The Dev is in the Details
This podcast is about the world of Software Development in particular and technology in general. Here, you will find thoughtful discussions about tech leadership, AI, the future of technology, and success stories told by the people who made them happen. Your host is Lukasz Lazewski, a seasoned software engineer, tech leader, and entrepreneur.
The Dev is in the Details
Leadership and persistence: Scaling a global brand | Krzysztof Zdanowski
► From startup hustle to global muscle: What does it really take to build a billion-dollar brand?
In this episode, we’re joined by Krzysztof Zdanowski, the CEO and Founder of Summa Linguae Technologies. Krzysztof took his company from humble beginnings to becoming one of the leading multilingual data management providers worldwide, with over U$ 30 million in yearly revenue and offices across Europe, America, and Asia. We’ll uncover his journey, the bold decisions that shaped his success, and his unique take on leadership in a global context.
Learn how he navigated cultural differences, embraced AI, and kept the momentum going through tough times. Plus, Krzysztof shares the ups and downs of managing mergers, and his biggest lessons for aspiring entrepreneurs looking to make a mark on the world stage.
► Our guest 🌟
Krzysztof Zdanowski 👉 https://www.linkedin.com/in/krzysztof-zdanowski-3926b322/
Founder & CEO of Summa Linguae Technologies, investor, pilot, and endurance runner passionate about AI and global business strategy.
► In today’s episode:
- The early days of Summa Linguae and how Krzysztof’s multicultural background influenced his business vision.
- Game-changing strategies that fueled Summa Linguae’s growth to a top global player.
- How Krzysztof’s leadership style has evolved and the tough decisions that came with scaling up.
- Missteps, lessons, and what he’d do differently if he could start over.
- Making AI work for your business: Beyond the buzz, real-world applications and insights.
- Mergers and acquisitions: What Krzysztof learned the hard way and what you need to know.
- Practical tips for building a cohesive, successful team across multiple countries and cultures.
- Key advice for entrepreneurs aiming to build a brand that stands out globally.
► Decoding the timeline:
00:00 – Summa Linguae’s first steps
03:52 – Krzysztof’s multicultural background influence on his business
09:00 – Power of networking
11:39 – Milestones and lessons learned
24:37 - Staying on top of time management
29:55 - Local vs global business insights
31:34 - AI-charging business
38:08 - Building a team and working with investors
***
The Dev is in the Details is a podcast where we talk about technology, business and their impacts on the world around us.
Łukasz Łażewski 👉 https://www.linkedin.com/in/lukasz-lazewski/
Write to us 👉 podcast@llinformatics.com
Over the years, I have fundraised I don't know how many rounds of equity and debt and I took the company public, then we took it private and I sold to private equity essentially, and so on and so on. I've learned to say no, probably as well. So if I say yes to the limited things that I say yes to, I give my 100%, but there's also 100 things I say no to yes to. I give my 100%, but there's also 100 things I say no to. I would say things that, when I reflect back, have always helped me were the following Today we have an extraordinary guest, Krzysztof Zdanowski, ceo and founder of Sumo Lingua Technologies.
Speaker 2:Krzysztof has built Sumo Lingua into one of the top 50 largest multilingual data management providers globally, with offices spanning throughout Europe, america and Asia and overall 20 years of total experience. His leadership have been key in scaling the company to achieve annual revenues exceeding 30 million American dollars. Beyond his impressive business achievements, krzysztof is also an investor, a licensed airplane pilot and a long distance runner. His diverse background and relentless drive have made him a thought leader in AI, data management and global business strategy. What a pleasure to have you here today with us, krzysztof.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Łukasz. Thanks for hosting me.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. Let's start from the beginning, like what sparked the idea of the company of Sumalingua Technologies. How did it all start?
Speaker 1:Well, look. So it's a funny story. I moved to Krakow, in the south of Poland, and I don't really come from a wealthy family or anything. I just had to support my student life. And there's two things that I do very well my student life. And there's, you know, two things that I do very well I speak Polish and English, and I'm also quite, you know, good with interaction. You know, interacting with others and networking and so on. So, knowing the two languages because my mom was born in Canada, I'm a Polish Canadian so I thought, well, you know, I'll just start translating, right? So initially I just started translating and helping others. You know, understand, you know one another, maybe in between Polish and English. And then I was hired by this company building a steel plant in Krakow. Right, they just it was, you know 2006 or seven, I think, and you know they just bought this huge plant. They were renovating it and they brought a bunch of subcontractors from all over the place. The engineers would not speak Polish, the Polish guys would not speak English, so they had to have us interpreters in the middle, and so I worked there. It paid me well to support myself for my studies.
