Pivot is hard. Pivot is great.
Exactly a year ago we launched a translation platform and rebranded our startup from Aligner to TranslateWise. It’s a story of a wrong start and a tough pivot.
I used to pitch my startup as Grammarly for translators, where translation and editing happen seamlessly in a new convenient form.
The whole journey from idea to product was by far not by the book. Although we managed to get into Y Combinator Startup School and it all made sense what they say, it took us 3 bloody years to build the product. And 2 months after launch to give up on it and switch our focus on building another product. Not that we love building and don’t like selling. Metrics just did not work out to make any effort on sales and scaling.
Why it took us so long?
It turned out to be a great challenge to deal with 50 shades of languages. Making anything multilingual is a hassle, whether it’s a simple website, app, support or tutorials, marketing… anything.
Even though there was no category king and strong players in the same field, many signs were telling us the demand is huge, so we kept working on it.
On our way, we got plenty of great feedback, that later turned out to be just fake.
We even won some pitching competitions because people related to the problem.
Some wannabe competitors in our space were there. Occasionally, one became the Product of the Year on Producthunt.
We were naive and got blinded by their successful campaign, pushing even harder in the wrong direction.
Having acquired around 3000 users to translation platform, the reality check was when only 2% converted into paying customers.
Three of the biggest learnings:
- Re-invent the wheel, only when you have hints of a professional business model. Regularly, founders’ pockets are not that deep. When I am asked for advice, it’s it. Whatever the startup is building, show me the competitors and their metrics. Make sure competitors’ metrics indicate it’s a strong business model. The closest product shall have average retention of at least 80%, and churn under 10% would be great. Otherwise, growth is sales-driven and the company’s growth is unnatural, being paid by inexpert investors.
- There is no finish line, so enjoy the journey with all the hurdles. It’s a rollercoaster. If your startup has a hockey stick, don’t get too proud, the troubles are ahead. If you are in deep trouble, it’s a chance for change and new horizons.
- Your unhappy customers and major technical issues are the biggest sources of learning. Inspiration came come from a bizarre situation. And what I refused to understand at first — it’s ok to be embarrassed by the product, as it’s never ready anyway.
As a comparison, with our new product — multilingual customer chat — we took the solution that people used already widely and used our learnings to make it better. We simplified the setup and added language support to customer chat. As a result, it’s the only scalable multilingual chat at an affordable price.
Life after pivot
Life got a lot meaningful. With covid, booming e-commerce, and plenty of annoying bots and chat pop-outs, we realized customer support is a mess, and fixing it feels so right. I feel we’re finally getting something right.
We built a scalable multilingual customer chat any website can add in 2 minutes. Unlike other professional tools, TranslateWise is so easy to set up and any e-commerce business can afford it.
This time I pitch our new product and business model thinking of Slack. And I am so proud it’s not just a sales pitch, there is a clear value and simple product, where work happens every day. And of course metrics, 1,9% churn rate, and 90%+ retention we see today from our Stripe report.
It took us 3 months of work to deliver chat beta, get first paying customers, and 6 months to understand we found it — the dream of all unicorn hunters — the product-market fit!
It would not be possible without 3 years of learning how the translation industry evolves.
I learned a lot from the pivot. Now I am watching other startups, business models, and scalability potential from a better corner.
Ps. I canceled my Grammarly premium subscription in one click without any hard feelings. Our team still uses Slack. There is a huge difference in the stickiness and value of SaaS products. I believe in real products.
Today, TranslateWise is a customer support tool where work happens every day. In addition to enabling smooth customer support, we accumulate and store all the conversations and use this data to help improve customer support. Making customer support in the internet better one company at a time.
Thanks for reading. If you have any questions or comments, leave them below, I’ll do my best to get back to all.
Read more about our new product: www.translatewise.com
