A software program programmer who left romania for a activity at microsoft within the u. S. Had a “loopy concept” that saw him return home and emerge as one of the international’s richest people, bloomberg reports.

Daniel dines is the ceo of uipath inc, an automation-software program maker that raised $1. Three billion in a u. S. Preliminary public supplying on wednesday. The 49-year-old owns a $6 billion stake in the corporation, making him one of the top 500 billionaires within the global. The path to that achievement, however, wasn’t clean.

Dines studied math and computer technological know-how at the university of bucharest at a time when romania was nevertheless below dictator nicolae ceausescu’s rule. At closing 12 months’s annual montgomery summit technology convention, he discovered that he immigrated to the u. S.

In his 20s to work for microsoft in 2001. That time subsequently stimulated him to go back to romania and begin a company that now automates low-skilled obligations typically outsources to employees in low-wage nations.

“i had a loopy idea to go returned and begin a corporation,” he recalled on the convention. In beginning uipath, the largest venture additionally have become dines’ pleasant weapon, he said in a letter that came with the company’s registry filings for its listing.

“starting a business enterprise from a small vicinity with no market has a hidden advantage: it forces you to think globally from day one,” he said. On account that then, uipath has grown from a small business to a corporation set to dominate robot technique automation. In keeping with forbes, uipath generated $a hundred and fifty five million in sales in 2019.

This 12 months, it raised $750 million in funding, led by using alkeon capital and coatue. Dines presently owns all of uipath’s elegance b stocks and could continue to govern the corporation even after promoting shares inside the offering really worth about $seventy five million.

“you have to grow to be a public corporation sooner or later to allow your employees to get extra liquidity, provide them stock alternatives,” he advised bloomberg in an interview final year. “we’re nearly there.”