Speaker 1:But then, at some point, the steel crisis in the year 2007, I think, hit the global economy and we were all fired so, as measures of cost cutting and so on. So basically, I ended up with a good student life but no money to pay for. And I just had to think, okay, what do I do next? Right? So? And I honestly I did the, you know, interpreting. I was quite good at it and I thought, okay, let's just, you know, bring more clients on. And then I already had a network from my university and I had friends who did the same, and so on. So we just put a bunch of people together and started you know, just doing this in a form of a small translation agency, what one might say. And you know, this is how it all sort of started. So I always say I started my company because I got fired from my, from my job, right?
Speaker 2:what an amazing story, chris, thanks for sharing. Do you feel like your canadian background and roots of your mom helped you as well? Like the culture and influence of canadian culture? Influence the english?
Speaker 1:right. So you know I spoke, I spoke polish and english. Obviously I'm I'm a polish patriot and you know I love my country. I was born here in Warsaw, in Poland and so on, but having spent years or, you know, a lot of time outside of Poland, also traveled quite a bit, did a number of courses on different places around the world and so on, I worked in Canada also for quite a bit and that certainly helps, right Broadens, the perspective and obviously the language and so on. So it was obviously a huge help, right.
Speaker 2:Now to today, when Sumalingua is now the top player in its industry. What are some of the key strategies that help you scale the business to its current level?
Speaker 1:well, I would say, obviously there's no, you know, uh, no one recipe to to do it, but I would say things that, when I reflect back, have always helped me, um, where the following it might be a little strange or unusual, but for an entrepreneur, I don't think I have an ego problem, right, which is an issue for some of us. I would always be very happy if I had people who were smarter than I am and people who could, you know, take up work and just, you know, just do it better than I can. So I always looked for people who could come and join me and then get the work done much better than I could. There are some people out there who are just like I'll do everything better than others, and so on. I'm not one of them everything better than others, and so on. I'm not one of them, right?
Speaker 1:So I think this has immensely helped me, obviously, in getting the work done and brought the company to next levels right. And there were these stages right, stages of, like you know, we were growing and growing and then we did a first international acquisition and so on, and each stage had obviously different people who were sort of leading each one of them, but certainly there were a few waves of people who were much better at certain things than I was, right from an operational point of view. So that ability to, I think, attract leadership, attract people, was a key success factor for me, I think, as an entrepreneur and CEO, and also, obviously, all that growth I have to contribute to investors, right. And attracting investment is another thing that I think is very important, right, and that's you know at the moment. If you were to ask me what are the two jobs, two tasks that a successful CEO has to do, is to attract talent and attract investment, right. So this was also part of my job.
Speaker 1:So, over the years, I have fundraised I don't know how many rounds of equity and debt and I took the company public, then we took it private and I sold to private equity, essentially, and so on and so on, right. So these two things, I think, were key in growing the business. And then, obviously, as an entrepreneur, you travel the world, you meet people, you take these bold decisions to do an acquisition in India, in our case, or then invest in the States and Canada and the Nordics, and so on. So all these things obviously required a lot of risk, calculated or not, but a lot of risk and a bold drive to go ahead and maybe overdo, overinvest, overpromise, at some point oversell, but certainly with an aim in mind. So I would say these were the key sort of success factors for me.
Speaker 2:Amazing. And in all of that, have you studied business Like? Did you do MBA afterwards or during that process?
Speaker 1:No, I don't have any business education right. I've obviously been reading up a lot and you know, obviously I'm part of a number of networks and they helped me a lot. And and and you know me, obviously part of a I'm part of a number of networks and and they helped me a lot. We can talk about them maybe a little more as well. But I have never uh, I've never taken up officially, like you know, an mba. I did a course on uh, I did obviously graduate from applied linguistics and then I did a course on a multidiscipline course on the European University of Rome in Italy. So obviously there were aspects of business covered, but this wasn't an.
