Ivan Smolnikov, CEO of Smartcat, explains to Nathan Latka why traditional freelance marketplaces like Fiverr fail to capture large enterprise translation budgets.
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“The difference is that first you don't have automation workflow technology on the platform, and without that, It can't work for big customers because if you're a big company with good budgets, you just can't deal today without automation technology. You can't just throw your, you know, content to a linguist and just make the translation done. You need automation technology allowing you to reuse what you have been translating before and also to leverage from machine translation, glossary management, and a lot of other tools automating the workflow.”
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More from Ivan Smolnikov
Insight
Free single-player SaaS solves the marketplace chicken-and-egg dynamic
“And that was our primarily idea to build something valuable for people, both for supply and demand and to give it away for free. Once we have it, people are coming to use our technology, both suppliers and customers. Suppliers are using our technology, even in…”
Ivan SmolnikovMay 11, 2018▶ 9:461021 How He Solved Translation Marketplace Space and Grew 7x YoY to $24m in Revenue
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Smartcat has onboarded 20% of all global freelance translators
“And literally we have listed all of them already on our platform, and we have 20% of supply side, which is 20% of all freelancers globally.”
Ivan SmolnikovMay 11, 2018▶ 16:341021 How He Solved Translation Marketplace Space and Grew 7x YoY to $24m in Revenue
Insight
Raising venture capital requires a focused pure software business
“First to raise money from venture capital, you need to have a focused business, you know, just doing software development.”
Ivan SmolnikovMay 11, 2018▶ 5:531021 How He Solved Translation Marketplace Space and Grew 7x YoY to $24m in Revenue
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Smartcat monthly revenue exceeds $2 million
“We are above two millions.”
Ivan SmolnikovMay 11, 2018▶ 9:211021 How He Solved Translation Marketplace Space and Grew 7x YoY to $24m in Revenue
AssertionNot checkable as stated
Smartcat operates without a sales team and relies on inbound adoption
“We don't have sales team because we have a lot of customers coming because of that technology, you know, and then we see if a customer is starting to grow, a customer success team is focusing on them to help them grow better.”
Ivan SmolnikovMay 11, 2018▶ 13:511021 How He Solved Translation Marketplace Space and Grew 7x YoY to $24m in Revenue
PredictionNot checkable as stated
Smartcat grows 20% month-over-month and projects 7x revenue growth
“We have been growing 20% months to months. So this year we should complete these like seven, seven times growth compared to the beginning of the year.”
Ivan SmolnikovMay 11, 2018▶ 17:041021 How He Solved Translation Marketplace Space and Grew 7x YoY to $24m in Revenue
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