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Founder’s Story Empowering the World with Language AI
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00:01Bonjour tout le monde, hello everyone, my name is Laura Connell, I'm one of the partners at Atomico, I'm an
00:08investor, I've had the great privilege of working with Jarek at DeepL for a couple of years now, but without
00:15further ado, I'm just going to give Jarek a quick opportunity to say hello and then we can dive in.
00:19Hi Laura, thank you for being here with me on the stage and looking forward to chatting a little bit.
00:25Absolutely, so many of you I have no doubt will have heard about DeepL, particularly this week after a very
00:31well publicised and very well deserved new round of funding of around $300 million led by Index, which value DeepL
00:38at $2 billion, quite an incredible milestone.
00:40But, you know, before we dive into that in more detail, I'd love for Jarek to share a little bit
00:46more about DeepL with you and about the journey he's been on so far.
00:49Yeah, I mean, maybe first a few words around the round because you just mentioned it.
00:55I think it's, from my perspective, it's super important to choose your investors to the stage of a company that
01:02you're at and we've always had, I think, the opportunity to work with the best funds out there in this
01:09world.
01:09And as the company is growing right now, as the company is becoming really larger and we are far more
01:15late stage, it is so much more helpful to also have those investors who are looking into the future far
01:24more longer and that can stay with us as a company through the, maybe not even the next years, but
01:31even the next decades.
01:32And this is kind of how we've been looking at this and trying to find those.
01:38In general, I think we've gone through a, from my perspective, pretty amazing journey over the last years, building out
01:46a tech company in AI already at the time before AI was cool.
01:52At the time where we all, maybe at some points in time, have been a little bit afraid of putting
01:59AI on the headline and on the front page of the business.
02:05And with that being built up, going into the AI craze and the AI boom that happened last year, that
02:13was a big, that was a big one for us.
02:16Definitely.
02:16And on that, it's so interesting because, you know, what we loved about the DeepL mission and why we invested
02:22is this incredible mission to really focus on breaking down global language barriers and particularly for enterprise.
02:28You know, over 100,000, 100,000 enterprise clients already, you know, a lot of focus in the press, particularly
02:35in the last couple of weeks around translation generally, you know, has big tech solved this problem of translation?
02:42Very simple answer to that, Laura.
02:44No, I think translation is a, is a question or is a problem that is, that is all around us.
02:52I don't know from how many people I've already heard today here on this, at this conference on how much
02:58translation and DeepL, how much this is helping them in their, in their daily life.
03:03This is a problem that we are all seeing all of the time.
03:06But there's also a real difference in whether you're in a foreign country and you want to check in into
03:13your hotel or whether you want to maybe translate the menu card in the restaurant and versus what you need
03:22to run a business across borders.
03:25When you need to run a company maybe which has offices in Japan and it's all of its R&D
03:32in Japan, but all of the markets and all of the commercial setup that is all in the US, you
03:38have a lot of translation going on within the company.
03:40You have a lot of communication bottlenecks.
03:42And this is actually where really the quality matters.
03:46This is where accuracy matters because you don't want to get these things wrong.
03:50And this is also where embedding the solution into the daily workflows of hundreds and thousands of employees is so
04:00important.
04:01So I think that the overall package of having both the technology and the product that really supports enterprises in
04:11becoming global, becoming international, that's really the problem that we're solving.
04:16And it's definitely not the problem that big tech has been addressing here.
04:19Yeah. I mean, I think one of the most extraordinary things about your journey is that you really had, I
04:24mean, this almost emblematic journey that most companies can only hope for in terms of having entirely product-led growth
04:30initially.
04:30You know, really this, which is such testament to the product that you built, the qualities you speak of, the
04:35accuracy of the translation engine, you know, which really I think justifies the dominance of your leadership now from a
04:42translation perspective.
04:43You grew and scaled incredibly quickly, you know, could you maybe talk to us a little bit about some of
04:48those early challenges, not only on kind of building and finding the right products, perhaps the geographies, but also in
04:54some of the investments that you had to make on the infrastructure side, you know, how you thought about kind
04:58of really scaling as quickly as you did.
05:01I mean, I mean, I was hiring a CMO a few months ago, and when we started discussions with him,
05:08I told him, we have not invested a single dollar in marketing for the first four years of the company,
05:15not a single dollar.