Speaker 1:MBA as such right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, actually, it's very curious about what you mentioned, the power of networks, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, actually it's very curious about what you mentioned the power of networks, right, and you're also saying India. I have come across an organization called EO Entrepreneurs Organization and then I've heard about this also from a number of friends in the States and Germany, I think, and then, you know, at some point, with a bunch of friends, we decided to actually bring it to Poland and 2018, 2019, just before COVID, we have officially launched a chapter of EO Poland. Also, there is a sister organization called YPO, and the chapter YPO's chapter is long established in Poland and I'm also part, and the chapter YPO's chapter is long established in Poland and I'm also part of YPO Poland. So these two organizations I call home, right, and they, you know it's a great network of entrepreneurs, business people and also, you know, they help you a lot.
Speaker 1:And what's important to me is not just the business aspect of exchanging business cards, which is probably the least of what I'm looking for at the moment, but it's more about sharing experience and obviously we entrepreneurs are not only what our businesses are. Our lives are actually much more than our business, right, and there's no work-life sort of division or balance. It's one life that's made up of different things, right, and these two families I can talk to or I can, you know, exchange ideas and share experience, not only regarding my business, but also other parts of my life, right, and that's very important to me. So, yeah, a strong recommendation for all entrepreneurs, business owners who are looking for a place like that, to check these two places out.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well disclaimer. I'm very fresh to this myself, but Chris interviewed me for a Polish chapter of EO back in 2020. And, yeah, I can totally back with my own experiences what has been said here. So thanks for this. Relating to your like a single moment when you thought to yourself. Have you had that moment when you thought to yourself, hey, this is, you know, I'm really making it now with your company. Have you had that and, if so, when did it happen?
Speaker 1:I think I had a few such moments right. So certainly one of them was the merger we did with a company in India. This is where we sort of crossed, I think, $5 million or $4 million in revenue. This was the first, you know, important milestone. Certainly, taking the company public was also some form of a commitment and so on. So then selling to private equity right, this was a very important milestone in 2019. So, yes, I had a few such moments. I think the key milestones in the history of Summa Linguae were certainly the ones where you sort of overthink, you double think the decision and you're like, okay, there's a lot of burden of responsibility that come with the signature right. But yeah, I never thought too much, maybe, about this. It was always like let's do it.
Speaker 2:Fascinating and, like you said, you merged with a company from India, so quite far away culturally. How did it go? How do you make that happen and how do you make it work over years with the culture, differences and collaboration?
Speaker 1:Yes, I think the culture in India is obviously very different from the one in Poland, but also if you think about the States or the Nordics, or anywhere for that matter, we're very different, right? So I wouldn't say India is India. Maybe the difference is more in the legal system and in the bureaucracy that we're struggling with a lot, rather than culture, because culture is just, you know, different everywhere, and the language and so on. So for me, the key was to always have a partner right, so a partner that does merge with me. Right, although technically we did a bunch, you know, we did a number of acquisitions. In fact I don't really call them acquisitions, right? Technically this is what they were, but in fact they were mergers right, because you always merge with a person, right, it's? You know, we buy from people, we sell to people, we do business with people, and so we merge.
Speaker 1:And I think this is what I've learned, you know, obviously, on that extreme example of, you know, merger with a 100-person company from Bangalore, india, this was obviously you know a number of iterations example of a merger with a 100 person company from Bangalore, india, this was obviously a number of iterations, a number of trial and error and mistakes and so on, but at the end of the day, we made it happen and it works. It was 2016, right, so it's eight years now. We made it work and it's still working very well for us because there are people at work and it's still working very well for us because there are people who bought into the idea, into the vision, and who are with me now, and I would never be bold enough to just go and buy it right out of somebody and then have that person go. It's always a merger, in a sense, a joint venture maybe.
Speaker 2:Makes sense. I really like that narrative of collaboration and joint venture. This really resonates with me strongly. But since you mentioned some mistakes along the way, can you speak or whatever you can share? Right, what? Were the biggest lessons on the misstep side.
Speaker 1:Many. I mean, I don't think it's very difficult to maybe point to one. There is a lot of thought that you need to put into the business idea behind merging and how that joint entity will work, right. So there is an alignment of interest and alignment of vision, right. And I think initially we did not probably work enough on this, obviously, and you know, failing in excitement into the idea of having, you know, a global entity and doubling in size, we probably overlooked a number of youto-earth business problems that we'll face on a daily basis, right. So we had to actually redo some of it after some time, right. But again, I had a great partner at the other side of the table, right. So we both realized there is an issue with A, b, c, d, blah, blah, blah and we said, okay, let's just relook at the deal and see how we can make it work better, right.
