Knorr of Speedinvest (Part 3)

Daniel Keiper-Knorr: We have one company in the portfolio in the Essex base. It’s an area that’s not so much in fashion with the recent VC industry, but still you can find super talented teams. The market is still large and growing. In the recent phase, three to five years is probably all about analytics. Nowadays, in the coming two years, it’s going to be all about data quality because all the AI and ML stuff will never work if the data quality is not there. It’s not just about quantity, quality is just as important. >>>