05:16Unbelievable. Yeah.
05:17So I think that is kind of testament to how far you can get with a product that is easy
05:24to use, but also kind of challenges everybody else in the market in terms of quality and in terms of
05:31just kind of how good the product is.
05:34And this viral growth, this word of mouth growth has been what has been fueling the company over the first
05:42years.
05:42But I think from that really comes the next challenge. And you asked me about challenges.
05:47Yes.
05:48Like how at some point in time, that's that's really not not enough.
05:52Yeah.
05:52And I think for everybody who has a great PLG motion, maybe sitting in that room, like, please, please remember
05:58that there comes a time when this is when this is not enough and where you have to be a
06:05little bit more explicit about which kind of customers you want to address.
06:08How do you want to address them? You're switching maybe from a more consumerish motion, which is usually very well
06:15driven by by word of mouth towards a more B2B or enterprise oriented.
06:20And this is where the company is right now. And this is all of these steps of getting our marketing
06:27up and running, getting our commercial model in general up and running.
06:31That has been a big task for us from going from a purely technology and even research oriented company towards
06:39towards a vertically integrated company that is not only amazing at tech, but also amazing at go to market.
06:45That is super important. And at the very beginnings, technology gets you very far.
06:52Then you have to add the product. It gets you a step further.
06:55And then you have to have to go to market because without that, you're never going to become like so
07:00large.
07:01Yeah. And I think it's one of the things you and I have spoken about before that, you know, as
07:06you say, when you come, there are kind of two transitions underway from a cultural perspective.
07:09On the one hand, you've got this transition where you've got this kind of very deep technical talent base, which
07:16has really driven so much of the company's progress and now layering on this kind of commercial muscle as well.
07:21So there's this kind of transition happening organizationally. And at the second time, at the same time, rather, you're also
07:26going through going from what has been a kind of European company to really meeting a global stage and hiring
07:31on a global basis and rolling out.
07:33And I think 63 markets now as well, or being live in 63 markets already, you know, it'd be just,
07:38it'd be great to hear a little bit about how you thought about kind of scaling culture internally as well
07:42and really navigating some of those challenges.
07:45Yeah. I think we've even started as a German company and only then went to a European company.
07:50I still very well remember the day when we flipped our all hands from being done in German into English
07:57because we had our first employee who didn't speak German.
08:02So that's, there is those moments.
08:05And I think the most important thing for you to be able to go through those changes is to build
08:12up that kind of trust within the employee base and the openness and the transparency so that any of those
08:21changes that you're going through,
08:23and they're going to be all painful for somebody or for everybody, that you have to trust within, with the
08:30employees that what actually is happening right now is important, is good, it needs to get done.
08:37And that the company is thinking about them also in that process.
08:41And that is nothing that you can just kind of achieve in a day.
08:46That is something that is built over the years.
08:48And you have to be very, very careful about making sure that you're not losing that at any point in
08:54time during the journey.
08:57At the same time, becoming so international is great for a company.
09:01Yes.
09:02I think the diversity of ideas that is coming into, the diversity of cultures, and I don't want to go
09:09into stereotypes, but there's great aspects to every culture.
09:13I mean, there is the made-in-Germany quality trademark, which I think speaks very well to the quality that
09:20DeepL is achieving in translation.
09:24But you also have to go maybe for the speed that the U.S. is standing for in today's tech
09:31companies.
09:32So mingling that all together, I think, gives you the best possible combination, which is why I'm a huge fan
09:40of us becoming global from that perspective.
09:43I mean, I think it's fair to say that there is some, given the core of the business focus on
09:48translation, there are some advantages to having scaled in Europe originally.
09:51You know, some of the, kind of on an ongoing basis, there's greater familiarity with the reality of the need
09:57to be multilingual.
09:58I think that's one of the big points of differentiation that you have.
10:01You know, maybe it would be great for the audience to hear a little bit more about some of the
10:04broader points of differentiation that you feel you have relative to the competition, because there are some quite clear ones.
10:09Yeah, and maybe first, though, alluding to the European part also here, it is incredibly important, especially at the very
10:18early stages, to understand what the product is for.
