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.

Ondrej Bartos: I’m a believer of that too.

Sramana Mitra: I think we’ve got a good sense of what’s happening in your universe. Is there anything else that you want to add before we conclude this segment?

Ondrej Bartos: To conclude, I come from this region. I love Central Eastern Europe. I’m a big believer that it has been overlooked for a long time. I remember the early days when we were coming to the Silicon Valley in 2010. Everybody was looking at us, “Where are you guys coming from? Is it Chechnya or is it Russia?” It was improbable to seek something interesting in our geography, but I think this is changing rapidly.

Looking at things like HackerRank and other sources, we can see that Central Eastern European engineers and programmers are now considered to be among the best in the world. Therefore, I’m a huge believer in the region. I believe it can be used both as an engineering center for US or Western European startups as well as a melting pot for the new generation of startups.

Sramana Mitra: Are you finding good collaboration in Silicon Valley? Like funds who are willing to invest in a company that’s starting largely.

Ondrej Bartos: Yes. The change is visible also on numbers. It’s visible on staffs and on number of deals. We have co-invested alongside Sequoia, Kleiner, Accel, and Index which has European genes per se. But we have invested alongside Flybridge which is an East Coast-based fund. Baseline is a San Francisco-based fund. We do see more and more appetite. More importantly, we see more beliefs and conviction in the big VC’s that it’s actually possible to build something really interesting and competitive out of Central Eastern Europe.

Sramana Mitra: Very good. It’s wonderful to hear what you’re up to and what your region is up to, and how it’s growing. We have been covering this for a while. It’s wonderful to see this progression and have you here. So, thank you for participating. We’ll keep in touch. I would actually like to feature UiPath in our entrepreneur journey series. If you introduce to my team, they will schedule the interview.

Ondrej Bartos: Sounds great. Let’s do that.

Sramana Mitra: All right. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 6 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ondrej Bartos of Credo Ventures
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