Speaker 1:So certainly, not only the legal but also the business rationale behind, and it's aligning a sales structure. You have clients from both Europe and India or Asia. How do you have the sales force work so that they're both incentivized enough to, for example, cross-sell and up-sell to each other's clients, right? How do they not keep them to themselves. So all these technical, small technical, practical things that you need to sort of figure out to make it really work.
Speaker 1:Because it's not in the merger itself that lies the success of a merger, right. It's in everything that happens afterwards, in the integration and in how you make one plus one equal, more than two right. And this is why most of mergers, according to all the research, fail. Because it's easy to merge and buy and sell. It's difficult to make it work together, right. So a lot of that.
Speaker 1:So actually, on that point, we at some point also realized that, again, we're not experts. We haven't done it before, certainly not on that scale and in a foreign geography. So why don't we bring people who know this better than we do? And in 2016, we hired somebody who I think the official name was like business strategy, a chief strategy officer, and she did actually lead this exercise for us, right, and she did actually lead this exercise for us, right. So I have deliberately sort of stepped down from getting involved in a lot of this and, as soon as the deal was sort of done from a legal and technical point of view, we just put a team of people who worked on all these issues and tasks later, on all these issues and tasks later, and I think that was a key success factor for us at this point.
Speaker 2:Okay, so would you say that it's like you're the visionary and you find integrators for a specific process or a specific issue that the company or organization is facing at a given time? Or how would you describe this on a strategic level? Do you always find like eject yourself from the process on the operational side, or is this misunderstanding?
Speaker 1:on my side. No, that's probably a fair statement. I'm very lazy, inherently very lazy, I think, and I try to you know, avoid. I try to pass, know, avoid. I try to pass the operational button to people who can just do things better than I can. Right, I am.
Speaker 1:I'm really an entrepreneur, right, an entrepreneur is in my definition is someone who can see the opportunities where others don't see them, who can network well, who is probably a good salesperson but is not a good operator At least I'm not right. And knowing that, and realizing that that's the reality, I think I have to do justice to my company. I have to do justice to the 350 people that we hire and the families they support and all that. And I think it's just best that I pass operational aspects of running the business to people who can just do them much, much better than I can, at the same time freeing up a lot of my time and capacity to do what I do best. And I think the past 15 years of running this company have been a path of self-realization of what I do best and what I should focus on and what I should not take up. And that's, I think, probably the best, the greatest discovery, and it's an ongoing journey, right, but it's a very important one, and I wish everybody was sort of humble enough and open-minded enough to be able to go through that journey and realize that, okay, these things I'm not great at, let's have others do these things right.
Speaker 1:And at some point not long enough I also decided to sort of step down from the CEO role. I have brought a co-CEO to the company right, where in fact, she runs the business right, and I can focus on things that I do much better than running a company of a certain size. It's not a large business, but it's a mid-sized business on three continents with three private equities as owners, 300 plus people and so on. There's a certain professionalism and experience required to run it, and I think I've realized that there's probably gaps in my experience and at the same time I was so sunk up into a lot of these operational issues that I could not focus on what I do best. So I brought a co-CEO and I think we work very well together because of that division. It's very clear on who does what right and it's so far a great success.
Speaker 2:Super happy to hear that and you say it's not a huge company but it's certainly very, very impressive with everything you just mentioned and what it has has achieved. So well done, man. But, um, I want to understand something. So is it safe to assume that sometimes, through your acquiring those operators, you might be unsuccessful, or were they always, you know, very happy with the outcomes? Like, how do you find operators that are providing the outcome that you're happy with?
Speaker 1:Again, I'm not really good at it, probably because I inherently trust people. I just you know, and so I think again, I've made mistakes in the past. I don't think I have a good recipe for this. A gut feeling is the best. I I do, probably it's.
Speaker 1:It's you know, obviously the track record, uh, the the combination of time and and motivation, right. So it's something I was trying to always uh understand is the motivation behind you know why? Why, would you know, a very senior person would want to join my company, and so on. So we had, you know, we had people who've come and joined us from NASDAQ listed businesses. We had people who've joined us from you know, the likes of Microsoft and so on. And again, I don't think I've cracked this one very well yet.
