UiPath Inc. founder Daniel Dines has always been a charismatic leader known for taking bold moves as he steered his company to the top of the robotic process automation/automation market. In April of this year, he chose to share his power, appointing Robert Enslin co-chief executive officer.

“We instantly clicked,” said Dines (pictured, right), who was looking for a partner to help take on some of the burdens of managing UiPath as the company continued to expand its customer base. Being a CEO is a lonely job because you are “the center of all pressure points,” Dines added.

In an interview at UiPath Forward, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, both Dines and Enslin (left) sat down with theCUBE industry analyst Dave Vellante to discuss why Dines decided he wanted a co-CEO and why Enslin chose to throw his fortunes in with UiPath. (* Disclosure below.)

A match made in automation heaven: UiPath co-CEOs find fortune in collaboration

After over 26 years heading up global software company SAP SE, Enslin became president of Google Cloud in 2019. Only three years later, he decided to join Dines at relatively small UiPath, a seemingly strange decision for someone with a history of heading huge multinational corporations.

“I knew that there was something special with UiPath that could be a generational opportunity, not only for myself, but for the company in the future,” Enslin said.

Dines and Enslin met through a mutual friend. In this case, it was Sequoia Capital partner and UiPath board member Carl Eschenbach.

“I wanted to work with somebody where we could shape the future together, and Daniel and I just hit it off from the very first time we met,” Enslin said. “He got to meet my family, my dogs, and we did the whole courting thing before we actually decided this was going to be a good thing for both of us.”

Five months into working together, the arrangement is working well with each having their areas of responsibility while sharing major decisions and traveling to meet customers.

“Having a partner, having someone who has your back, it’s kind of awesome,” Dines said.

The first task Enslin undertook was to travel around the world, meeting UiPath’s customers and discovering firsthand why UiPath is so popular. He heard the same answer everywhere he went, with customers exclaiming surprise at the breadth of UiPath’s platform and asking how they could expand their automation faster. This confirmed he’d made the right decision to join Dines’ mission to “bring a robot to every person.”

“There’s so much opportunity here,” Enslin said. “That’s what I’ve learned in the last four or five months.”

The growth of automation could mirror ERP during Enslin’s time at SAP, according to Vellante, who posited that early adopters of automation will go on to perform better than their peers and dominate their industries in the same way that customers that were implementing ERP well in the early days became successful. Enslin agreed that he sees the same thing happening with automation and RPA.

“The reason I believe that is that speed is so critical,” he said. “We have an incredible solution that can help companies in these constrained times deliver outcomes to their business like no one else can. … It feels like 1992, 1993 to me.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the UiPath Forward event:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the UiPath Forward event. Neither UiPath, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE