Localization at Startups

When startups think about going global, they might be faced with different challenges than larger, more established companies: Do they have an international strategy? Internationalization or localization expertise in-house? What is the budget? At what stage in their development as a business should they go global? Who drives and supports the decision to go global?

A panel of localization managers from three Bay Area startups share their thoughts and recommendations on building a successful localization strategy for startups. Topics include:

• The role of Localization Manager within a startup

• Effective global content strategies for startups

• Localization tools and processes

• Placement/support of localization within a startup

• International Product Management

Panelists:

Patrick McLoughlin is Senior Localization Program Manager at Eventbrite, where he manages global simships of the popular ticketing platform in 14 markets. He has more than 15 years’ experience in the language industry ranging from translation and interpreting, language teaching and multilingual desktop publishing to subtitling, machine translation and lexicography. Prior to Eventbrite, Patrick spent five years at Yahoo!, as both Localization Project Manager and Terminology Manager.

Silvia Oviedo is the Localization Manager at Pinterest, where she focuses on growing Pinterest's international footprint. Since the beginning of her career she has managed communities, content, localization and international at companies such as Yahoo!, eBay or Pinterest. For a while, she also ran her own internationalization, blogging and Search engine optimization consulting company. She studied Translation and Interpreting at Universidad Complutense in Madrid and Strategic Decision and Risk Management at Stanford.

Mark Bulmer leads International Product Management at Ask.com, developing and launching search and content products for a wide range of international markets. Prior to this, Mark spent 10 years bringing consumer internet products to global audiences at a number of leading brands – Yahoo!, Flickr, Wanadoo, Orange, based in the US and in Europe. Mark has a Masters Degree in Digital Media.

Katell Jentreau started her career as an English-to-French translator, and has been working in localization for 15+ years, both on the vendor and client sides. She is currently responsible for all localization work at Box, one of the leaders in enterprise cloud-based collaboration platforms, based in Los Altos, CA. In 2013, Katell also joined the board of the Women in Localization, an organization dedicated to promote professional development, networking and continuous education among its rapidly-growing membership.

Host/Moderator: Eva Gross leads localization at LiveCareer, helping launch LiveCareer's core products into global markets in 2014. Prior to joining LiveCareer in September 2013, she worked at Apple and Language Automation, Inc. Eva has been a German<>English freelance translator since 2000 and earned her Master Degree in Translation and Localization Management from the Monterey Institute of International Studies in 2010.

Schedule:

6:30-7:00 Social time with snacks
7:00-8:00 Presentation and discussion
8:00-8:30 Social time