Less than 5 years ago, we were in the same position as most of our new customers find themselves in today – in need of translation management and up to our eyes in countless spreadsheets, endless email threads, and frustrated teammates. What started as an internal project intended to make our lives easier and powered only by a handful of developers quickly grew into a healthy business as top-tier customers started knocking at our doors.
Today, Lokalise serves over 1500 customers in 80 countries from early-stage startups to scaleups, including Revolut, Notion, and Lemonade, to Fortune500 companies.
From bootstraps to funding
After 3 years of operating fully bootstrapped, Lokalise faces the need for quicker development in light of demand eclipsing capacity. We plan to achieve this with external funding that will go into hiring top talents. That being said, it would be remiss of us not to mention the impact bootstrapping had on Lokalise. Self-funding allowed the team to explore and master a profitable revenue model, as well as implement a constantly improved and customer-centric product philosophy and strategy.
With a modern and capable product, an established customer base, and a proven business model, it’s clear to us that the best way to scale Lokalise is to attract the top go-to-market talent. Our backers are both emblematic and supportive of this mission.
The funding round was led by one of Europe’s most experienced VCs, Mike Chalfen, with participation from capital300 and a number of high-profile angel investors, including Andrey Khusid (Founder and CEO of Miro) and his angels fund S16, Nicolas Dessaigne (co-founder of Algolia), Des Traynor (co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Intercom), Matt Robinson (CEO of Nested), Rich Waldron, Ali Russell, and Dom Lewis (the founders of Tray), Carlos Gonzalez-Cadenas (COO of GoCardless), Eugene Katz (ex-CS lead of Atlassian), Stephane Kurgan (the former COO of King.com) and Charlie Songhurst.
$6M raised in its series A funding round means Lokalise has received the largest first-time investment to date for a startup founded in Latvia. It’s a badge of honor we’ll wear proudly.
Remote team, global talents, happy customers
Lokalise has been experimenting with remote work since 2019. We switched to fully remote in March 2020 and announced we’ll stay a fully remote company in August. Since 2019, our team has grown from 15 to 60 people. A remote working environment facilitates access to the best talents from every corner of the world, as well as brings Lokalise closer to our customers.
We’re doubling down on our customer-centric approach, seeking to serve customers better, focus on product improvements, and make onboarding easier. From day one, Lokalise’s goal has been to eliminate hassle surrounding localization. Our mission remains unchanged.
