Unbabel (YC W14) raises $60M Series C to become the world’s translation layer

Post by est31 » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #9

bpodgursky wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have some reasoning or evidence to back up that dismissal of a very plausible concern? Or do you think it's coincidence, or due to economic structure, that the US and China dominate the tech scene? This is a pretty widely understood hurdle for EU startups, and it's unclear why you dismiss it out of hand.

It is often repeated, but does that make it true or understood? My reasoning is that if you're a tech company then translation costs are trivial (that's close to obvious) Now, depending on your industry, cultural differences may be an important factor but that's different. All the well-known tech companies are equally present across the EU so it does not seem like a major problem (that may be different across widely…

Post by est31 » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

mytailorisrich wrote: post #4

est31 wrote: post #3

Among other things, europe's language diversity is listed as one of the reasons why europe isn't a good place for founding a tech company: the american market is much more homogenous. However, for translation startups, this diversity makes europe the best place to be in the world. They definitely won't run out of diversity, and it also has the european single market which makes it easy to conduct business across inne…

Europe's language diversity is a trivial cost of business and does not impede tech companies. But, obviously, that does make Europe a very good market for translation companies.

Post by mytailorisrich » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 4:54 PM UTC

est31 wrote: post #11

mytailorisrich wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is often repeated, but does that make it true or understood? My reasoning is that if you're a tech company then translation costs are trivial (that's close to obvious) Now, depending on your industry, cultural differences may be an important factor but that's different. All the well-known tech companies are equally present across the EU so it does not seem like a major problem (that may be different across widely…

Even large companies like Amazon or Facebook launch some of their new products only for the american audience and only expand to europe later. And early stage startups don't have the resources of translating their app into two dozen languages, offering customer service in those languages, having a sales infrastructure, etc. It's doable but more expensive if you operated in the american market.

Post by theunixbeard » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 4:59 PM UTC

skellera wrote: post #14

unbabelengineer wrote: post #12

Please run as fast as you can. This company is toxic waste.

Can you explain why you hold that opinion? I’m curious as two people have mentioned it in the comments so far.

Post by rabidrat » Wed, Sep 25, 2019, 5:06 PM UTC

jklinger410 wrote: post #16

Not sure why you would bet against Google on this.