Speaker 1:It's, and with a mixed success. Right, some of those profiles were great and some were not great. So, and I don't see, I don't yet see, a common denominator of you know. So, yeah, well, I'll. I don't think I can answer this one very well yet. It's still in discovery, sort of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fair enough. But would you say you have like an operator for recruitment, you know the head of recruitment of some sort that helps.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do obviously have, you know, an HR department and so on. But again, for these senior roles, I think you know my involvement is always sort of required. But yeah, they do the background checks and all that and yeah, but it's one of these things I don't think I'm very good at, so I don't, I don't really get involved, I think Fair enough involved.
Speaker 2:I think Mm-hmm, fair enough. On the topic of your time management, I'm always deeply impressed how you find time between the organizations that you manage and also individual members, as I am one of them and you really looked after me and my journey there, also recently with some stuff that we've been discussing. Do you have time management practice or tooling, or maybe a personal assistant that helps you with this? How do you do it Like it feels like you're working all around the clock?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I think I'm organized quite well. I have a zero inbox policy, sort of. So I try to you know when there's something I can get done in five minutes, I just get it done in five minutes and not stuck it up for for later. I think I, I don't have an assistant, I don't have an office, in fact funny, uh, we have an open space. I don't have a desk, um, I don't use assistants or you know, I I book my own flights and that's just the way I like to do it. Obviously, there's a few assistant secretary type of roles in the company that I can use for whatever specific tasks I need to get done, but I don't really have one assigned to me. I guess it's just, you know, multitasking, to some extent an art of delegation which I have mastered throughout the years of just making the most of my laziness.
Speaker 1:I've written a book about this. Actually, I think I've. Well, this it's about the history of Sumalingua. It was an anniversary book, I think. If you don't yet have it, I'm happy to ship it over to you, but there is a lot about how lazy I am in the book and how it has actually helped me. But yeah, I think it's also prioritizing what's important. So certainly the network, the EO YPO network, is very important to me.
Speaker 1:Obviously, I've learned to say no, probably as well. So if I say yes to the limited things that I say yes to, I give my 100%, but there's also 100 things I say no to, right, so these, you know you wouldn't see them, but if I were to take up everything people ask me for, that would have been obviously a disaster, right, and that's also part of you know why. I thought it's there's so many things lining up from an operational point of view that I fall short of my high expectation myself. And this is why, you know, delegate more, bring more people on that are better than I am, and so on. So I think that was also the key. And it's also, you know, taking a toll on my family.
Speaker 1:I sort of I don't have a working hour schedule, right, I work, you know, nonstop, weekends, mornings. Sort of I don't have a a working hour schedule, right, I work, you know, nonstop, weekends, mornings, evenings. Right, most of my, 70% of of my business is in the States. Right Of our, our revenue and clients are in the States, uh, also a good number of our employees. So the, the. The evening hours are obviously, you know, a norm for me, um being based out of poland, so yeah, I can totally, totally relate to that same same as your business right yes, totally.
Speaker 2:When you say zero inbox, do you mean it across channels or just email? Because you know, obviously we exchange instant messages and there is also other ways of communicating and, like I'm really curious, yeah, whatsapp, right, whatsapp and WhatsApp teams and email right.
Speaker 1:I'm still mainly on WhatsApp and email. I don't use we have teams, but I have. I route everything to my email. Basically, I'm just used to maybe old fashioned now, but I'm just used to working on my email a lot.
Speaker 2:I'm really impressed because I get it. I also work a lot. It's tough sometimes between the family and everything. Exactly like you said, no life-life balance. I actually don't believe in that term. I don't believe it's a fair term to say, but for an entrepreneur especially. But at the same time time I'm really curious of your systems. You know I'm super happy to go through your book as well, so if it's a PDF or if there is an online version of it, we're also happy to put in it's only a printed version, so yeah, no way to put it in footnotes or something right, or can people acquire it?
Speaker 1:you can't buy the book, you can ping me and I send you the book for free, and that's the only way you can. So you can just find me on LinkedIn and send me a message. I'll send you the book for free. That's the only way to buy the book.
Speaker 2:That's very scary now, because everyone who listens to this now might just take you up on the software.
Speaker 1:Are you ready now?
Speaker 2:because everyone who listens to this now might just take you up on the software. You're ready for this, that's fine that's fine, yeah that's fine.
