How Ukrainian built in the US business worth $ 250 million

38-year-old Andrey Axelrod was born and raised in Dnepropetrovsk, but lived most of his life in New York. In the Big Apple, he received his education, became a successful programmer and created his own business. Smartling, which Andrey founded with his partner Jack Weldy, specializes in automated translation of content, websites and applications into other languages. Her clients include SurveyMonkey, GoPro, Pinterest, Snapshat, Spotify, InterContinental Hotels Group. Over the five years of its existence, Smartling has attracted $63 million in investments. During the latest round, investors, according to Forbes, estimated the startup at a quarter billion dollars.

His universities

In the early nineties, when many were still trying to figure out what programming was and what it meant, high school student Andrei Axelrod was already writing his first programs in one of the most popular languages, “C,” and easily navigated DOS and Norton Commander. Preparing to enter Dnepropetrovsk State University, I crammed English. He entered, studied the first year, and then his parents suggested continuing his education in New York - his grandparents lived there.

Without thinking twice, Andrew packed up his suitcase and in 1994, he transferred to the Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, which was known for its computer science school. Already there it turned out that the quality of mathematical education in Ukraine is not inferior to the American one - the DSU had such a high level of teaching higher mathematics that after a year of study in Dnepropetrovsk, Andrey no longer had to take additional courses in mathematics at Brooklyn College.

“Studying at DSU gave me a lot. Programming language Oleg Markovich Pevzner taught us - he drove us hard. During the first year, we wrote our own program and passed it in the exam. What we did in Ukraine was the highest level of multitasking programming under DOS. For many it was difficult, but for me it was very interesting,” says Andrey.

He did not have to complete his studies in college in the C programming language, which he knew perfectly. “I agreed with the teacher that I would take the exam at the very beginning of the semester and would not go to classes anymore. The college didn't actually allow it. And the teacher looked at me very incredulously after these words - his exam was quite difficult. I came the next day and passed. I didn’t go to these classes anymore.”

Work mode

The free time, Andrew did not lose in vain - got a job as a developer at the software company RunTime Technologies. As a result, he worked there for 11 years.

“I came to work and sat in a corner at the computer. I absolutely did not like talking to people, I liked talking to computers. People are so incomprehensible, and computers always listen to you, they are completely under your control. This is very cool, ”Andrei shares his memories.

He did not have to sit long in the corner. The career of a talented programmer has gone up - he has grown to the chief architect of all the software the company has made.

“I’ve worked with Andrei 10 for years, and there’s not a single software project that I couldn’t trust him,” said Bob Matsuoka, founder of RunTime Technologies, about Axelrod.

On the eve of the 30 anniversary, Andrei thought about the future.

“When you are a programmer, you need to always learn new things, you need to constantly be aware of the latest technologies. But I can't do it all my life. I understood: the younger generation will come, and it will be very difficult for me to compete with it professionally, ”admits Axelrod.

Andrey Axelrod performs at the Dnipropetrovsk coworking center “I coworking hub”. Photo from Facebook I coworking hub

The programmer decided to leave in technology management. "It was scary. I had a profession in my hands, in which I was very strong. I was a great developer and got good money. I understood that if I left the profession, I would very quickly lose my qualifications, ”recalls Andrey. But he made up his mind and became vice president of technology at Spafinder, a global health marketing company.

However, Andrei did not stay long in Spafinder. This work was already rather a transitional stage on the way to his own business - at that time he was already thinking about launching a startup.

Business in the millions

“I was mentally prepared for my business. And when you make an internal decision and start to go to the goal, things start to happen by themselves. You don’t even need to put special effort into this, ”says Andrew.

For him, the turning point was a meeting over a cup of coffee with the former chief operating officer of RunTime Technologies Jack Veldi. Behind the last, the latter had, in particular, the creation of a personal information manager in the post-university period, which in 1993 bought Apple for two million dollars. At the time of the conversation, Veldi was still working at eMusic, but was about to leave.

Jack Veldi offered Andrey several ideas for a new startup. As a result, we decided to create software that would help to translate websites into other languages ​​as easily as possible. At that moment, the process was laborious and extremely lengthy - both Jack and Andrew faced this problem more than once in their work.

The newly established company was named Smartling. In 2010, it consisted of only two people. Now, Smartling employs about 150 people and thousands more translators around the world collaborate with it as freelancers. Company offices are located in New York, Boston, San Francisco, Dublin, London, Kiev and Dnepropetrovsk.

“If we knew at the beginning how difficult it would be, I think we would not even start,” laughs Andrei Axelrod. - What is the advantage of entrepreneurs who make their first product? They have no idea what awaits them. They are fearless. ”

Andrei and Jack came up with a prototype of software for translations, then they brought programmers from Dnepropetrovsk to work it out - Axelrod had worked with a local outsourcing company for a long time. In order to understand how well the software works, they offered their friends to translate their sites for free. The first customers were satisfied.

Language issue

Before Smartling, the process of translating a site that was initially focused on only one language looked like this: all the text published on the site was taken from the database and code, translated and inserted back. The text often came to translators out of context. Go figure what was meant: “Apple” is an apple or a multi-billion dollar company created by Steve Jobs, “windows” is a window or an operating system. In addition, the database and code itself could not always handle translated content. With this approach, adaptation of an application or website of average size and complexity could last from 8 to 18 months and required the efforts of several programmers.

Smartling proposed two solutions to the problem, both of which allow you to make a transfer in a few weeks.

The first is the Global Delivery Network (GDN). The product is built on any website and in a short time creates its translated version. In fact, the site in a new language is placed on the cloud platform Smartling, but the user does not see this - he only has a translated page of the site before his eyes.

GDN is a serious infrastructure product. Sites that initially planned to be multilingual did not need such a system. In order not to lose customers, Smartling, responding to market needs, developed a second, lightweight technology - Translation Management System (TMS). In this case, clients simply upload files of any format, and Smartling translates them. The translation process often involves several participants: the content is sent first to the translator, then to the editor, proofreader and lawyer, then again to the translator for verification, and then returned to the client.

Smartling is also developing so-called connectors - programs that integrate into other applications and translate their contents. For example, Smartling can install a special plugin that allows you to quickly translate all content to its customers using WordPress.

“Our products allow you to automate all the steps associated with the translation of any digital content, except for the translation itself. Translation is done by people. Machine translation is very bad. Try, for example, using a computer to translate something into Russian - it turns out to be an abracadabra, ”explains Axelrod.

Translation into a specific language is always done by a specialist for whom this language is native. If you need a translation into Japanese - they are looking for a translator in Japan, if in Greek - in Greece, into Russian - in Russia.

Money supply

The first major client of Smartling was SurveyMonkey, a company engaged in online survey tools. Then the list was supplemented with such giants as GoPro, Pinterest, Snapshat, Spotify, InterContinental Hotels Group. Thanks to transfers from Smartling, they were able to gain a foothold in new international markets.

“Smartling acts as fast as we do”, - so in comments American Forbes described the work of the company Silvia Oviedo Lopez, localization manager at Pinterest.

Today, Smartling has more than three hundred clients worldwide.

From the first steps, the startup enjoyed the favor of investors and venture capitalists. When founding, Jack Veldi invested 50 thousand dollars, another 100 thousand was given by a venture capitalist, and in the past his old partner in student business.

Then there were four more rounds of attracting investments from serious venture capital funds, and each time the company received amounts for development with six zeros. The total investment today has reached 63 million dollars. During the last, fourth, round, Iconiq Capital Venture Fund valued Smartling's capitalization already at 250 million dollars.

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