George Roth On Thinking Big And Giving Back To The Community

George Roth’s story is fascinating, and his CV is impressive.

He was a part of the first generation that graduated from the Cluj High School for Informatics. In 1980, he graduated from the Babes Bolyai University in Cluj, the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics, and then he moved to the US in 1991, to work as a software architect for a company that was building software solutions for investment companies.

That’s when he had his first breakthrough. He built a financial data “cleaner” (SUMS — Securities Universe Management System), which was implemented in multiple investment companies in the US and Europe.

In 1999 he started Recognos in Cluj, a company that develops software for investment processes. Up until 2018, they were working on a system that extracts data from unformatted documents using AI and NLP.

People started to take notice, so in May 2018 UiPath bought the technology along with a few employees, including George, who started working as a Senior Manager for the successful startup.

We sat down with George to see how he navigated different ecosystems in his over 4 decades of professional experience.

Early life

George was born in Cluj, and he still misses Cluj to this day. Before the pandemic hit, he would visit Cluj once every few months.

Cluj is also where he got his early start.

He was lucky enough to grow up during the outbreak of tech education in Romania. George was actually part of the first generation of students at the Cluj Highschool of Informatics (Computer Science). When he graduated, he was already able to code in 4 different languages.

After attending university in a similar field, he worked at the Computing Center in Cluj, which was sort of a precursor of cloud technology. They would store data for different companies and state agencies.

“I feel I’m lucky because I was in the first generation of Romanians educated in IT.” — George Roth

And it wasn’t a mindless programme either. He had teachers from a French institute, although he actually needed to learn Russian to study. You see, communist Romania didn’t quite appreciate American influences, so manuals in english were a no-go.

But he got through the struggles.

And when Romania was liberated from communism, he set his sights on the US. In 1991, he emigrated to the US.

It wasn’t always easy. He started off working in sales, because he couldn’t find a programming job.

But in the end, he was able to secure positions as a software architect, and this rounded him as a fully-fleshed IT expert.

George Roth used that experience to start his own company.

Recognos

Recognos was a software development company with offices in both Romania and the US, with George at the vanguard as CEO. For years they built valuable software, and worked on a data processing product of their own, on the side.

It all paid off, because UiPath got interested.

They did their due diligence, and in the end the technology that Recognos was building was bought, alongside George and other team members.

He still works at UiPath today, as a business partnerships Senior Manager, aposition in which he’s able to leverage both his network and his understanding of different startup ecosystems.

On top, George was nice enough to share his insights about these ecosystems with us.

Silicon Valley

As far as George is concerned, Silicon Valley has three ingredients in its recipe for success.

First, the layout of the land matters. Palo Alto is a big university center, host to the world famous Stanford University, which constantly brings in valuable talent into the scene.

Second, and sort of paired with that, there’s networking. Universities in the US do a very good job at maintaining an alumni network, and partnering with private companies to set their students and businesses up for success.

Lastly, the amount of capital spinning around Silicon Valley matters a lot. There’s a lot of money going around, and that counts for something.

But it’s not the perfect place.

For example, there’s no loyalty in Silicon Valley. People can change between companies very quickly. In fact, at the moment of writing this article, there’s a big shift of employees from Cisco to Google.

On top, there are graveyard companies going around.

These are companies that just buy out qualitative startups to run them into the ground, to remove any possible competition.

That’s what Facebook did with LiveRail for example.

So it’s not a perfect place.

But how does it compare to the Romanian ecosystem?

What can we learn from Silicon Valley?

The Romanian Ecosystem

The first problem we have is money. We do have more capital than we used to in Romania, but it’s still not enough.

Second, a big problem is that we don’t have any alumni organizations, and we’re not that good at networking to make up for it.

Cluj is actually doing a good job heading towards the Silicon Valley model, BBU (the main Cluj university) having partnerships with private companies.

So to copy the Silicon Valley recipe for success, Cluj needs to stay the course and expand their alumni network.

But the Government needs to get involved more if we want to match better performing ecosystems. They don’t have to get hands on, just partner with experts and corporations and let expertise dictate change.

“The experts need to dictate how the government gets involved in entrepreneurship.” — George Roth

Bridging The Gap

George is also heavily involved in bridging the gap between Silicon Valley and Romania, and he told us a lot about how that relationship evolved throughout the years.

The first step was made in 1997, when President Cosntantinescu visited the US along with a team of IT experts. It was a big milestone, because it put Romania on the map of a few important Silicon Valley companies. George was there.

In 2000, another delegation of romanian IT companies visited California.

And then the biggest milestone was hit in 2003, when Romanian companies created high quality antivirus software like Bitdefender, which is still around today. It showed Silicon Valley that we have the talent, and it showed Romanian entrepreneurs that they can create valuable products too.

“2003 was a big milestone for Romanian Entrepreneurs, because it showed us outsourcing was not the only way forward.” — George Roth

George is also focused on helping repatriate talent, know how and financial backing to Romania. But he doesn’t feel special for it.

“I think people that don’t think about giving back to their birth country are the exception.” — George Roth

People want to give back to the community, and that’s the way we will be able to grow.

Tips For Entrepreneurs

Throughout his career, George learned a lot of things about entrepreneurship. He thinks that, by far, one of the most important lessons for Romanians is that borrowing money is not necessarily a bad idea, as long as you do it with a purpose and an objective in mind.

On top, he thinks that a lot of young entrepreneurs get lost among investments and business opportunities.

“You need to focus on either bringing money, or spending it right.” — George Roth

And if you can’t prioritize one, choose at random and get someone else to focus on the other one.

Finding investors is also very important. If not investors, at least people from the outside that can advise you on your project.

“Don’t be stuck in your echo chamber. Validate your idea while developing it.” — George Roth

George made the mistake of not validating an idea. He was building a calendar with a partner, and because they were very perfectionist, the product never launched. Google released the Google Calendar, and although George’s product was better, there was no way to compete with the tech giant.

The bottom line is that mistakes are normal.

And you’ll make some of them, so don’t put yourself down.

But it’s important to learn from them, and from the mistakes of other people.

That’s how you get forward.

And that’s how our entire ecosystem can get ahead.