Speaker 2:That means people have listened to the podcast uh with diligence. So, yeah, absolutely, we can measure the, the engagement. Then, right, fantastic, cool and um, like, because you're across so many different, you know um geographical locations, do you feel, like, for any specific uh location, your overall strategy and the local entity that is in the market do they have a different strategy than overall business like? I guess what I'm trying to ask is is your global strategy different from a local specific market strategies and how do you manage that?
Speaker 1:I think our global strategy is coherent but there are certain practical tactics and go-to-market strategies that are very different depending on the geographies we sell for. So you know, the way we position ourselves in the Nordics is obviously very different from the way we position ourselves in the Nordics, is obviously very different from the way we do so in the States, or in India, for that matter. Right. So the go to market strategy is very different. But obviously the services that we sell, you know, obviously, from practical standpoint, you obviously have local. You localize your marketing content Right and it's not just a translation Right, it's actually localized and adapted to the local market. Local. You localize your marketing content right and it's it's not just a translation right, it's actually localized and adapted to the local market.
Speaker 1:Also, the positioning, the way you sort of you know, do you call people or do you meet them? Is it okay to you know, call somebody 50 times or do you send whatsapp messages or do you email people? What's the tone of voice that you use? Is it formal, informal? What's appropriate in the nordics was not appropriate, you know, in india and so on. So obviously very specific to uh, to the local geographies, but at the end of the day, we obviously sell, sell, uh, more or less the same service everywhere, so services everywhere.
Speaker 2:so yeah, when sumalingua started right it is. You mentioned it yourself, you've been doing it yourself, the translations and your colleagues from from college. Eventually it became a technology play right and ai nowadays, to my understanding, also has significant role in its success in the future development right, can you speak to um? How did it happen that from that let's say, very human centric, very I'm not sure if it's a right description, but manual process with a lot of manual labor became more streamlined and automated and today is probably driven mostly by AI.
Speaker 1:So certainly, when you grow in scale and you start servicing bigger clients, they pose these challenges ahead of you, right. Bigger clients? They pose these challenges ahead of you, right. So what's possible and doable for a small client? When you have an opportunity to go after a bigger fish, you have to see how you can perform the service in a scalable way. So we have sort of always been on the overselling extreme. So I've always tried to sort of sell a project and then see how I can get it delivered, which was obviously risky, but at the same point, it has always fueled the growth of innovation in my company. So this is how we have taken up projects bigger than ourselves and always adapted and innovated and learned how to get them delivered. Also by means of hiring people who have done it in the past and so on. That's one thing.
Speaker 1:Obviously, translation being largely now driven by machine translation and a lot of automation around, it is a process that it's a tech-enabled service, right? So obviously, all our automations, all the implementations that we do at the moment are obviously there's a human component in some of them, but it's largely a tech-enabled service. But it's largely a tech-enabled service. It's still a service. We don't sell products. At the end of the day, it's not a SaaS license that you can buy or anything. It's a product, it's a service, but it's a service delivered by means of a number of technologies that we put together, both our own proprietary, as well as a third of the shelf implementations and also growing on the premise of delivering clients, managing multilingual projects for our clients. We have also realized that you know probably in 2016 and 2017, that there is much more to much more that we can help them with than only getting a text from language A to language B and speaking to them and being very close to our clients, which is something that I like to do.
Speaker 1:I've realized that at this point in time, they were also after the early wave of AI, right, and at this point in time, they started building AI products. Right, and AI products have to interact with human beings. They have to understand language. With human beings, they have to understand language, and so we started working with them on things that are multilingual but not related to translation services, right, and this is how we got to what we now call data services or multilingual data services, and that's how we help our clients build AI products that understand natural language and interact with human beings right. So we look after the data part of it. So, alexa, if you interact with Alexa, there's our data behind it, the data that we have collected, data that we have annotated, labeled and engineered so that Alexa can learn from it, right.
Speaker 2:Is this like for sentiment analysis or?
Speaker 1:Well, there's a lot more to it. Obviously, sentiment analysis, collection right, you start from collection. You annotate, label the data. Right? You engineer it in a way that's digestible for an AI algorithm. Then you constantly have to evaluate the quality and it's like looking for a needle in a stack of hay. Right? You try to, for example, eliminate bias from data. Right, you try to enhance data sets for an engine to perform better. So that's everything that we call data for AI. Maybe that's what we do, and that's now about half of our business, right? So, obviously, catching the early AI wave, we have identified that this will be the trend driving the future of growth of the company, and that's certainly been a very good business decision we made back in 2016, 2017.