10:21And it's still amazing when you talk sometimes, or like specifically in the early days, when we talked to journalists
10:28in the U.S., they didn't get the problem.
10:31Yes, yes.
10:32So, if they're not getting the problem, how can they build solutions for the problem?
10:36And especially at the beginning, at the very early stages, it's all about gut feeling and kind of the founding
10:42team understanding what it is all about.
10:45So, in Europe, with everybody speaking so many different languages, with kind of our headquarters is in Cologne, so that's
10:52like 50 kilometers from the Dutch border, and France is also not far away, and Belgium.
11:00Like, we knew what the problem really is.
11:02So, that's been truly helpful for us to get it started.
11:09I think when it comes to the remaining points of differentiation, we've been always a very trusted partner to our
11:17customers in terms of safety and security, and specifically with translation, when you're thinking about what a business, what an
11:27enterprise is translating, this is quite often very confidential data.
11:33Like, we have some of our customers are actually translating their quarterly earning reports as public companies, and they're saying,
11:40we cannot give that to anybody outside of the company, but we are fine to run it through the technology,
11:46because that's pretty much the safer option, actually.
11:50So, safety is an important one.
11:52I think also kind of the product depth.
11:55We understand what the product, what the language challenges of our customers are, especially those bigger customers.
12:02And we can tailor our solutions to those, like making sure that the language that everybody is using within a
12:10company when they're translating is always kind of the same, or like the terminology is the same.
12:17Making sure that there's this kind of language system behind it all.
12:22That's just like some of the unique points that we are helping our enterprise customers with.
12:28Yeah, I think one of the most extraordinary things about you as a company, I remember this when we did
12:33the rounds when we invested initially with Atomico, but, you know, often people in Europe and investors in Europe and
12:40US can underestimate the value of products beyond the geographies they're immediately in, as we just mentioned, the US perspective
12:45on the problem of translation.
12:48But what was extraordinary to see was the traction that you have in emerging markets, and actually even, you know,
12:53Asia, kind of some very mature markets already, including the likes of Japan.
12:57And it's been amazing to see the prevalence, the kind of the uptake you've seen in new markets like Korea.
13:03And, you know, I'd just love maybe for you to share a little bit about some of those dynamics, because
13:06they are quite extraordinary.
13:07Yeah, we have this one central Excel sheet in the company, which kind of calculates the potential of different markets
13:15for us.
13:16Right.
13:16And it goes into what is the population size in that country, in that market, what is the, how strong
13:25are the trade relationships between this country and the rest of this world, because that somehow signifies how much translation
13:32will be needed there.
13:33And then we're looking at average English proficiency in that country.
13:37And if you mix those two factors and look at the top countries in this world, Japan, the first one,
13:46Korea is one of the next ones.
13:47Right.
13:48And these are kind of the markets that we've very quickly looked into, like Indonesia is another one.
13:54Countries with a huge population base, but also countries with really a language problem there.
14:01Like those, those languages are so far away from English.
14:06People struggle speaking those and, and the technology is actually quite often really saving the lives in business to, to,
14:16to, to work across those borders.
14:17And it's, it's, it's, it's not a surprise or not an accident that I mentioned the Japanese customer at the
14:24beginning, because actually some of those stories are the most compelling ones.
14:29Yeah. And I think it also speaks to the, the multiple vectors for growth that you have quite clear growth
14:34potential just on the core translation product today, prosumer and enterprise.
14:40But then of course, also thinking about the next generation or kind of what comes next from a product perspective,
14:44perhaps you could speak a little bit to, you know, what you're most focused on there.
14:47Yeah. I mean, the, the ability to translate spoken language is the one and most asked for question for each
14:57and every user and each and every customer in Asia.
15:01That's like number one across the board and like one of the things that we're working on right now.
15:05So there's, there's very strong signals sometimes really from those markets where you, where you have those very particular problems.
15:15Yeah. I think one thing that I'd really love to come back to and talk a little bit about, because
15:19I think it's again, something that people often underestimate when they, when they're not deep in the kind of the
15:23translation market, but the value of incremental accuracy, particularly when you get to enterprise is so significant.
