SlatorPod

#80 TAIA CEO Marko Hozjan on Scaling a Translation Startup

July 16, 2021 Slator
SlatorPod
#80 TAIA CEO Marko Hozjan on Scaling a Translation Startup
Show Notes Chapter Markers

Marko Hozjan, CEO and Co-founder of translation startup TAIA, joins SlatorPod to talk about his company’s journey from launch to their recent series A.

Marko discusses what brought him into the world of translation from a background that spans everything from economics and leadership, to language teaching and…sailing.  He talks about automation and machine translation and the need to remain focused and disciplined when developing translation products.   

First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week — which saw three M&A and Funding announcements. The two talk about Rome-based Translated’s USD 25m investment, Argos Multilingual’s acquisition of Chillistore, and Big Language Solutions’ acquisition of UK-based Dora Wirth Languages (DWL).

Esther talks about media localization provider ZOO Digital’s 2021 annual report, which detailed a shift in their service mix toward Media Services (media packaging, content preparation, etc.).

Florian also muses about the minefield of intellectual property rights and licensing when it comes to voices, after Vice covered the case of a voice actor suing social media giant TikTok, which allegedly acquired and replicated via AI the actor’s voice without her knowledge.

Agenda and Intro
Who owns voices?
Translated raised USD 25M
Zoo's best ever quarter
Argos buys Chillistore
BIG buys Dora Wirth
TAIA CEO Marko joins the pod
Marko's background and entrepreneurial journey
How Marko moved into the translation business
TAIA team
TAIA's machine translation stack
From MVP to current offering
Why simple UI matters
How to juggle tech dev and services delivery
Battling feature request overload
Marko's industry outlook