Speaker 2:Of course, yeah, totally, and the tech team that you have that develops all of this from leadership down to the individual programmer. Did you build that ground app or did you actually acquire them through M&As?
Speaker 1:Most of the acquisitions were supplemented by organic hires.
Speaker 2:So, in other words, all the know-how how to deal with tech aspect of it came from the partnerships like you mentioned.
Speaker 1:Look the M&A aspect of our growth has always been part of our DNA. We've done 10 plus acquisitions. So when we identify that, okay, data for AI is where we need to be and this was the case in 2016, we said, okay, let's see, maybe go to a few conferences, learn more about it, see what the competition does, and then, if we know this is what we want to bet on, let's acquire a couple of companies. Right, we're looking for technology, we're looking for clients, we're looking for geography and the geo aspect. So we bought a company in Canada Well, a US company, in fact. All of their clients were in the States. So we bought a data for AI company in the States. We also bought one in Europe, where we have supplemented. The one in the States was mainly voice data and the one in Europe was focused on nlp and text textual data right, and there were the, the two main formats of of interest for us.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, when you do this you mentioned, you go to conferences and you learn about competition and so on. Who does this? Like the management? Like how can you strategize around that?
Speaker 1:I, I like to do it myself, obviously there's the team that goes to conferences as well and so on. But I just especially early days. I always did that myself. I spent for a good few years.
Speaker 2:I spent, you know, six or seven months away from home, yeah, and Wow, I'm glad I have this recording so I can present that to my own significant other as an argument. For me it was COVID right.
Speaker 1:I virtually had a number of tickets booked and so on, and COVID came and just killed everything right. And then my son was born in 2019 and everything came to a halt. And then I just didn't, you know. I did obviously start traveling again, but not to the extent I did before. From 2016 to or 2015 to 2019, I virtually spent. I did about 200, over 200 flights each year. I became a frequent flyer on most of the airlines. You know Frankfurt and Munich were my second homes in Europe for all the transfers I did through these two airports. And then COVID, my son was born, and for a few years I obviously sat at home and then now I do much less. I do still travel quite a bit, but not much less, much less.
Speaker 2:Nowadays, Christoph, since you travel less, do you feel like do you need a specific team of analysts or people who travel on your behalf and just go to all of these conferences and have some sort of framework under which they summarize it for you? Or I wonder how the management team can make a, you know, educated decision based on inputs from from various different conferences and sources.
Speaker 1:At the same time, I think a lot, of, a lot of these things that you had to travel to before are now digital and virtual, so I can do probably half of it online. I do still travel quite a bit, but I think the the culture has changed around. You know, maybe going to your clients and visiting them and talking to them, right, so you know what I recall. For example, you know our clients, the likes of you know Nike and Intel and so on. They would probably want to see me four times a year on each QBR. So I had to travel to the States.
Speaker 1:Now, it's enough, I go once and then the other three. It's okay, I join online. So that saves a lot of time, right, and obviously, over the years we've also, like I said, built a team of very experienced folks who can do some of it. That what used to be a gut feeling, unstructured process behind my innovation is now framed into a proper strategic thinking or strategic framework of how we innovate, in a sense, and how we come up with new initiatives and ideas, where we say no, to, where we say yes, where we invest and so on, know to where we say yes, where we invest, and so on. So it's much more productized now and, sort of you know, much more professional than when I used to run it myself.
Speaker 2:And in all of that you said you previously you did a lot of equity and debt rounds how much of the influence over your strategy and also information intake or maybe other value investors have that you had like you know, the ones that you just got on board how much influence would they have? How much did they help with this?
Speaker 1:yeah, so all our investors will were always passive investors, right. So obviously some of them like to get involved a little more, some less, but it has always been on the passive side. We never had an active you know, strategic active investor. Obviously, with you know, now, with a group of three private equity firms that own 50 plus percent of the business, they have a much more professional oversight of the company and obviously there are some decisions that we have to go and ask their permission for, but they're still a passive investor.
Speaker 2:So no initiative, suggestions or idealization, just leave it to you, except maybe for some oversight.
Speaker 1:Well, they obviously have suggestions. We also have a number of experts on the board, but it's up to us to, you know, make them happen or say no to them, or it's our call the management, I mean.