15:29And, you know, when words matter, people use deep L you know, with that, I'd love to maybe have you
15:35share a little bit more about how you think about, you know, those industries where you're seeing the most kind
15:39of traction, but perhaps, you know, what you're most focused on from a go to market perspective, because good enough
15:43just doesn't wash in a lot of enterprise solutions.
15:46Yeah. How are we thinking about that is really, there is a, there is a, there's always a quality level
15:52that enables certain use cases.
15:55And I kind of thinking about it even like in a gamification way, like you unlock new use cases when
16:02you're achieving higher quality levels.
16:04If you have a one-on-one email to a customer, um, of course that is important and the quality
16:10needs to be, needs to be good for that.
16:12Uh, because like you want to convince that customer, you, you want to make sure you're not making any mistakes
16:17because like it is, this is a crowded world, the communication matters.
16:21And, uh, but still, when you think about one-to-end communication, if you're thinking about your website and market
16:29marketing material, you have to be even better for that.
16:33So each and every step you're achieving on this is, is actually measuring a lot for, for our customers and
16:41enables them to do more and more either automatically through this translation or just make sure that the person who
16:49is helping the AI, who is doing the final cross check on the translation is just very quick at doing
16:58that.
16:58Because there's, there's, there's no mistakes or there's, there's, there's very few, um, there's very few mistakes.
17:03So, so quality really, really, really matters on that.
17:06Absolutely.
17:07You know, I think, um, coming back perhaps to a broader question around scaling D-Pell and, and, and, and
17:12particularly as you thought about scaling the, the team and the depth of technical talent in Europe, you know, the
17:16market's evolved a lot in the last kind of five years, decade.
17:19Um, and there's been a lot of chatter this week, quite rightly about artificial intelligence and, um, you know, the,
17:25the advantage that certain countries may have in Europe around this depth of technical talent.
17:29I'd love to get your thoughts about, you know, how you, well, the approach that you took around finding that
17:34technical talent, you know, the level of competition as you've seen it evolve in the last couple of years.
17:38You're great to get your pulse check on that.
17:39Yeah, I, I still think AI is a pretty fresh market when you're, when you're looking for talent in a
17:47way, a lot of the, the, the, the tech has been only created like in the last years.
17:57And, um, it's, it's not like you've been working in that area for 30 years and you've amassed all of
18:02this experience and through that you can be much better at your job.
18:06I think that's just not the case.
18:08I, I think quite a lot of the, the researchers or the, or the tech employees that are coming into,
18:15into, into DeepL, um, they actually have to go through a little bit of a bootcamp and kind of get
18:20to know how we're doing those things.
18:22Because we've been always at the, at the forefront of, of this kind of research and, and we have to
18:27educate them either way.
18:28And it doesn't really matter if they've been working in exactly this field for, for, for such a long time.
18:34So, so I think what we are looking always for is really this raw talent on, um, kind of being
18:42able to, to create great technological solutions.
18:46And a lot of our researchers are actually kind of coming from physics PhDs, for example, because this is just
18:53a super hard university course that teaches you how to think about abstract topics.
18:59Um, and also at the same time, quite often teaches you how to get those done in a computer because
19:04you have to simulate a lot.
19:05So there's, and for that, I think there's, there's a super broad talent base in Europe and for us, it
19:13was mostly Germany, especially at the beginnings.
19:16Um, super interesting.
19:17And maybe just coming back to you personally for a second, you know, founder, CEO of this business, um, you
19:22know, quite extraordinary in so many different ways.
19:24And, and I'd love to maybe, um, hear a little bit about, I mean, uh, some of the things that
19:29you found you had to scale yourself around, you know, muscles that you developed, that you had to develop, perhaps
19:35how you saw your own leadership style evolve.
19:37Yeah.
19:37Any reflections you might be willing to share with founders in the room?
19:40So I was starting very much with leadership by example.
19:45Yes.
19:45I think, uh, that is just my natural inclination and I very much kind of liked to be the hardest
19:54working person in the room and the person who is like kind of pulling it out of the mud if
19:59like something goes wrong.
20:00And, and I really got even a lot of kind of personal satisfaction of being the one who can make
20:07it work.
20:07Yes.
20:08That works very well for the beginning, I think.
20:11And you're setting a great example for the company and kind of setting the benchmark.
