Andrei Pitis is also an associate professor with the Polytechnic University in Bucharest and vice president of US company Fitbit, one of the largest actors on the smartwatch and wearable gadget market.
UiPath, a startup established in Romania that became the leading robotic process automation software vendor in the world, alone has already created 100 Romanian millionaires after achieving a valuation of $7 billion and this money will go back into the local market.
“UiPath is a very important piece for the construction of the Romanian ecosystem; it is a success everyone has heard of. UiPath has created value, first of all. When I met with Daniel Dines, co-founder and CEO of UiPath, he said he thought he likely made 100 millionaires and I think this happened with his first employees, who also had shares. This will show into the ecosystem sooner or later. It’s not as visible as I would have liked, but it will definitely show.”
Pitis said some of the UiPath millionaires have already started investing in local projects, without elaborating further.
“The UiPath people are very active; with some of them I’m even co-investor in some of these projects. I can’t say which and who I’m talking about.”
Radu Georgescu, the first Romanian entrepreneur to sell a hi-tech company to a world giant, in 2003 (RAV Antivirus to Microsoft), talked about the same thing on ZF IT Generation.
“The very important thing is that we now have people willing to invest in technology who were part of the generation of entrepreneurs who have already sold a company. This is the most important: a critical mass of technology companies was sold that gave founders, entrepreneurs (…) a lot of knowledge, networking and money. Which money is going back into the system. These are people who worked together, made money together and want to work together and make money together again. (…)”
Pitis, who is known in Romania for his successful exits from such projects as Vector Watch to Fitbit or Clever Taxi to Daimler, as well as for the involvement in the startup ecosystem, also launched his own program at the end 2018, which is intended to help create 100 new millionaires from high-tech projects. He has invested EUR0.5 million in 15 or 16 projects thus far and says all the projects stand chances of turning their founders into millionaires.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)