Speaker 2:Beautiful? And beyond AI, is there any other technologies you have on your radar currently for the next years that you think will become, you know, which will impact your business or become a new standard on the market for businesses like this?
Speaker 1:Well, so we're certainly, you know, still very involved in the translation and data for AI space. So we try to, and within the broad basket called AI, there's so many things happening that you know it's more than enough to investigate, and every other week we learn about something new, and so on.
Speaker 1:So we like to stick to what our core business is, that is, multilingual. And then everything around content, right, so multilingual content and how we can help our clients streamline their message better across the different markets they sell and offer their services at, so that's. And also how they understand their customers, so how their customers talk back to them. That's also very important for us. So, sentiment analysis, understanding what you know, a Nike user posts on some social media channels somewhere in, you know, in India. That's very important to us to be able to get that message back to our client. Right, so it's a complete circle of content creation and interaction with your clients. Right? So it's very important that we have technologies and strategies around that.
Speaker 1:So content creation, content curation, content creation, everything around multilingual content for the companies that we work for. That's testing, right, seeing how, measuring the impact, so ROI on content all these things are very important for us. So, and same for AI, right, when we help Amazon launch Alexa in a given country, there's so much that goes with it. Right? So, to understand how Alexa can be more inclusive, how it can help its customers better, how it can help make the lives of Amazon's customers more comfortable and better, and so on. These categories are so broad, and the language as such is so broad that it's more than enough. It's it's an ocean big enough for us to swim for years to come, I think absolutely, absolutely, and it's uh, across so many dimensions.
Speaker 2:it's fascinating. Did I get it right that you also help with the response? So if you, let's say, you monitor social media and you see something come up in one of those markets that you mentioned, and then you know the customer is not happy with it, would you also curate a message back to ensure the best, you know, the best impact there? It's almost like PR.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, part of the service, right? So everything, language, fantastic. Again, it's a service that we offer, right? Not everybody buys the service from us, but it's one that we can offer.
Speaker 2:And you also tweak the message like market-specific. So imagine the circumstances in which one of your clients is asking you to enter with a product line similar product line that they have, let's say, in Europe, and they are trying to enter the US. Would you help them build their branding based on the target market?
Speaker 1:We can do that. We can also work with a marketing agency in the country in-country expert and help them with the language-only aspect. So certainly that's part of the service that we can offer.
Speaker 2:What's the differentiation between using the third-party marketing company and doing it yourself? There's a specific line that you don't cross, or what are your qualifications? How do you qualify the client to go left or right here?
Speaker 1:Well, I think we work mainly with large and very large corporate clients, right, the ones who spend upwards of a million dollars in the category of services that we sell. And these clients have some just corporate nature type of guidelines and they would, for example, have a global marketing partner, but that partner might not be an expert in the language aspect. So we tie up with them and work together. So it's very you know. It's case by case. It's, at the end of the day, what the client wants okay, that makes sense, I get it.
Speaker 2:So obviously they they have their own portfolio or network of companies they work with. Totally, totally makes sense. Chris, before we wrap this up, I would like to hear what is your one piece of advice that you would like to offer to our listeners. If they're the aspiring entrepreneurs and they're just starting up, what would you say is one thing that they should hold on to or follow? Yeah, tell us.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So it's not the first time I've been asked this question and I always have the same answer. So I'm not going to, I'm not going to share, I'm not going to give you, uh, advice, because we're all different, uh, because our lives are different, uh, the circumstances are different. Uh, what I would say is have the courage to listen to stories like mine, but also many others, and then make your own decision based on the experience that you found interesting, and then own it. Because if you listen to somebody else's advice, then the burden of responsibility lies with the one who gives you the advice. So I don't want that. I'm very open to sharing a lot of experience, but at the end of the day, you have to make the call and then own it.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, Absolutely yeah, and they should probably join EO or YPO at the nearest possibility.
Speaker 1:Convenience to broaden the network it's a great circle of people who can share experience.
Speaker 2:Wonderful Krzysztof. Thank you so much for being with us here today, for sharing your journey and your experience with us. Really appreciate that. Yeah, thank you, and yeah, I hope to connect with you again. Maybe we'll do another episode in the future.
Speaker 1:You're full of so many fantastic people, thanks so much for hosting me.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, krzysztof, for sharing your journey and insights with us today To our listeners. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Dev is in the Details. To our listeners thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Dev is in the Details. Be sure to subscribe and leave a review of your comments Until the next episode.
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