#39 Petr Antropov on Lokalise Series A, BIG M&A, Why THG Insourced Translation

In SlatorPod’s third guest episode, Florian and Esther are joined by Lokalise co-Founder Petr Antopov, fresh from his company’s Series A funding round announced on Sept 7, 2020.Your regular hosts bring you the week’s language industry news; from Jeff Brink’s BIG Language Solutions acquiring US-based healthcare specialist ISI to two LSPs merging in Belgium, this week was awash with corporate transactions (not an NMT story in sight).Another two companies went public, as the owner of Language Connect, The Hut Group (THG), successfully completed a major IPO in London. Florian and Esther discuss why an e-commerce giant like THG would not only bother doing localization internally, but make it an integral part of their IPO messaging. The two also talk about Ai-Media’s IPO in Australia. In financial results, Esther gives an update on H1 2020 trading from London-listed video game specialist Keywords Studios, which grew 8% organically. Keywords’ Localization division suffered as customers postponed projects, but is rebounding now the dam has lifted.We’re joined by serial entrepreneur Petr, who talks about why localization appealed, taking Lokalise fully remote, and his plans for scaling for the localization SaaS provider.