20:15Um, at some point in time, you really have to evolve from, from that because I cannot solve off the
20:21prob, all of the problems within the company.
20:23And if I keep doing that, then nobody else will be enabled to solve those problems.
20:28And there's not the second and third and fourth wave of, um, of employees within the company who will be
20:34able to take that company further, the next steps.
20:37And, and actually probably like the growth of the company will stall because I will be the one who's going
20:42to be kind of the bottleneck there.
20:45Yeah.
20:45And it is sometimes like personally a hard one to let go of that and not be the one who
20:51is the hero and who is solving the issue.
20:53But like, it's the other ones now who are the heroes.
20:56Um, at the same time with the company growing, you have to become really much more stringent about how you're
21:04running the team and what the goals are and how does the accountability work.
21:08So, a lot of change that needs to happen there really on the personal level on how you're, how, how
21:15you're behaving within the, within the company context.
21:18Yeah.
21:19Um, love that.
21:19And, and maybe one just quick follow up question on, you know, as you scale yourself, so much of, of
21:23kind of scaling a business generally is also sometimes not only developing internal talent, but bringing in new parties to
21:30lead particular functions.
21:31And it's always a pivotal moment to do that because, you know, they, these people have to be marquee hires.
21:36They have to also be culture carriers within the business.
21:38How do you think about kind of finding those people and qualifying on the cultures of culture piece in particular,
21:44you know, finding the right fit for, for what you're solving for?
21:47Yeah.
21:47Uh, so my, my early stage investors, even before Atomico, uh, has invested and it specifically met from, from benchmark.
21:55I think the most valuable lesson that he taught me is to spend a lot of time on hiring and
22:03specifically leadership hiring, like really making sure that everybody you're hiring, you're 100% sure that this is the person
22:10that, that, that you want to join there.
22:12Like, obviously you're never going to be 100% sure, but like, it's, it's a nice metaphor.
22:17Um, so I was always very, very, very, very colorful about that.
22:21And, and then the next step is really the onboarding.
22:24Like you have to make sure that the leadership team, which is, which is your extension as a founder, as
22:31a CEO, really understands how you think.
22:34And they, they should be thinking on their own, but they should also know how I would think about it.
22:39Yeah.
22:40So that they can kind of fight this internal fight in their own mind on, is it right how I'm
22:46doing that?
22:46Yeah.
22:46What would Yarek say?
22:48Uh, is it, is it kind of in line with the company policy?
22:50And they, they are very well enabled to make their own decisions and to make decisions that, that are contrary
22:57to what I would do.
22:58Uh, but at least they need to understand how things have been done until now so that have, so that
23:03they have the context.
23:04Amazing.
23:05Um, look, we only have a couple of minutes left.
23:07So, so maybe just leaving it with an open ended question, you know, in terms of what's next for Deepal?
23:12Your kind of vision for what you're building now.
23:14Yeah.
23:15I think, I think we want to really make sure that these language barriers that still exist.
23:21I mean, we have, we have, we have gone so far over the last years as humanity in terms of,
23:26in terms of AI and translation really specifically.
23:28It was, it was, it was the first frontier where AI has made a huge impact in, in this world.
23:35Um, but there's still a lot to, to be done.
23:38I'm, I'm really envisioning the, the, the world of translation in a way where you have to feel that you
23:46have a human who is speaking the other language natively and also speaking your language sitting next to you.
23:54Asking questions about this translation, making sure that, um, that this is, uh, this is the right thing for you.
24:02Going back and forth with you on the translation and have that always at your hand, at your fingertips with
24:08the technology, uh, there.
24:10So, a lot of research to be done.
24:13Deepal remains to be a very research committed and focused, uh, company.
24:17At the same time, we have to really go into, um, being able to work with the largest organizations of
24:24this world, being able to help them solve their super complicated communication problems.
24:30And, and, and that's ahead of us.
24:32And like technologically, as I, as I mentioned, I think spoken language is going to be really, really cool.
24:37Amazing.
24:38Well, some very, very exciting times ahead.
24:40And with that, we'll leave you to it.
24:41Thank you everyone who joined us today.
24:43Thank you very much.
24:44Thank you, Laura.
24:45Thank you, Laura.
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